First of two parts. 

If it is election season, it must be Jim Dear Time in the lively South Bay blue collar community of Carson.

The most controversial politician in the South Bay will try on Tuesday to regain the mayor’s chair that he voluntarily gave up last year for the more lucrative position of city clerk.

Mr. Dear, often congenial, lost a recall election last winter. Little else, however, has changed in his decade-and-a-half career.

His enemies – “rivals” is far too tame of a description – boastfully treat the resilient Mr. Dear as if he originated on a separate planet.

In how many towns will you read this headline:

“City leaders square off against Jim Dear supporters”?

Especially since Mr. Dear is running for mayor against the incumbent, Little Al Robles. Were opinion-makers not incurably obsessed with hammering Mr. Dear every day, the mayor’s alleged (but arguably invisible) sins might monopolize a sizable wall.

The following three paragraphs from the above-headlined Carson City Council story will provide a taste of the perpetual war against Mr. Dear.

“You need to vote against this man,” Councilwoman Lula Davis-Holmes, a Dear opponent, said at Tuesday night’s Council meeting. “This City Council voted 5-0 to censure this man. He’s evil.”

Dear’s supporters, who advocate for him under the banner Carson Alliance 4 Truth, balked at the city’s recent claims that Dear’s actions unnecessarily cost taxpayers about $1 million the last two years.

“The truth is that the city, Council, staff and attorneys are responsible for squandering the now-$943,000 that you say you spent on the witch hunt (for allegedly harassing and intimidating employees),” said longtime Dear ally Jan Schaeffer.

(To be continued)