The powerful union representing county government workers on Wednesday threw its support – and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash – behind the candidacy of Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre in the race to represent South San Diego County on the County Board of Supervisors.
The union’s endorsement follows the announcement last week that another union influential in county politics – Laborers International Local 89, representing construction workers – would back one of Aguirre’s rival candidates for the Supervisor seat, San Diego City Councilmember Vivian Moreno.
Both unions have provided crucial financial support to winning Democratic candidates in recent years and both have been pivotal players in Democrats’ newfound political dominance in San Diego County.
The unions were in lockstep in recent Supervisor races, throwing their united support behind both District 3 Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer and District 4 Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe.
Their decision to back different Democratic candidates in the race to replace recently departed District 1 Supervisor Nora Vargas suggests unions see this race as an opportunity to advance their members’ sometimes diverging interests amid a climate of political uncertainty following last November’s presidential election.
Representatives for the county workers’ union cited Aguirre’s support for government employees in Imperial Beach, in particular the city’s lifeguards, and her efforts to resolve the ongoing sewage crisis in the Tijuana River as principal reasons for their support.
In recent years, Aguirre and other Imperial Beach Councilmembers have worked to ensure lifeguards have protective equipment and other accommodations to shield them from Tijuana River sewage pollution, which frequently closes city beaches and sends toxic fumes wafting along the shore.
“Mayor Aguirre is a champion who has fearlessly stood up for our community and the workforce in Imperial Beach,” said Service Employees International Union Local 221 President Crystal Irving in a statement Wednesday. “We know that Mayor Aguirre will make sure that the issues in [South San Diego County] are no longer ignored, and she will bring the change we need.”
In contrast, construction workers singled out rising home prices and their desire for more home construction in San Diego County as decisive in their decision last week to back Moreno, who has supported construction projects in her City Council district and is seen as having an amicable relationship with the homebuilding industry.
Another influential labor group, the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, was also expected to settle on their endorsement pick in the Supervisor race Wednesday. Union sources said the Labor Council, an umbrella organization whose delegates were scheduled to meet Wednesday evening, appeared headed toward backing Aguirre.
The split among county labor groups could portend a bruising primary race in which the three Democrats seeking to replace Vargas – Aguirre, Moreno and Chula Vista City Councilmember Carolina Chavez – compete to face Chula Vista Mayor John McCann, the race’s lone Republican, in a general election.
Thad Kousser, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, said that in elections with a lopsided number of voters in one party – the majority of voters in supervisorial District 1 are Democrats — “we frequently see splits” in political coalitions as interest groups look “for the best candidate to represent their vision of government.”
Kousser said that though Democrats nationwide are reckoning with their loss in the November presidential race, the District 1 campaign is less affected by that intraparty debate because it remains solidly Democratic and is likely to turn on local issues such as the sewage crisis or name recognition among the candidates.
“This is about what policies this Supervisor will pursue rather than the right political strategy to put a Democrat in office,” Kousser said.
A recent voter analysis conducted by Voice of San Diego in partnership with KBPS and inewsource found that voters in South San Diego County shifted notably to the right in November’s presidential race, backing Republican Donald Trump in larger numbers than four years ago and failing to turn out for Democrat Kamala Harris.
Whether the split in union endorsement reflects an equivalent shift in political preference among District 1 Democratic voters remains to be seen.
For her part, Aguirre on Wednesday celebrated the county workers’ union endorsement as “a game changer.”
“SEIU 221 represents the frontline workers who keep our county running, and their support makes clear this race is about change – not more of the same broken status quo,” she said in a statement sent to Voice of San Diego. “For too long, everyday people have been ignored while career politicians let the cost of living spiral out of control, failed on homelessness and neglected South County’s disastrous sewage crisis. That changes now.”
Of course the unions do. They’re in cahoots with SD city gov’t. Rottenstreich, the campaign mgr. is married to the laborers leader Browning. people need to wake up who the players are.
As a County employee, I do not always agree with SEIU and I have concerns about them influencing the Board. While SEIU represents us paying members, they go off on their own and make choices “they” feel are in the best interest of the membership, but in reality we have not seen the results from SEIU we would expect. When they tried to strong arm the CAO selection it was a bad look in my option and they struggle to find ways to be relevant other than discipline, wages, and M&C items. I have seen them create a huge divide between management and staff and the current President seems more about creating a divide than working together which is unfortunate. County employees might want to look at how things are taking shape for the employees at Chula Vista City.
So basically, one union says they are backing Aguirre because she fought for County employees to have protective gear. And the other union is backing the Moreno because she’s backing their developer-backed agenda. Got it.