Tijuana Adult Entertainment: Fiery editor’s accusations in 1925 did hold water
San Diego is the rottenest graft ridden city of its size on the American continent. If the Mayor and the Chief of Police don’t know it they ought to be sent to a home for the feebleminded. If they do know it, they both should be in the penitentiary. Abraham Sauer San Diego Herald
The muckraking editor and publisher of the San Diego Herald was never one to mince words. A self-proclaimed expert in “the gentle art of truth telling,” Abraham Sauer frequently used his weekly newspaper to assault in print the political high and mighty of San Diego.
Occasionally, Sauer’s attacks appeared to go too far. In a front-page editorial he published on May 21, 1925, Sauer accused three city councilmen — Don Stewart, Virgil Bruschi and Harry Weitzel — of violating prohibition laws and protecting downtown gambling, prostitution and other unnamed crimes. The graft-ridden misdeeds of the “councilmanic combine” required immediate grand jury attention, Sauer said. He was particularly scornful of Weitzel, describing him as “the kind of man who gets his fingers full of splinters from scratching his head.”