Politics Report: A New IE

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria raised just more than $236,000 in the six months leading up to January and added just a few thousand dollars since. As of Jan. 20, he had just $347,000 in cash on hand to spend.

It’s a paltry total for the incumbent mayor. But this isn’t a result of his struggles with public opinion or whatever policy dilemmas that bedevil the city. Genevieve Jones Wright, one of his opponents had just $17,000 in cash on hand. Ballots are just about to go out!

It’s the law. It’s affecting everyone. We wrote about it last May:

Signed in September 2022, the law, SB 1439, requires elected officials to recuse themselves from votes involving anyone who gave them more than $250 in campaign contributions. Specifically, if, say, a city councilmember got a donation from a developer for $500 and the developer’s project came up for a vote, the councilmember would have to either give back the money (within 30 days of learning that the project was up for a vote) or not vote.

The money will find a way. But it now means independent expenditures are going to be a lot more influential in these types of campaigns.

A new entrant in the independent campaign world: Sarah Kruer Jager is kind of a big deal. She is a partner in the Monarch Group, a developer that touts having created 19,000 residential units. State Senate President Toni Atkins, and now gubernatorial candidate, appointed Kruer Jager to the Commission on Judicial Performance where she served for seven years. Atkins and her wife, Jennifer La Sar, are friends.

Kruer Jager is also former City Councilwoman Barbara Bry’s daughter. Bry, of course, ran a tough campaign against now Mayor Todd Gloria in 2020.

Kruer Jager then led HomeTownSD, one of the coalitions that bid on the opportunity to redevelop the city’s Sports Arena land. They were the ones who pitched a smaller arena and design “more conscious” of the surrounding neighborhoods.

They lost.

Now, Kruer Jager has launched an independent expenditure committee to support Gloria’s re-election and primed it with a $25,000 donation she directed through Monarch.

I didn’t have much luck getting in touch with her or her partners in the effort, almost the entire HomeTownSD team, including Keith Maddox the man who rebuilt the Labor Council and Marcela Escobar Eck, the how-you-get-permits maven. (I know, I know who wouldn’t want to talk to me for the most popular Saturday morning politics report in the city???) Unfortunately, that means I could not ask them why they wanted to launch an independent campaign for the mayor.

After all, one already exists. Attorney Gil Cabrera ran the independent campaign that helped the mayor beat Bry in 2020 and the new version is still cooking.

What’s going on? Does the HomeTownSD crew know something about the city’s negotiations with the crew that did win the Sports Arena job and they want to be top of mind if talks fall apart? Is there a rivalry with Cabrera’s group? Do they not think he can do it? Or is it just a more-is-merrier thing?

Sorry crew, I failed to unlock the real reason.

The kicker: The HomeTownSD team’s committee to help Gloria is called Big City San Diego Supporting Todd Gloria. HomeTown –> Big City. It’s a call out to the mayor’s own repeated mentions of the need for San Diego to tap into that Big City Energy.

Nothing says Big City like saying you’re Big City, amirite?

Scramble for Port Seat

Attorney Rafael Castellanos recently announced that he was stepping down from his seat on the Port Commission so he could go back to working a job that actually pays money. But the volunteer role of port commissioner is still an attractive one and always leads to some amusing political games.

Kruer Jager has put in her hat.

Some labor leaders are lining up behind Sid Voorakkara, who came up short to Castellanos when he got the gig. Susan Guinn and Woo-Jin Shim have also been mentioned.

Shim is a member of the San Diego API Coalition, which released a statement Friday about the appointment.

“For over 20 years, the commission’s appointments in the City of San Diego have lacked adequate representation despite our region being over 17% Asian Pacific Islander,” the statement reads. “We urge elected officials and decision makers to end this exclusion and ensure that the API community has its rightful place at the table.”

Tax Week: Stormwater Time; Sales Tax Has a Name

San Diego City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera shocked City Hall this week when he announced that he would lead the push to put a ballot measure up in November to raise a tax on properties to pay for stormwater system improvements.

The tax is one of the more complex and he has not laid out how it would go. Would it be a tax on how many square feet of land you own? Would it allow exemptions for work you’ve done to make sure stormwater seeps off the land in a clean way? Not hard questions but still questions.

One scenario: As we all know, a tax for a special purpose put on the ballot by the government requires approval from two-thirds of voters. But there could be a way for Elo-Rivera and his colleagues to keep it from needing that much support. The idea is to put the tax on the ballot – charge homeowners and property owners a fee on the parcel they own but not say where the money would go. That would mean it only requires a simple majority of voters supporting it to pass.

Then they could put on the ballot a bond authorizing the city to borrow the exact same amount the tax is projected to raise to invest in the stormwater system.

That would mean the city could be putting two tax increases for general purposes on the same November ballot. Because Elo-Rivera made sure to clarify to the Union-Tribune that he still supports a sales tax increase.

And that now has a name: On Jan. 24, a committee officially filed with the city to support a 1 percentage-point increase in the city of San Diego’s sales tax rate. It’s called “Penny for Progress” and it lists Nancy Haley, Danielle Stephen, Nicole Crosby, Mel Katz and Michael Zucchet the general manager of the largest union of city employees, the Municipal Employees’ Association as its principal officers.  

If you have any ideas or feedback for the Politics Report, send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandieg.org.