As presently constituted, San Diego County’s Board of Supervisors is a dying breed.
Decades of a status quo determined by mostly white, Republican, and male overlords are coming to an end. Term limits, a less homogenous population, and the decline of the Grand Old Party’s base in California mean a change is coming.
This is the lens through which Measures A thru D–to be voted on by all San Diego County voters–must be viewed through.
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Donald Trump and his enablers know the statistics from experience and rely on it to shield their groping, harassment, and pussy-grabbing. And now they are exploiting this reality in their quest to place a man on the nation’s highest court who’s history indicates he’ll do everything possible to further subjugate women.
There are well-established facts about sexual assault and its aftermath: only 310 out of every 1,000 rapes are reported. Of those rapes reported to police, just 57 lead to arrests, 11 are referred to prosecutors, seven lead to felony convictions, and six lead to incarceration for the rapist. Victims of rape have long-lasting consequences, including PTSD, suicidal thoughts, problems at work or school, drug use, and more.
I have no way of knowing how the vote on Kavanaugh will turn out. I do know that, whatever the outcome, the old white guys in DC have further motivated millions of women to make sure to vote in the upcoming elections.
Now’s the time to make a plan to vote, and to encourage your friends to do so. Mail-in ballots go out in less than two weeks. Even though most of them won’t appear on every ballot, there are more than six hundred people running for office in San Diego County alone. Opportunities to learn about and engage with campaigns and issues are popping up everywhere. All you have to do is pay attention. [Read more…]
The short version of this analysis is you need to pay attention to City Measures E & G, and could reasonably be expected to vote yes on the rest of them.
E & G are about the future of the stadium site in Mission Valley, and the only ones with pro and con groups; the rest of the City ballot items are just housekeeping or consensus agreements on issues. My remarks on those (H-N) will be short and sweet.
How we got here: After years of dicking around about wanting a bigger and better place for the San Diego Chargers to play, team owner Dean Spanos packed up his franchise and left town. [Read more…]
San Diego County is changing, and nowhere is that truer than in the North County, currently represented on the Board of Supervisors by Bill Horn.
Most of the five supervisors have been in office for more than 20 years. It’s been largely a white, male, Republican club brimming with alumni from San Diego State University.
After 23 years in office, supervisor Horn is terming out of District 5. And not a moment too soon. He’s long been the embodiment of what’s wrong with County government: gruff, unfeeling, and forgetful about who he was supposed to be representing. [Read more…]
Tuesday, November 6 should be the beginning of the end of a status quo situation in San Diego that is just. plain. wrong.. All you have to do is vote.
I know, I know. Every campaign and every ballot measure says they’re The One, but this vote will –over the next few years– improve mental health care, help the homeless, and make our corner of the country a better place for all of us to live.
Much of the power over our lives by the government is vested with the five members of the County Board of Supervisors. Most of them have been in office for more than 20 years.
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The district is a bi-polar political entity. Geography and long-standing loyalties both exert a significant influence on elections in the city’s southernmost political sector.
City Council District 8 is bisected by National City & Chula Vista. The north and south ends have a majority Latino population in common, but the external realities differ.
The forces of gentrification weight heavily on neighborhoods connected to the core city like Barrio Logan. The border with Mexico, along with the militarization that goes with it, looms over the southern end.
Overlaid on these different environments are family and personal connections. To understand the race for city council in District 8, a history lesson is in order. I’ve simplified parts of this story because the nuances are near-impossible for an outsider to discern. [Read more…]
I’ll let you in on a little secret: San Diego is a lot bluer city than most people realize, meaning–as one politico told me recently–if you run the right Democrat, they can win just about everywhere.
City Attorney Mara Elliot carried every council district in 2016 except D5 Mark Kersey’s collection of north-central communities clustered along Interstate 15. There are roughly 130,000 more registered Democrats in the city than Republicans, who have sunk to third place–70,000 voters or so behind No Party Preference.
Fortunately for partisans on the right side of the aisle, San Diego’s City Council races are officially non-partisan. The words “Democrat” or “Republican” don’t appear on the ballot, making a high public profile a potential equalizer. [Read more…]
With more than two dozen canvassing efforts planned for the coming days, Nathan Fletcher, Tommy Hough, Monica Montgomery, Dr. Jen Campbell, Ammar Campa-Najjar, Mike Levin, Todd Gloria, Chris Ward, Dr. Akilah Weber, Alejandra Sotelo-Solis, Mona Rios, Jose Rodriguez, Cori Schumaker, Tasha Boerner Horvath, James Elia, and Sunday Gover all want a little help from their friends with talking to voters throughout San Diego. And if you read through the listings below, you’ll find there’s also a celebrity coming to town to knock on doors.
Getting out the vote is serious business in San Diego this year. There’s still time to join campaigns. If you’re not able, be sure to be encouraging should they knock on your door. Contacting voters is the absolute best way to win an election and this level of pre-election activity is unprecedented in my experience.
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At the heart of District 4 are San Diego’s historically black communities, created in large part by property deeds limiting where people of color could buy or rent homes.
In 1969 a coalition calling itself BOMB: Black, Oriental, Mexican Brothers called a public meeting in Southcrest Park and began advocating for a civil rights advocate to be appointed to a vacated City Council seat.
The appointment and subsequent election of Leon L. Williams began a tradition of the District 4 seat being held by African-Americans. Five decades later, issues of race and repression are at the center of a contentious contest between a storied incumbent and her activist challenger. [Read more…]
My coverage of the 2018 general election will focus on the City of San Diego over the next few days, starting with the City Council and moving on to ballot measures. Today’s topic is the District 2 contest between Lorie Zapf and Dr. Jen Campbell.
Let’s face it. For a city with a seemingly bright future and a terrific climate, if you had to pick a color to represent San Diego’s mood, it would be dark gray. When progressive things happen, they get tripped up by a petulant group of land speculators and scam artists entrepreneurs.
From an economic and political point of view, the “May Gray” is a year-round state of mind for all-too-many of us. All the promises of prosperity made over the past half-century compared to the ever increasing number of people who are economically challenged amount to a solid argument for why “trickle down” is a myth. [Read more…]
I’ve been searching for ways to highlight many of the local down-ballot candidates who readers might not be aware of. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by internet and tv ads touting big-name candidates for major offices, and when the time to fill in the ballot arrives, a bunch of unfamiliar names makes filling in many bubbles a crap shoot.
Today, I’m going to list women running for local offices as Democrats in San Diego County, along with basic contact information when available, going you the opportunity to learn more. While I intend to provide additional coverage on these candidates, there is simply no way I’ll get to all of them.
While there is nothing guaranteeing a woman running for office will be a better choice (every group has its outliers), I can say with certainty we certainly can’t do worse than we are these days.
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Sometimes the most influential contests on your ballot are the ones you haven’t heard much about. Let’s fix that.
Are you psyched to vote for Sunday Gover or Paloma Aquirre in the upcoming general election? How about Cory Schumacher or Akilah Weber? James Elias or Jeff Griffith? (I’ll say more about them below.)
What? You’ve never heard of them? Chances are good they won’t be on your ballot unless you live in a small city or less urbanized part of the county. But there will be a host of names, regardless of where you reside, worth learning about in the coming weeks. [Read more…]
