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This post initially ran in the Dec. 1 Politics Report. Get the Politics Report delivered to your inbox.
Democrat Vivian Moreno won the race to replace her boss as the City Council representative for District 8, despite opposition from the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, one of the most powerful groups in the local Democratic coalition.
In the weeks since the race ended, though, she hasn’t been especially eager to bury the hatchet.
In an interview, she said she hasn’t had any clear-the-air conversations with labor leaders following the tense race. In fact, she said she’s having a hard time forgetting one mailer against her, which criticized her for taking vacation days from her job as a Council staffer.
Moreno said she can’t believe a union attacked her for using paid vacation days she earned – especially because she took most of those days off so she could canvass for other Democratic candidates.
“I wasn’t on vacation, I was getting Democrats elected,” she said.
Moreno, though, hasn’t hesitated to lean into support from another group: the Lincoln Club of San Diego.
That group spent $35,000 on her behalf during the election, through a third-party political action committee. And now, the president of the Lincoln Club and a handful of the group’s board members and other conservative political donors and right-of-center establishment figures are hosting a debt retirement fundraiser for her next Friday.
