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…]

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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