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This post originally appeared in the Nov. 19 Morning Report. Get the Morning Report delivered to your inbox.
Monday the campaign to pass that hotel-room tax increase announced that it got the endorsement of Councilman Chris Ward. He’s been kind of hard to pin down. He was for it but also not for it.
A brief history of Ward and the hotel tax effort:
June 2017: Ward voted against Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s plea to put the measure on the ballot in November of that year. Faulconer retaliated with budget cuts aimed at Ward’s office.
August 2018: Ward was out of the country and could not call in when the Council considered the mayor’s urgent plea to place the measure on the November 2018 ballot after a dysfunctional effort to collect the needed signatures failed to get an obviously sufficient number of signatures. His vote would have been decisive.
April 2019: With sufficient signatures finally verified, Ward opposed putting the measure on the March 2020 ballot because he believed measures should go on November ballots, in accordance with the spirit of 2016’s Measure L.
October 2019: Ward was nevertheless listed as part of the coalition supporting the measure at a press conference. He did not go to the press conference.
Nov. 4, 2019: Ward votes against putting the measure on the March 2020 ballot.
Monday: He’s into it. “He was consistent in not voting for a March vote but supporting the goals of the measure,” said spokesman Ansermio Jake Estrada.
For more on San Diego’s hotel-tax increase measure, click here.