Our North County reporter Tigist Layne reveals San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond spent at least $250,000 of taxpayer funds advertising himself and his perspectives on social media and television.
Some of the money went to Target River, a marketing agency based in Salt Lake City. The rest went to platforms like Google, Meta, Disney and X directly.
Coincidentally, Desmond is running in one of the most consequential congressional races in the country.
The context: The offices of each of the five county supervisors receive a budget of $3.6 million. They typically use that money for things like office supplies, printing services and event registration fees.
But Desmond’s office has put much more than the others into what his chief of staff told us was “constituent outreach.”
Politics Report: That ‘Net New’ Thing Is a Big Deal
Thursday, we revealed something interesting about the deal city staff and the development team behind Midway Rising had brought forward for the City Council’s approval: Some of the 2,000 promised affordable housing units at the site may be units other developers were already going to have to build because of their projects somewhere else.
And the city’s staff had been wanting to add a provision to keep them from doing that but it had not been included in the deal put forward.
The affordable housing developer that is part of the Midway Rising team told us having other developers pay to have their affordable units at Midway Rising was an important tool.
That turned out to be a big deal Friday: The Land Use and Housing Committee of the San Diego City Council unanimously advanced the historic deal but with one major caveat: Those 2,000 units should be net-new, meaning they should be in addition to whatever anyone else in the city is already required to build.
In this week’s Politics Report, Scott Lewis writes about how tense this has gotten.
The Politics Report is available to Voice of San Diego members, but we opened this link to all readers. Read the Politics Report here.
More Midway Rising: Our podcast crew sat down with Assemblymember Chris Ward to discuss the state legislation that protects the project from environmental lawsuits. Listen to the episode here.
Electeds Sound Off Against a NAVWAR Data Center; Developers Insist It Was One of Many Ideas
After we broke the news that developers were thinking about putting a data center on a large, downtown-adjacent site owned by the Navy, Rep. Scott Peters called a press conference.
“This place should be a new community, a mini downtown,” Peters said, standing in front of the Pacific Coast highway with the metal Naval Information Warfare Systems Command building looming in the background. “A data center is not something that belongs here.”
Marni von Wilpert, a San Diego city councilmember who’s running for the 48th Congressional District seat, said developer Manchester Financial Group had showed her glossy mock-ups of their project years ago – and a data center was not represented.
“This was promised to be housing instead of a large data center we don’t know the specifics of,” von Wilpert said.
A representative from the developers, Matt Awbrey, told Voice of San Diego that a data center is one among many options for the site.
“Several elements for the project are being considered such as housing, retail, commercial, industrial, and hospitality uses. The possibility of a medical center, university campus, defense industry campus, data center, and life science facility are also being explored,” Awbrey wrote. “The development team had early, informational conversations with energy providers to understand what might be feasible, but there are no negotiations underway and no agreements in place.”
Sacramento Report: About the Recall and Campaign Finance Measures
Leading up to the November election, Sacramento reporter Nadia Lathan is breaking down the state propositions on the ballot.
On deck: A measure to change how California conducts recall elections and another that would allow public money to finance political candidates.
The change to recall elections: Proposition 5 would make it so voters would decide first if a state leader or lawmaker should be recalled. Then a separate election, months later, would be held to choose the replacement. Right now, both decisions are on recall ballots and it’s how former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger first won.
If Proposition 5 passes, elected officials that are recalled could run in the election to replace themselves.
The initiative has an interesting group of supporters, but an even more interesting group of critics who argue that the change would increase election costs.
Campaign finance change: Proposition 4 would allow candidates running for state or local office to use public campaign dollars. (This is legal in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but illegal pretty much everywhere else.)
Read more about the two initiatives in the Sacramento Report.
Related: If you haven’t filled out your ballot yet, and could use some help, our team has you covered with our No BS Voter Guide. You can read it here or download it.
Good News on Homelessness
The number of San Diegans exiting homelessness surpassed the number who became homeless for the first time in September. The Regional Task Force on Homelessness reported that 1,076 people moved into homes and 1,061 became homeless for the first time in the county.
Your monthly reminder: For most of the last few years, local efforts to house homeless residents haven’t kept up with the flood of people losing their homes. That equation must change to dramatically reduce homelessness.
In Other News
- Opinion: Mike McCoy with the Tijuana Estuary Foundation argues in a new op-ed for Voice of San Diego that fixing a broken wastewater treatment plant won’t solve ongoing concerns about industrial waste in the water. Read more here.
- Southern California firefighters worked to contain two fires at the San Diego-Orange county line Friday afternoon which forced a full closure of a major interstate. (Fox 5)
- The U.S. Coast Guard helped rescue 27 people about 140 miles off the coast of Ensenada related to a human smuggling operation. (CBS 8)
- Flights at the San Diego International Airport were temporarily halted Friday due to high wind speeds. (Fox 5)
- Longtime National City Treasurer Mitch Beauchamp ended his mayoral campaign Friday and endorsed City Councilmember Marcus Bush, who is vying to lead the city against City Councilmember Jose Rodriguez and first-time candidate Jacobb Castrejon. (Union-Tribune)
The Morning Report was written by MacKenzie Elmer and Lisa Halverstadt. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña and Scott Lewis.