When President Donald Trump officially launched his re-election bid this week, we got a press release along with everyone else about how San Diego Republicans stand with Trump’s vision for America.
It came from Tony Krvaric, the chairman of the Republican Party of San Diego. The thing is, some of the most prominent Republicans in town don’t stand with Trump. And when we asked Krvaric about that, he scoffed that the GOP wasn’t like the Democrats and could have diverse views within the party.
But then the most prominent local Republican, Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who pointedly hasn’t stood with Trump, at all, suddenly literally did stand with him.
“Hahahahah. Just as you try to drive a wedge with your questions Faulconer meets with President Trump!” Krvaric texted.
But then we asked Faulconer if he, after years of refusing to support Trump and criticizing his most controversial pronouncements, had indeed begun to, you know, stand with him.
No, his office said.
Then we heard that the president had gone on national television and discussed his meeting with Trump. And … well, he had a different recollection of how it went than Faulconer did.
In the end, the mayor of San Diego basically said the president of the United States lied about their meeting.
No big deal in 2019, apparently.
How Things Change
Just a few years ago, Krvaric was not the gleeful Trump supporter he is today.
In the summer of 2016, political consultants and elected officials were telling us Trump was making things harder for their campaigns, particularly those who had branded themselves as moderate “San Diego Republicans.” We reached out to ask Krvaric for his take.
“We’re the local party which means our focus is the nearly 200 local candidates that will be on the ballot in November,” he wrote. “There’s no doubt the party is divided in terms of the nominee so there are good Republicans with different views. What everyone can agree on are our local candidates — which is the focus of all local party organizations.”
Then we asked whether Krvaric himself supported Trump. He did not respond. A day later, we asked if it was fair to read that as a no comment.
“You have all my comments,” Krvaric wrote.
The Trump Drag: Perhaps the clearest example of a local Republican who lost an election due to the president’s unpopularity in San Diego is former San Diego Councilwoman Lorie Zapf. It’s impossible to be sure why she lost her re-election bid last year. But groups opposing her candidacy hammered District 2 voters with mail pieces connecting Zapf to Trump on the way to her losing by more than 15 points to Councilwoman Jennifer Campbell. Four years earlier, she had won re-election by 14 points.
After losing that race, Zapf appears to have decided to leave the Republican Party. On Feb. 3, she re-registered as a no party preference voter, according to the San Diego Registrar of Voters.
Zapf did not respond to a request to ask her about why she decided to leave the party. She has not been visible in local politics since leaving office, and hasn’t indicated she plans to run for office again.
Kersey Probably Going to Do it
Just about everyone in local politics now expects Councilman Mark Kersey, who left the Republican Party earlier this year, to launch his own mayoral bid soon.
Waiting until after June 30 would mean he doesn’t have to worry about filing any fundraising figures for months, giving him time to get his campaign situated.
Democrats are coming off a very good 2018, when even Republicans who few thought were in danger, like former Escondido Mayor Sam Abed, succumbed to the county’s changing demographics and an unfavorable national climate.
But if Kersey indeed made it through March, he’d nonetheless find himself in a one-on-one match-up where he’s likely to have significant financial support.
The solid analysis you pay for: City Councilwoman Barbara Bry has apparently decided not to run for mayor to the right of Assemblyman Todd Gloria. At least not yet, and that’s left a big lane open for Kersey. He may not be able to consolidate all of the right-of-center interests, especially if Republican partisans are bitter about his defection from the party, but how many of them are there?
Fundraising matters: June is nearly over, and with it will come the close of the latest campaign fundraising period.
Voters aren’t paying attention to any of these races right now – many never will – so the early fundraising check-in is something of a proxy for whose campaign is going well, and whose isn’t.
It’ll be especially interesting, for instance, to see how the two main mayoral candidates, Gloria and Bry, are doing courting donors.
Gloria has stacked up a commanding lead in major endorsements, another concrete indication of how a campaign is doing at this stage. He got former Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday.
That’s now feeding a conventional wisdom that he’s a clear front-runner in the race. If Bry puts up a big fundraising number, she could chip away at that perception.
Notes From the Week
- The Chamber of Commerce is gearing up to oppose the “split roll” initiative set for November 2020. The initiative would split off commercial properties from Proposition 13 property tax protections. Read more about it here. The chamber sent out an invite to board members for a private briefing on the issue featuring Faulconer on June 24. The chamber’s position seems clear: “Help stop the split roll initiative.”
- Darrell Issa may be running for U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr.’s seat in the 50th District, reports The Hill. The former congressman resigned from a neighboring district, District 49.
- Every election cycle, there’s a controversy as the parties consider early endorsements in races where there are more than one relevant candidate from that party. It’s happening again as the Democrats consider an endorsement in the District 3 County Board of Supervisors race. The Coast News reports that Olga Diaz, Escondido city councilwoman, is close to getting the early endorsement and her Democratic rivals are not pleased.
- That piece earned an immediate rebuke from Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez and she had a very long exchange on Twitter with writers and editors at the Coast News.
- Rumor watch: The District 2 county supervisor race wasn’t supposed to be interesting but it is on its way to being fascinating. Manny Rodriguez, the former police chief in National City, is considering running as a Democrat in the race. He’d join Poway Mayor Steve Vaus, a Republican, Joel Anderson, a Republican, Tom Lemmon, the labor leader, who’s running as a Democrat, and Kenya Taylor, a Democrat and counselor.
- District 5 of the San Diego City Council – the seat Kersey has now – has not been contested for some time. Republicans usually settle on a candidate and that’s that. But they have not, not at all, settled on a candidate this time around. The conservative blog SD Rostra played host to a duel of accusations between Joe Leventhal, a lawyer, and Pat Batten, a lobbyist. Leventhal has a major crippling problem in the race: He can’t raise money or spend money until September. He’s a former Ethics Commission member so he has to wait a year from when he left the commission before he can be involved in politics. Brian Brady smacked Leventhal for gearing up anyway. Then another writer came to his defense.
Correction: An earlier version of this post neglected to include Kenya Taylor’s candidacy in the District 2 county supervisor race.
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