Morning Report: Lawsuit Challenges Mayoral Candidate’s Residency

A new lawsuit is seeking to boot city cop Larry Turner from the mayor’s race. The lawsuit alleges Turner isn’t actually a full-time resident of the city of San Diego, as first reported by CBS 8. 

Turner is one of six candidates running to unseat Mayor Todd Gloria. So far, none of Gloria’s opponents have garnered major campaign cash or attention. The main question — barring any wild developments — is which one will come in second during the March 5 primary election. That person will face off with Gloria in November.

The lawsuit isn’t the first whiff of a challenge to Turner’s residency. One of the political action committees supporting Gloria paid a private investigator $5,000 to dig into Turner’s residency, as our Scott Lewis reported in the Politics Report last week. 

The whole thing is a political hit job, Turner told Lewis. He argued the mayor’s people think he poses the biggest threat so they want him out of the race. 

As Lewis wrote in Wednesday’s Morning Report, it appears some of Gloria’s supporters want Jane Glasson, his only Republican challenger, to be his opponent in November. 

The people coming after Turner’s address allege he essentially lived in El Cajon at the time he entered the mayoral race and claimed a downtown property owned by his campaign manager as his residency. 

North County Report: Two Failed Housing Developments Seek a Comeback

Two North County developers are trying to resurrect housing projects that were previously shot down, our Tigist Layne reports. 

In Encinitas, Baldwin & Sons are having another go at a massive 485-unit apartment complex that has (and had) residents all in a tizzy. When Baldwin first proposed the project in 2020, a wetland was discovered on a corner of the property and the project ground to a halt. Now, Baldwin has suggested changes that they hope will allow the development to proceed, but residents have come out to speak against the project by the dozens. 

In Carlsbad, a more tamped-down project is at issue. A developer has proposed a four-story project that would have retail space on the ground floor and five residential units above it. After much back and forth, the City Council blocked a similar project from the same developer in 2018. Residents believe the project is out of character with its surroundings. But now new councilmembers will have final say over the project. 

Read the North County Report here. 

In Other News

• The San Diego City Council voted earlier this week to close a loophole in the city’s street vendor regulations that allowed vendors who cited free-speech claims to dodge city rules. (Union-Tribune)
• The county Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board isn’t backing off its push to body scan detention facility staff when they enter county jails. (KPBS)
• Mayor Todd Gloria signed an overarching project labor agreement with local unions for city construction projects on Wednesday, just over a year after San Diego voters reversed a longstanding ban on the labor-friendly deals. (Times of San Diego)
• Data from the state Department of Education showed nearly 4.5 percent of San Diego County’s K-12 students were homeless during the 2022-23 school year. (CBS 8)
• Police are investigating after a resident of the city’s Golden Hall homeless shelter stabbed another shelter resident while he slept early Wednesday. (Fox 5)
• Port commissioners on Tuesday declared their plan to dedicate nearly 10 acres of Navy Pier into a veterans park. (Times of San Diego)
• After a hung jury, the District Attorney’s Office requested the dismissal of its case against a doctor who faced an involuntary manslaughter charge following the death of an inmate she treated at the Las Colinas jail in Santee. (NBC 7)

The Morning Report was written by Will Huntsberry and Lisa Halverstadt. It was edited by Lisa Halverstadt.