South County Report: Voting Day Is Here

South County voters went to the polls Tuesday to – finally! – pick a new elected representative to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. 

It has been four months since former District 1 Supervisor Nora Vargas abruptly resigned from the Board for unexplained reasons. Since then, South County residents have been without a voice in county government. 

On Tuesday, voters got their voice back. 

At least, some of them did. 

“It has not been busy,” said Shanna Fernandez, a precinct inspector at the San Ysidro Senior Center polling location late Tuesday morning. “Today we’ve had seven voters.” 

Turnout is often low for special elections, Fernandez said. And many voters who have come to the center since it first opened for voting on March 28 “don’t know what they’re voting for.” 

“Some people ask us who they should vote for,” Fernandez said. “We can’t say.” 

Fernandez said precinct workers are forbidden from making voting recommendations or giving any information about candidates beyond what is printed in election pamphlets mailed last month to District 1’s 373,641 registered voters. 

“I think this evening it will be more,” Fernandez said of turnout. In the meantime, she and the precinct’s eight poll workers sat on folding chairs in the senior center chatting and drinking coffee. 

Turnout in the race indeed has been low, roughly 14 percent so far, according to a recent tally by Mason Herron, a partner at the political consulting firm Edgewater Strategies. 

That hasn’t stopped candidates and their supporters from pouring millions of dollars into the race. A separate tally by Herron found that, as of April 4, independent expenditure committees alone had spent more than $2.7 million on election ads and other efforts to persuade voters. 

Political consultants who labored on those ads might be chagrined to learn that they don’t always work as intended. At a voting center on Third Street in Imperial Beach, voters Joey and Jane Erskine said they “pretty much toss” all the campaign ads they receive in the mail – and the negative ads “actually make us like [the candidate who sent them] less.” 

The Erskines, Imperial Beach residents who brought their (utterly adorable) 13-month-old daughter, Lily, with them to the voting center, said they planned to vote for Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre – in part because Aguirre had been targeted by many of the negative ads they’d received in the mail. 

“All the negative ads made me want to vote for her more,” Joey said. Both Erskines said they liked how Aguirre had led their city, especially her outspoken advocacy for resolving the sewage crisis in the Tijuana River, which has shuttered the Imperial Beach shoreline for years. 

“She got $600 million for Imperial Beach,” Joey said, referring to money recently pledged by the federal government to upgrade an ailing cross-border sewage plant. “She’s a good supporter of IB.” 

In addition to Aguirre, six other candidates are running to replace Vargas: Chula Vista City Councilmember Carolina Chavez; energy consultant Elizabeth Efird; small business owner Louis Fuentes; Chula Vista Mayor John McCann, San Diego City Councilmember Vivian Moreno and district resident Lincoln Pickard. 

If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote on Tuesday, the top two finishers will face off in a July 1 general election. 

At Chula Vista City Hall on Tuesday, local familiarity seemed to be working in McCann’s and Chavez’s favor. As lunchtime approached, a slow but steady stream of voters arrived to cast their ballots. Most said they planned to vote for one of the two Chula Vista leaders. 

“I’m voting for Carolina Chavez,” said Chula Vista resident Sergio Duran. “I’m worried about the sewage crisis and trash coming from over the border. That’s the most important issue to me.” 

Blanca Cinthia Vasquez, also from Chula Vista, said she planned to vote for McCann. “My top issues are the safety of kids in schools and making school lunches more healthy,” she said. 

A committed Christian, Vasquez said she liked that McCann, a Republican, appeared to align with her traditional values and also supported law enforcement. Her daughter’s boyfriend, she said, was a police officer in National City. 

“I would like more backup for” police officers, she said. 

Raising the stakes in the race is the fact that the Board of Supervisors is currently split between two Democrats and two Republicans. Whoever wins the District 1 race will shift the partisan balance in county government. 

That prospect was enough to bring Debbie Diaz, a retired teacher from Bonita, to the polls. “I’m not happy with what’s happening” in national politics, Diaz said. She said she doesn’t want what she described as the Trump administration’s efforts to “silence” opponents to come to San Diego. 

“I plan on voting for Paloma Aguirre,” Diaz said. A committed Democrat, Diaz said she wanted to keep county government in Democratic hands. 

Diaz said she actually likes McCann and thinks he is “doing good things” for Chula Vista. “But he doesn’t support this place being a sanctuary” for immigrants, she said, referring to a current county policy that limits county cooperation with federal deportation efforts. McCann has come out against the policy (as have Democrats in the race). 

Diaz encouraged other District 1 residents to vote. “Don’t complain if you’re not part of the process,” she said. “At least I can say I did my part.” 

Polls remain open until 8 p.m. More information about the race is here. Voice of San Diego’s complete coverage is here. 

The Battle of Quarry Road 

As it happens, this week an issue will appear before the San Diego County Board of Supervisors that illustrates why at least some South County residents are eager for their lack of representation in county government to end. 

On Wednesday, a small but determined band of Bonita residents plans to appear before the Board of Supervisors to speak out against a large self-storage facility proposed to be built on 10 currently vacant acres near the intersection of Quarry Road and Sweetwater Road in Bonita. 

The proposed facility – a two-story, 133,000-square-foot self-storage building with 1,400 storage units plus a covered parking area with room to store 109 RVs – is too big, will bring too much noise and traffic and is out of compliance with county planning guidelines governing the surrounding semi-rural area, opponents say. 

The opponents, many of whom sit on the county’s local Sweetwater Valley Planning Group advisory board, are arranging carpools to ferry allies from the community to Wednesday’s Supervisors meeting. It’s their last chance to stop the storage facility after four years of implacable but, so far, unsuccessful opposition. 

Though the 15-member planning group, which serves as an elected intermediary between county government and local residents, unanimously opposed the storage project in an October vote, the county’s planning commission approved it anyway two months later. All that remains for final approval is for Supervisors to ratify the planning commission vote on Wednesday. 

If built, the storage facility would be one of several owned and operated in San Diego County by InSite, a nationwide storage company headquartered in California. A spokesperson for the company said it wasn’t quite accurate to say local activists had been unsuccessful or unheard. 

In fact, the spokesperson said, InSite had met with local residents, including members of the planning group, nine times and conducted other outreach to solicit community feedback and adjust the project accordingly. 

Changes made in response to community concerns included reducing the height of the storage building, adding a public restroom, shortening the facility’s hours, using building materials approved by community members and adjusting lighting to ensure nearby residents weren’t disturbed at night. 

“The planning group represents a small, but vocal, minority of the community,” the spokesperson said. In fact, the project enjoys “strong community support,” as evidenced by “over 100 letters and emails of support” sent to InSite by community members, the spokesperson said. 

John Taylor, a member of the planning group, said residents opposed to the storage facility feel hamstrung by the lack of a local representative on the Board of Supervisors. Ordinarily, Taylor said, other Supervisors defer to their local colleague’s view of a planning issue, enabling residents to channel their advocacy in one direction – toward their local Supervisor. 

“But now we don’t have a Supervisor, and the other Supervisors don’t have guidance and don’t know anything about our project,” Taylor said. “We have no leverage.” 

Taylor said he had “no idea how many people will come” to the Supervisors meeting on Wednesday. As of Monday, no one had signed up to carpool, he said. 

“I am just shocked and a little concerned,” Taylor said. “There may be a huge groundswell of people who show up. We don’t know.”