SAN DIEGO — It was a new day in San Diego back in 2012, when voters elected a Democrat to the Mayor’s Office for the first time in a generation.

Ten-term Rep. Bob Filner had successfully traded a comfortable chair in the U.S. Congress for the hot seat of his adopted hometown’s highest office, where the responsibilities — and personal scrutiny — loomed far larger than in the nation’s capital.

He had already been dogged by rumors of inappropriate behavior, but a cascade of sexual harassment allegations crystallized once he became the high-profile leader of one of the nation’s largest cities.

Filner wielded power sharply, as he said he would do throughout the tense campaign against former City Council member Carl DeMaio. He upended the status quo across city hall and went sideways with the entrenched leadership in near-record time.

Yet Filner achieved some notable successes as mayor.

He secured a five-year labor deal with city workers and funded two year-round homeless shelters. He did away with the red-light cameras that remotely issued tickets to drivers, he cleaned up the stink from bird droppings in La Jolla and he set aside money for a centennial event at Balboa Park.

But by July 2013, barely half a year into his tenure as San Diego’s chief executive, Filner was at the center of a remarkable scene where three prominent supporters publicly accused the sitting mayor of serial sexual harassment. More than a dozen other accusers would soon follow.

Filner, a Pennsylvania transplant who taught history at San Diego State University before jumping into politics with a winning campaign for school board and later the City Council, would be gone within weeks.

The disgraced mayor with a lifetime of public service, dating back to the renowned Freedom Riders in the pre-civil-rights era South, died at an assisted-living home in Costa Mesa on Easter Sunday. He was 82.

“Bob Filner came to City Hall with the promise of cementing the blue shift in San Diego that had been developing in the 21st-century,” said Carl Luna, a Mesa College political scientist who has studied local elections for decades.

“But like an unfortunately large number of San Diego politicians, his potential was undone by his own hubris and malfeasance,” he said. “The result was a forced resignation and turning over the Mayor‘s Office to Republican Kevin Faulconer for the next seven years.”

By the time Todd Gloria and the Democrats took back the Mayor‘s Office in 2020, the San Diego progressive agenda had been hobbled by budget constraints, the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of the political right nationally and locally, Luna said.

It was not immediately clear what caused Filner’s death. His daughter Erin confirmed it but declined to provide details beyond the contents of a paid obituary, which said he died with his two children at his side April 20.

Robert Earl Filner was born in Pittsburgh on Sept. 4, 1942.

While a sophomore at Cornell University in 1961, Filner joined a cast of volunteers known as the Freedom Riders, the progressive-minded activists who sought to promote civil rights in the Deep South, well before those rights were codified in federal law.

Filner arrived by bus in Jackson, Miss., early that summer and was quickly arrested for disturbing the peace. He refused to post bond and spent two months in the Mississippi State Penitentiary known as Parchman Farm.

The experience galvanized his support for less advantaged people across society and informed his political leanings for the rest of his life.

Filner earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, a master’s degree in history and a Ph.D. in the history of science before accepting a teaching position at San Diego State in 1970.

A dispute over the proposed closing of a neighborhood school pushed him to run for a seat on the San Diego Unified School District board in 1979. He served two terms before winning a tight race for the San Diego City Council, to which he was elected in 1987 and spent five years.

In 1992, he set his sights on the U.S. House of Representatives — and won.

His election to Congress allowed Filner to advocate for his favored causes, including veterans, people of color and various progressive convictions. He rose through the ranks and eventually served as chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

The incoming representative brought his affinity for working families and overlooked populations to Washington, D.C.

He helped establish the Congressional Progressive Caucus and was a major supporter of labor unions and U.S. veterans. He also helped secure almost $200 million to provide pension benefits to Filipino veterans of World War II.

But over his 10 terms in Congress, his public service also led to unwelcome scrutiny.

He was among several dozen lawmakers singled out in 2005 for putting family members on their campaign payroll. The Los Angeles Times reported he directed more than $150,000 to his then-wife.

Two years later, Filner became the subject of a dust-up at Dulles International Airport when he entered a restricted area to try and retrieve his luggage.

In 2011, Filner announced he would run to succeed Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican and former police chief. He defeated DeMaio in the 2012 campaign by a margin of about 5 percentage points and was sworn in as the city’s 35th mayor.

But by July 2013, former Councilmember Donna Frye joined prominent San Diego attorneys Cory Briggs and Marco Gonzalez at a press conference called to pressure Filner to step aside amid a slew of sexual-harassment allegations.

The three well-known Democrats did not identify any victims but declare that Filner had repeatedly breached his public trust.

On Monday, Frye said that speaking out at the time was necessary to ensure justice.

“The public has a right to expect that their elected government leaders and political party officials not look the other way or make excuses for illegal behavior just because they agree with someone’s political point of view,” she added.

Initially in 2013, Filner deflected the allegations with a vague apology. Days later, Frye and the two lawyers held another press conference with more victims and more details.

This time, the mayor said he would enter a program to address his treatment of women, but he resisted stepping aside — even as the number of accusers approached 20 women.

Longtime San Diego journalist Irene McCormack was the first to come forward publicly.

McCormack had interviewed for the key position of communications director for the new mayor and said she was thrilled when she was brought in to manage Filner’s message. But things quickly turned sour.

“I walked into the most dysfunctional, horrible experience I’ve ever been involved with,” McCormack said Monday, and the mayor couldn’t keep his hands to himself. He created a hostile work environment that treated women as “sexual objects or stupid idiots” and made wildly inappropriate comments to his staff.

McCormack, who had previously spent years as a reporter and editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune, said she decided to go public with her concerns after seeing a young woman emerge from Filner’s inner office.

“She was fixing her hair and adjusting her top, and she looked aghast,” she said. “I said, ‘I can’t let this happen to anybody else.’ That was the moment I tried to figure out how to make it stop.”

McCormack announced her lawsuit at a press conference with attorney Gloria Allred that was carried on live television across the country. Soon after, the City Council refused to pay the mayor’s legal bills, and City Attorney Jan Goldsmith entered exit negotiations with Filner.

By August 2013, Filner was out of office.

He pleaded guilty to three criminal charges, including a felony, and resigned as part of the settlement. The city subsequently paid more than $1 million to resolve a host of lawsuits; McCormack agreed to a $250,000 payment.

At his farewell council address, Filner at turns apologized and insisted he did nothing wrong.

“I started my political career facing lynch mobs, and I think we have just faced one here in San Diego, and you’re going to have to deal with that,” he said.

Norma Damashek, a longtime political supporter of Filner’s and past president of the local League of Women’s Voters chapter, said the city’s political establishment resented Filner because he posed a threat to their stranglehold on San Diego governance.

“Filner’s personality and style, as much as his liberal politics, made him an easy target for San Diego’s big-business interests,” she said.

Damashek called Filner — San Diego’s first Democratic mayor since Maureen O’Connor was elected in 1986 — a big-city mayor ahead of his time.

“He supported solar systems on public buildings, he urged the City Council to impose state prevailing wages on city contracts and he opened the first San Diego office in Tijuana to promote economic growth and cultural exchange,” she said.

Filner is survived by two children, his daughter Erin Filner and son Adam Filner, as well as by his brother Bernard Filner and two grandchildren.

He is also survived by two former wives, Barbara Christy, his wife from 1966 to 1982, and Jane Merrill, who was married to him between 1985 and 2009.

No public services are scheduled. His family suggested that any donations in his honor be directed to the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties.

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