One of San Diego County’s most powerful labor unions announced late Thursday it is backing San Diego City Councilmember Vivian Moreno in the race to represent District 1 on the County Board of Supervisors.
The pivotal endorsement from the union representing construction workers comes with a promise to spend up $325,000 to help Moreno defeat three rivals for the Board seat, which became vacant following the surprise resignation late last year of former South County Supervisor Nora Vargas.
The announcement comes as other labor unions this month jockey to interview candidates and influence the race with their own endorsements.
The Laborers’ International endorsement announced Thursday is especially important because, in recent years, the union has been among the biggest and most influential political spenders in local races. Last year, the union spent more than $600,000 to defeat District 2 Supervisor candidate Kevin Faulconer, who went on to lose to current Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer.
The union said in a statement that it endorsed Moreno because “she has a proven record as a champion for working families” and also because of her track record “delivering more housing and infrastructure improvements.” A union representative said members weighing the endorsement cited the high cost of housing in San Diego County as a reason they chose to back a candidate with a pro-development record.
Moreno, unlike some Democrats in the region, has frequently supported home development and other construction projects in San Diego and has opposed some policies, such as rent control, that developers dislike. In a recent interview with Voice of San Diego, she expressed skepticism about a county environmental policy that seeks to limit homebuilding in outlying areas. Moreno said the policy, which discourages development projects far from job centers, is “making it more difficult to build” homes and could be backfiring by forcing people to move out of the county altogether.
The influence of home prices on a powerful labor union endorsement suggests that this year’s race for Supervisor is shaping up to be very different from the last time candidates competed for an open seat to represent South San Diego County in county government. That election, in 2020, was driven in large part by voters’ desire to shift the Republican-controlled Board of Supervisors in a more left-leaning direction.
Vargas, who won that year, campaigned on her pathbreaking identity as the first bi-national Latina to sit on the Board and a promise to leverage her background as a Planned Parenthood executive to improve healthcare and other essential services in underserved communities.
This year, following a November election in which South San Diego County voters shifted noticeably to the right, candidates for Vargas’ open Supervisor seat are taking more centrist positions on a range of issues.
Moreno’s competitors include Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre, Chula Vista City Councilmember Carolina Chavez and Chula Vista Mayor John McCann, the race’s lone Republican.
In recent interviews with Voice, Aguirre, McCann and Moreno all have voiced opposition to a county policy limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities and vowed to speed up the county’s efforts to steer homeless people with mental illness or severe drug problems into treatment.
On her campaign website, Chavez promises to “support small businesses” and “ensure our law enforcement has the resources they need to keep our neighborhoods safe.”
In a San Diego Union-Tribune poll leading up to the November election, home prices ranked as the most important issue for the largest number of respondents – nearly half – followed closely by the related issue of homelessness. In recent years, San Diego has ranked among the nation’s most expensive housing markets.
Figures compiled by the Building Industry Association of San Diego, a trade group representing homebuilders, show that housing construction has slowed since 2020 in unincorporated areas controlled by county supervisors. In 2020, 606 discretionary units were approved, according to the group’s tally of projects listed in county development reports. In 2023, that figure was just 10 units.
Chris Cate, a spokesperson for the homebuilders’ association, said one factor in the building slowdown was a county policy adopted in 2022 that evaluates development projects according to how many commute miles they generate. (Cate is also a member of Voice’s board of directors.) The policy, known as Vehicle Miles Traveled, or VMT, is based on a previously adopted state policy intended to reduce pollution by encouraging denser development closer to existing job and retail centers.
“No one is willing to take the risk to build because of the unknowns with that policy,” Cate said. “We’re not seeing the commitment [from County Supervisors] to build those much-needed homes.”
County officials dispute that the VMT policy chills homebuilding, though, so far, they have refused to make public planning data that could independently confirm or challenge homebuilders’ claims. In an interview last year with Voice, a county spokesperson said it was too early to determine whether the policy has affected home construction one way or the other.
In her interview with Voice, Moreno said the VMT policy “has been an absolute issue in Otay Mesa,” an area near the U.S.-Mexico border with developable land. Moreno said the formula used to calculate home projects’ anticipated environmental impact doesn’t take into account the fact that lack of affordable housing in San Diego simply drives people out of the county to cheaper homes in Riverside County or even Tijuana.
“That’s obviously something that we need to look into,” she said.
A campaign representative for Aguirre, who also has sought union endorsements, said in a statement that “insider political endorsements won’t change the reality of this race…Paloma Aguirre is the only candidate in this race who time and again shows up for South County, fights the big battles and wins.”
The construction workers’ union also announced on Thursday that it plans to spend up to $100,000 opposing McCann. The union declined to comment on their reasons for the expenditure, though it is in line with the group’s previous track record of opposing Republicans.
McCann, who said he is seeking endorsements from the pro-business Lincoln Club and law enforcement unions, said the laborers “know I’m in a strong position to win the District 1 Supervisor race, and that’s why they’re spending an enormous amount of money to attack me.”