Elections are great at forcing us to evaluate our bubbles. I was more in a bubble on some things than others. But the thing I was most in the bubble about was thinking things mattered that clearly didn’t.
The presidential race? It was baked a year ago. All those billions of dollars, months of angst, the Biden withdrawal and Harris nomination. All pointless. The election would have looked largely the same a year ago as it did this week.
David Wasserman, the analyst who came for Politifest, crunched the numbers. “… across the seven battleground states, the ’20-’24 swing towards Trump was ~3.1 pts. Across the other 43 states (+DC), it was ~6.7 pts,” he wrote.
In other words, the inertia toward former President Donald Trump was nearly 7 points. As evidenced by the margin in swing states, the $1 billion Harris campaign was able to slow and reverse some of it, but not close to enough.
Stuff costs too much: People frustrated with inflation and immigration, and blaming all of it on President Biden and de facto Vice President Kamala Harris was all that seemed to matter in the end. It was baked early. Biden’s decision to run for re-election and eliminate any serious primary challenge set it in motion.
The Great Supervisor Race: $3.6 Million Wasted
County Supervisor, District 3: That was baked too. That was easier to see months ago.
County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer never had a serious challenge from former Mayor Kevin Faulconer. Mostly because she and her allies were able to tie Faulconer to Trump. He never was willing to say otherwise — not that anything he said would have made much of a difference. The (lemonade stand? savage) attacks on his own competence as mayor were just like dropping boulders on an already sinking rowboat.
Mason Herron ran the numbers for me. After the Friday evening update, here is the presidential vote margin in District 3:
Harris: 63.1 percent
Trump: 36.9 percent
Harris Margin: 26.2 percent
Trump may have done well in many parts of the country, but this is the exact type of district he’s still not doing well in. Yet, this isn’t as high as the 29 points Biden won the same areas by.
If this holds after future counts, Faulconer ran about 7 points ahead of Trump. His “I’m actually quite liberal!” efforts worked. (Did you see that picture of him forcefully shaking Barack Obama’s hand???) But he needed to essentially double its effect to prevail. Independent elections analyst Vince Vasquez made these maps of the district.
The first is how the count has gone so far for Harris in the district.
The second is how it has gone for Lawson-Remer.
There were Kamala/Faulconer voters concentrated in Carlsbad, Point Loma and Coronado, La Jolla as well.
The final money tally: Independent groups spent $3.6 million on the race — about $500,000 more to support Faulconer than Lawson-Remer. I had thought it was more lopsided than that because much of the money for Faulconer came early and much of the money for her came late.
Herron’s tally of all the spending is broken out here.
Nothing Faulconer could do to Lawson-Remer was close to what she could do to him with that picture of him standing next to a grinning Donald Trump.
More Baked Races
City attorney: Also baked and also easy to see a year ago. I used to say the “deputy city attorney” ballot title was worth $1 million. I’m going to say now it’s worth maybe $2 million. That’s how much someone with a worse title on this ballot may have to spend to be able to beat it. Heather Ferbert and her campaign made no errors and didn’t give Brian Maienschein any openings.
The amount of money spent on these baked elections is mindblowing.
Mayor: Also baked. San Francisco Mayor London Breed lost her re-election bid. The similarities between her and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria are striking. Both are sincerely and aggressively pro-housing. Both have adopted tough-on-crime rhetoric and endorsed Proposition 36. Both promised to ban and sweep away encampments. Both face large deficits this year.
So why did she lose and he win? The opposition, and lack there of, probably. San Francisco uses ranked-choice voting which makes challenging an incumbent an easier proposition for someone like Daniel Lurie, the Levi’s fortune heir who ousted Breed. Several high-profile candidates ran at Breed.
Here, with the complete absence of the Republican Party in San Diego, high-profile Democrats lined up behind Gloria. Maybe there was an alternative reality where money to support independent police officer Larry Turner comes in earlier. But the first $1 million didn’t come in until after voters had already started sending their ballots in and bizarrely – maybe scandalously — none of it went to attacking Gloria. Only the last batch cast some negative light on Gloria’s management of the city.
Gloria’s supporters quickly marshaled their own funds and reinforced his message of steady progress.
If Measure E passes, it’ll be no excuses time for the mayor. The city will have an estimated $400 million more coming in. It will also begin charging fees for trash service and the 2020 measure to increase hotel taxes to pay for a Convention Center expansion and homeless services could be ruled law in just over a year. He said he needed a homeless camping ban. He got it. He said he needed the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that enforcing such laws was Constitutional. He got it. He said he needed Proposition 36 to pass to be able to crack down on crime. He got it.
He said he needed it to be easier to clear out storm drains. He got it. He said he needed the state to pass a law to allow law enforcement to force people into treatment for mental illness or drug addiction and he needed the county to implement it. That’s coming.
The money, the laws, the mandate. San Diegans have a right to expect an improved quality of life.
Measure E update: As of the Friday night count, the sales tax “Yes” vote had not gained ground on “No.” It was still more than 8,000 votes back out of nearly 436,000 votes cast. But it still very much could flip.
DeMaio: Carl DeMaio is headed to the Assembly. Not since San Diego State University put up a ballot measure to buy Mission Valley land for a stadium and development have I seen a political coalition as diverse as the one that came together to oppose DeMaio. A committee run by fire fighters raised $1.8 million to oppose him. It attracted donations from police, the California Association of Highway Patrolmen, correction officers, building trades unions, domestic workers, DoorDash, Realtors, landlords and more. Lorena Gonzalez stood with Rep. Darrell Issa, Amy Reichert and the Republican Party of San Diego County.
None of it mattered.
This dispatch from Deborah Brennan says it all: “There’s so much political advertising,” Sarah Fox said before casting her ballot at Reidy Creek Elementary School in Escondido. “It’s like white noise.”
It should have been obvious from his commanding win in the primary. It was baked. It was done.
DeMaio’s outrage machine has gotten recharged. He’ll have a new, bigger platform now for the next 12 years. He promises to remake the California Republican Party and shake up Sacramento. Nobody’s as good at messaging as him and he’s especially effective at it when he’s got an office and a staff and a constant stream of votes and policies to react to and stream. It can, and will, be dizzying.
DeMaio texted me late Thursday night: “How you holding up?”
I wished him luck.
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San Francisco had much bigger problems with crime, homelessness, and open-air drug use. The DA had recently been recalled successfully. The fact that she lost, and Gloria won has nothing to do with ranked voting. The voters in the bay area were just angrier with her performance. Moreover, she flipped on her positions whereas Gloria has had fairly consistent positions over his term. San Franciso voters simply had more reasons to be unhappy with their representation. Her flip probably seemed reasonable to some, but it was a day late and a dollar short.