Mayor Bates has admitted to stealing about a thousand Daily Cals. The Patriot had the story first, but it has omissions.

“When we went to the Daily Cal with the story, the editor told us that they could not print the story with only four witnesses, since we are all Republicans. He told us that we weren’t credible since we presumably had an ideological bias against Bates,” explained Irvin. “I’m agitated that the Daily Cal implied that just because I’m a Republican I would lie to further my own beliefs.”

This wasn't it at all, although the real reason is hardly to the Daily Cal's credit either.

Mr. Sexton, at the time a Patriot staff writer, called in the paper thefts, which immediately put the Daily Cal on edge. (To remind everybody, Mr. Sexton lost a bitter battle to become Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Cal last year, and has been a vocal critic of them since moving to the Patriot.)

Down on the scene, nobody but the Republicans seemed to have seen these thefts. This includes those who were much nearer the trash can the Daily Cals were found in, as well as students like the ROTC recruiters that would hardly have a reason to love Mr. Bates. Not only that, but only Mr. Sexton was really firm on seeing Daily Cals go in the trash at the hands. The Daily Cal felt the other three were kinda wishy-washy on if they actually saw Bates throw them away. Bates denied it.

There's no end to how insane the idea is that Bates would throw away stacks of Daily Cals. He was in the middle of a very crowded Sproul Plaza, where hundreds of students could've spotted him. He was in the middle of a very tough election fight with Dean, where any issue he gave her she would've beat him into the ground with. Also, anyone with any knowledge of Berkeley politics knows that the Daily Cal almost always picks the loser in any close election race. Being endorsed is the kiss of death. So its not like Dean getting their endorsement would've swung thousands of student votes her way.

In fact, Bates' supporters can only explain him tossing the papers as a moment of temporary insanity.

Spring said she believed Bates was overwhelmed by the stress of the campaign.

"He was very exhausted from the election, getting very little sleep, and he just blew it," Spring said. "He let his emotions take over."

Faced with a crazy situation, the Daily Cal considered an equally crazy one: that this was a deliberate plot by Mr. Sexton and his Republican cronies to embarass the Daily Cal by libeling Berkeley's likely next mayor, as well as trash a political opponent of theirs. Almost all Republicans supported Dean. A libel suit is not something a financially strapped newspaper looks forward to. 'After all,' the Daily Cal thought, 'how could the Republicans be the only ones to see this in crowded Sproul Plaza? Bates is tall. He draws the eye.'

Both were crazy, so the Daily Cal gave up, noting only that papers were thrown away in a 'News in Brief.' Lin filed charges with UCPD, but they batting 0/100 on solving paper thefts, so that was little hope. It was left to UCPD and the Patriot to pursue the story. And now we're here.Email This Post!