The county supervisor’s race between incumbent Terra Lawson-Remer and former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is bound to focus on national themes and local quality-of-life concerns.
Like most campaigns, both sides likely will rely on simple messages over more nuanced realities.
There’s a lot at stake in what is expected to be the region’s highest-profile local election next year.
A Lawson-Remer victory would retain the Democrats’ 3-2 majority on the Board of Supervisors — something Lawson-Remer regularly mentions in fundraising appeals. It’s also a test of whether Republicans can win in a Democratic district in the county.
But this isn’t just about partisanship. Should Faulconer prevail, the Republican-dominated board would be expected to be less labor-friendly and more pro-business and pro-development, and perhaps more reluctant to expand social services than Democrats.
However, a flip of the board majority would be more complex than that.
Faulconer has suggested he would seek to spend more on social services. Early on, he has claimed the county needs to do more to combat homelessness, particularly when it comes to expanding mental health care facilities, creating more housing and increasing support services. He suggests he “delivered results” in those areas as mayor.
But the county has ramped up those programs after just a few years of Democratic leadership — which included Lawson-Remer — following a long stretch when a Republican majority did not make homelessness a high priority, though no one is saying more shouldn’t be done.
Among other things, Lawson-Remer teamed up with Republican Supervisor Joel Anderson on a pilot program to provide a rent subsidy for low-income older residents who are at imminent risk of becoming homeless.
The city’s Housing Commission has broader rent subsidies, including some also targeted at people at high risk of becoming homeless. Meanwhile, as reported by Blake Nelson of The San Diego Union-Tribune, the county is lagging on using available housing vouchers for veterans.
Faulconer can point to a dip in the homeless population during his mayoral administration, according to the annual one-day count. But his stepped-up engagement in homelessness didn’t happen until a public health crisis struck — the 2016-18 hepatitis A outbreak that resulted in nearly 600 cases and left 20 people dead. Unsanitary conditions in homeless encampments were widely blamed.
Who wins that campaign argument between the county’s effort and Faulconer’s record will clearly have an upper hand in the race. Polls show homelessness is a top concern for voters, though most of the discussion and news coverage has focused on the city, where the bulk of the region’s homelessness is concentrated.
More generally, Faulconer is talking about public safety. A key indicator of which way the race might go is who — or whether — the Deputy Sheriff’s Association of San Diego County decides to endorse. Conventional wisdom suggests the group would go with Faulconer, a Republican who had good relations with the San Diego Police Department and agreed to a sizable salary increase for its officers.
But the association is also an interest group and may take a pragmatic view about who it might be dealing with as supervisor.
But the candidates’ records and positions on homelessness, or any other issue, may not be as determinative as hard political dynamics — which includes Donald Trump. And right now, that’s about Faulconer.
In the recent special election for an open supervisorial seat, San Diego City Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe easily defeated Amy Reichert in a heavily Democratic district. The Montgomery Steppe camp hammered Reichert for opposing abortion, and tied her to Trump and other national conservatives.
Faulconer, who unlike Reichert has a moderate profile, would seemingly be insulated from attacks on abortion because he supports abortion rights. Further, he almost certainly will have the kind of resources to compete that Reichert didn’t.
But the other partisan tactics are certain to come into play.
Lawson-Remer’s District 3 stretches along the county coast from just north of Imperial Beach to Carlsbad. Because of reapportionment, it’s a somewhat different district than Lawson-Remer was elected to in 2020. The district is strongly Democratic, but less so than the other two districts held by Democrats.
Yet District 3 has shed more conservative inland communities — a benefit to Lawson-Remer. Still, Faulconer has previously won City Council and mayoral elections within portions of the district. Arguably, he could be the better-known candidate.
Republicans in local elections generally have not fared well along the San Diego County coast, especially in presidential election years. Part of the negative Trump effect on the GOP was coastal Republicans turning to vote for Democrats in greater numbers than Republicans elsewhere.
Lawson-Remer’s push for gun-safety measures and a crackdown on pregnancy crisis centers she says are misleading women certainly appeal to Democratic voters. But they’ll be plenty motivated anyway if Trump is on the ballot.
People in the Faulconer camp have talked vaguely about a private poll that shows him doing well in the district, but the full survey has never surfaced publicly.
His results in the district when he ran for governor were not encouraging, however.
During the 2021 recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom, Faulconer ran as a replacement candidate. Newsom crushed the recall, and there was much made of Faulconer receiving a mere 8 percent of the statewide vote and finishing a distant third. Lesser known is that in District 3 he received only 12 percent of the vote.
Perhaps more significant for this race is Faulconer’s about-face on Trump. Faulconer received national attention as mayor in 2016 when he refused to endorse Trump. In 2019, he visited Trump in the Oval Office and a photo of the two went viral. Labor and Democratic organizations backing Lawson-Remer will make sure that photo is in circulation next year.
In 2020, Faulconer acknowledged voting for Trump. Now he’s running in a district where President Joe Biden defeated Trump by 30 points.
There has been a fair amount of discussion about local elections becoming nationalized — that happened, to a degree, in the Montgomery Steppe-Reichert race.
Ron Nehring, former chair of the San Diego and California Republican parties, recently acknowledged the GOP brand has become weak in suburban areas — and District 3 is largely a suburban district. But that may have less effect in some races, he said.
“Party brands matter less when the race is high profile,” he said in an email. “In San Diego the Faulconer race will be high profile which means he will have the bandwidth to make sure voters see him for who he really is.”
Lawson-Remer and Democrats also will have the bandwidth to offer up their version of who Faulconer really is.
What they said
President Joe Biden in San Francisco via Union-Tribune alum Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) of Politico on X.
“Biden also w/ some nice words about Newsom tonite, saying ‘he could be anything he wants. He could have the job I’m looking for.’ The line got laughs.”
