Opening passage from Lee Burdick’s book, “Bob Filner’s Monster.”

When former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner went off on a trip to France during his ill-fated administration, his staff had a little surprise waiting for him back home.

They had installed a punching bag in his office. And some boxing gloves to go with it.

The thinking was, he had anger issues, and it might help for him to have an outlet other than his aides. Ironically, or perhaps predictably, he didn’t respond well.


Publicity photo for Lee Burdick’s book, “Bob Filner’s Monster.”

“Instead of accepting it as gesture of support, it threw him into the biggest rage I saw during his time in office,” his onetime top aide, Lee Burdick, has written in a new book. “I can’t explain his behavior, but if I were to guess, I think one of Filner’s greatest fears was that people would laugh at him.”

Burdick was a legal adviser who stepped up as chief of staff as allegations of sexual harassment took center stage during Filner’s brief 2013 stint as mayor. Her self-published book, “Bob Filner’s Monster,” is slated for release Feb. 8.

In the book, Burdick shares for the first time her version of the events leading up to Filner’s resignation amid allegations brought by some 20 women. Filner pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor battery and one count of felony false imprisonment. He spent three months under house arrest and is now serving probation in Los Angeles.


Written from her personal journals, Burdick’s 249-page memoir describes life inside the doomed administration, fractured relationships between city departments, alleged lawbreaking by public officials, and what Filner staffers believed to be a covert eavesdropping operation targeting the mayor’s offices at City Hall.

“I wrote the book because I felt that people could benefit from seeing their government more candidly and openly than they could at the time, and that some good could come from it,” Burdick said.

Filner did not respond to The San Diego Union-Tribune’s requests for comment.

Burdick’s tale starts in November 2012, when she voted for Filner even though she thought he was “an ass.” She says she voted for him because she supported his progressive political agenda, and she joined his staff as his legal advisor for the same reason.


“I can see now that I convinced myself political principles are more important than even the most awful personalities,” Burdick said.

Burdick says she maintained her dedication to those principles even as she grew more and more concerned about his self-destructive behavior — including an increasingly “creepy” pattern of sexually-charged behavior towards women.

The first hints of unacceptable behavior surfaced early in Filner’s administration, according to Burdick’s account.

About 10 p.m. one evening in January, 2013, after Burdick had finished catching up on work that had piled up over a long weekend, she met Filner and a woman who was not his fiance as they got off the elevator at the mayor’s offices at City Hall, her memoir says.


Filner asked Burdick what she was doing at the office, Burdick writes, and she told him that she was “just clearing off (her) desk from the long weekend.”

“‘Yeah, me, too,”’ he replied, according to the book, and he grinned as he opened the door to the main lobby for his guest.

Burdick said it was possible that the mayor was just giving the woman a tour, or accomplishing an innocent errand, and Burdick decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

As more hints about Filner’s offensive behavior towards women reached Burdick, she became increasingly concerned until, finally, she received credible information that Filner had sexually harassed members of his staff, and she became disgusted, according to the book.


But she didn’t quit her job.

“Some have called me an evildoer, as bad as Filner himself, because I stayed with his administration to the very end,” Burdick writes. “Others have called me a hero because, despite the chaos that marked the end of his administration, I stayed to fight for the hopes and ideals of those who elected him…my hopes and ideals…and for some of his victims — people you might not think of — who remained hidden from public view.”

The “fight” Burdick describes repeatedly drew her into conflict with City Attorney Jan Goldsmith.

Cover of Lee Burdick’s new book


Throughout the book, Burdick accuses Goldsmith of overstepping his authority in his quest to drive Filner out of office, including divulging details of what happened during closed-session City Council meetings on two occasions.

By then, Filner had few friends at City Hall, having alienated even those who initially supported him, Burdick said.

“Putting it in context, we had a situation where, because of Filner’s alienating the City Council, they clearly sided with the city attorney in all of his efforts to fight the mayor,” Burdick said. “So when the city attorney went beyond his legal authority, the council did nothing. And I get it. I understand why. Do I believe that that is acceptable in governance? No, I don’t.”

Gerry Braun, a spokesman for the City Attorney’s Office, said, “In the past, the city attorney has acknowledged that he was instrumental in obtaining Mr. Filner’s resignation. Regardless of Ms. Burdick’s opposition at the time and today, it was the right thing to do.”


Braun said that the office acted legally and appropriately when it released selected information from a closed meeting — a tangential discussion that was not on the agenda, and not part of the formal meeting.

“Any discussion of city business was redacted from the transcript,” Braun said.

Goldsmith’s name also comes up in Burdick’s book when she claims she and a member of her staff discovered what they believed to be evidence of a high-tech covert eavesdropping operation targeting the mayor’s offices in City Hall.

In her description of the incident, which unfolded in the last weeks of Filner’s administration, Burdick recalls a conversation with then Chief of Police Bill Lansdowne about the expense of hiring an outside consultant to investigate possible eavesdropping.


According to the memoir, Lansdowne told her there wasn’t extra money in the budget for it, and “we know who’s doing it anyway.” When Burdick asked who, Lansdowne said, “‘’The city attorney. Who else?’”

Burdick also writes in the book that she decided not to pursue further investigation and told Lansdowne to “stand down.”

Lansdowne said Tuesday that he never said or suggested he thought Goldsmith was involved in the surveillance.

“I don’t believe now, and I didn’t believe then, that he (Goldsmith) would violate the law like that,” Lansdowne said. “I did not say that.”


Lansdowne said the police department did end up hiring a consultant to sweep the office. He said they did the sweep at night, and found no evidence of surveillance.

“(Burdick) did want us to do it, we did it, and we told her there was nothing we could find,” Lansdowne said.

Burdick said she wasn’t aware of any sweep. And she stood behind her recollection of what Lansdowne said about Goldsmith.

“I was surprised that he (Lansdowne) shared his opinion with me so candidly, because it was unsolicited,” Burdick said.


The city attorney was not aware of or involved in any eavesdropping on the mayor’s offices until Burdick complained and was referred to the police, according to Braun.

While Burdick’s book is critical of Goldsmith and others in City Hall, she points out that Filner was his own worst enemy. She says he was ultimately responsible for the pain he inflicted upon himself, city government, and San Diegans.

Burdick speculates that all the behavior that led to Filner’s ouster — alienating his colleagues, yelling at his employees, unwelcome sexual advances on women, insensitive and tone-deaf comments and humor — had a common thread: Filner simply had trouble connecting with people on a basic human level.

This seemed clear to Burdick when, months after Filner flew into a rage about the punching bag in his office, Burdick was watching an episode of the political drama television show, “House of Cards.”


In the episode, the President of the United States berates the vice president for intentionally undermining the president’s efforts on an important issue. As the vice president leaves the room, he suggests the president might want to use a punching bag next time.

Later the president walks into his office to find a punching bag with a note on it. In the note, the vice president apologizes for his recalcitrance.

“The president looked at the note, and then at the punching bag, and smiled,” Burdick wrote. “He smiled.”