Following the 2024 presidential election, talk among South County politicos centered on the surprising shift to the right of the region’s majority Latino voters.
I wasn’t surprised by that shift, based on reporting I’d done. Latino voters and politicians I talked to in 2024 spoke of deep concerns about the economy, inflation, even what many described as an overly porous U.S.-Mexico border.
For many voters, Donald Trump was the answer to those concerns.
But I wondered. Would South County Latinos’ Republican-curious feelings last?
This week, UnidosUS, which calls itself the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights organization, released a national poll of Latino voters that includes focused polling of California Latinos.
The poll does not break out results for San Diego County. But the statewide numbers track with observations I’ve made during my own conversations with South County residents and politicians this year.
In short, Latinos’ Republican-curiosity appears to be over.
There is a major backlash to President Trump’s handling of the economy, immigration and foreign policy. Latinos are reverting to many of their previously held views – though that does not necessarily mean unwavering allegiance to Democrats.
Some highlights:
- Seventy-one percent of California Latinos disapprove of Trump’s job performance. That’s higher than a 67 percent disapproval rating among Latinos nationwide.
- Top factors in Latinos’ views of the president include the cost of living, inflation and immigration enforcement – precisely those issues that motivated Latinos to move right two years ago.
- Among Latino Trump voters, more than a quarter (28 percent), now say they would change their vote if they had the opportunity to choose again.
- Just 13 percent of California Latinos support Trump’s current approach to immigration: Deporting undocumented immigrants regardless of how long they’ve been in the United States. Three-quarters of Latinos support an amnesty program that would provide a process for longtime undocumented residents to become citizens.
The topline results might suggest a slam dunk for Democrats in November. But the full poll presents a more nuanced picture.
By a wide margin, California Latinos want elected officials to address pocketbook issues, rating them far more important than issues that often dominate Democratic campaigns, including gun violence, education, civil rights and police brutality.
Just 5 percent of California Latinos want elected officials to address police reform. Thirteen percent rate gun violence as an important issue.
All of this tracks with what I’ve seen and heard in South County.
Latino residents and politicians alike (and many of those politicians right now are going door to door in campaigns asking voters what they care about) say the same things over and over.
The economy is terrible, they say. Everything costs too much. Even if they are American citizens, they worry they’ll be harassed by immigration authorities. They feel life under Trump has not turned out as they expected.
What does all of this mean for South County elections?
Democrats undoubtedly will do better this year than in 2024. But it’s early for a victory lap.
There has been a lot of internal discord among South County Democrats this election cycle, some of which I’ll be covering in more detail. And the Republicans and conservative-leaning independents currently leading all three South County cities are not viewed by most voters as overtly partisan.
If there is one overriding takeaway from the Unidos poll, it’s that, even in staunchly Democratic South County, Republicans two years ago had an opportunity to broaden their coalition and erode Democrats’ longstanding dominance among Latinos.
Based on this poll, Republicans appear to have blown that opportunity.
Democrat Enters IB Race for Mayor
Democrat Karl Bradley this week announced he is running for Imperial Beach mayor, making Imperial Beach the third and final South County city that could end up with a Democrat in the city’s top office.
Though Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one in South County, not a single South County city currently is led by a Democrat.
Bradley, a retired school construction manager who has served in recent years on I.B.’s Design Review Board, will face current Mayor Mitch McKay, a self-described conservative-leaning independent who filed papers seeking a second term in office earlier this month.
City Councilmembers appointed McKay to the mayoral seat last year following the election of then-Mayor Paloma Aguirre to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.
Bradley said the speed with which the Council’s conservative majority appointed McKay without entertaining other candidates for the job was part of what motivated him to enter the race.
If elected, Bradley said he would focus primarily on the ongoing sewage crisis in the Tijuana River, which he said has jeopardized residents’ health and delivered a sharp blow to the city’s economy.
Bradley said the current conservative-leaning Council has not been proactive in drawing attention to the issue or pressuring federal authorities for greater transparency into efforts to upgrade a cross-border wastewater treatment plant.
“There are those who think if we don’t talk about it, business will get better and developers will come back,” Bradley said. “That’s not realistic.”
Bradley said he hoped to leverage his years of experience managing multimillion-dollar school construction contracts to scrutinize work at the treatment plant and advocate for a more balanced housing mix in Imperial Beach.
Other top issues include finding ways for the city to earn more revenue so it can afford to keep highly qualified employees at City Hall and limiting the proliferation of high-density apartment projects that are out of scale with the surrounding neighborhood.
Fun fact (or two): Bradley is a lifelong drummer who still wails away on his drum kit in the garage and, over the course of his life, has played in punk, heavy metal, classic rock and country bands. He’s currently in a musical theater orchestra in San Diego.
And he once appeared, and won, on the television game show Jeopardy. His winning final Jeopardy question was about the classic French romantic play Cyrano De Bergerac.
Council Candidate Responds
Last week, I wrote about a controversy over election messaging in the race to represent Chula Vista’s 2nd District on the City Council.
Two candidates in that race – former planning commissioner Russ Hall and current District 2 Councilmember Jose Preciado – accused a third candidate, Angelica Martinez, of seeking to belittle Preciado by using a four-year-old image of him in a campaign poster that dated from a time when Preciado, who has struggled with his weight, weighed more than twice as much as he does now.
Martinez last week did not respond to a list of questions sent by email or a request for a phone interview.
This week, she emailed to say she felt the story about the campaign image unfairly depicted her as engaging in personal attacks when, in fact, the image was intended to highlight what she said was Preciado’s policy failures on crime and other important issues.
She also suggested she was not directly responsible for the image’s circulation on social media in recent weeks.
Though Martinez declined to respond directly to questions about the image’s origin and appearance on social media in a phone interview this week, in a follow-up email she said she herself did not “independently post” the image but “might have been tagged in a post related to the” campaign event at which the image was displayed on a poster.
“Not once have I talked about [Preciado’s] weight or physical appearance,” Martinez said.
Martinez said she has kept her campaign focused on District 2’s high crime rate, the city’s need for more police officers and what she said was Preciado’s recent effort to silence her and deprive her of her speech rights while she was trying to give an interview to a Spanish-language news reporter.
“My decision to run for Chula Vista City Council District 2 has always been about protecting families, taxpayers, small businesses and the residents of our community,” Martinez wrote in an email.
“My campaign has consistently focused on crime, homelessness and the rising cost of living – the same issues Councilmember Jose Preciado campaigned on in 2022 but failed to meaningfully address four years later in 2026. I will not allow false narratives to damage my reputation when all I have done is hold an elected official accountable to the promises and statements he himself made publicly during his 2022 campaign.”