With less than a week before Election Day, races to lead South County’s three major cities have diverged widely, reflecting the region’s heterogeneous political culture.
One of the races, in National City, has devolved into an expensive knife fight between two former friends amid major city budget problems.
Another, in Chula Vista, appears over before Election Day. The third, in Imperial Beach, reflects that city’s hard-to-pin-down demographic mix.
All three races involve major and in some cases existential issues. Here’s a roundup of each race, including the stakes as voters make their decisions.
(Click here to see all my coverage of this year’s races.)
National City
The surprise of this election season is the outsized prominence of National City’s mayoral campaign.
A year ago, observers assumed the race to lead Chula Vista would be South County’s most-watched and most-expensive contest. For reasons I explain below, that didn’t happen.
Instead, National City rose to become the region’s chief battleground between deep-pocketed interest groups seeking to chart South County’s future.
The race is now a three-way contest between two friends-turned-opponents on the City Council and a first-time candidate who has mounted a spirited campaign but likely lacks the resources and name recognition to win.
The two councilmembers, Marcus Bush and Jose Rodriguez, joined the City Council together in 2020 on a shared progressive platform.
Since then, they have drifted apart, clashing on the Council dais and accusing one another of abandoning the progressive principles that brought them into politics.
Their feud comes as National City faces an existential budget challenge and difficult decisions about the city’s future.
The candidates have attended an exhaustive series of debates and candidate forums, including on KPBS and during Voice of San Diego’s Politifest public affairs forum.
But as the race nears the finish, debate has devolved into personal attacks, accusations of lying and an improbable attempt to paint Bush, a lifelong progressive Democrat who calls Donald Trump “one of the worst things that happened to this country,” as a MAGA acolyte.
Rodriguez’s campaign has sent mailers and created a website branding Bush as “MAGA Marcus.” Like a video game, the website includes a “MAGA Meter” that rises each time the website mentions one of Bush’s campaign supporters with ties to Republicans.
Ironically, at least one of those supporters also gave money to Rodriguez. Rodriguez said he returned the donation, though he kept a $999 donation from another contributor who is a prominent member of the Republican-aligned Lincoln Club Business League.
Rodriguez says Bush’s alliance with business owners seeking to delay and modify a proposed city business tax increase, along with Mayor Ron Morrison’s endorsement of Bush, shows Bush has betrayed his progressive ideals.
Bush says Rodriguez’s lying about his college degree and censure two years ago for misconduct shows he can’t be trusted and only pretends to care about working people to further his political career.
It’s messy and expensive, with interest groups and donors pouring $260,000 into the race so far.
Morrison said the race has set new lows. Until recently, he said, National City campaigns were hard-fought but “pretty clean and cordial.”
This year, he said, “It’s gotten nastier.”
Chula Vista
Call this one the race that wasn’t.
On voters’ ballots, there are two candidates in the race to lead Chula Vista: Current Mayor John McCann, a Republican, and Chula Vista Elementary School District Trustee Francisco Tamayo, a Democrat.
Observers expected the race between the two veteran politicians to be a hard-fought duel between business interests backing McCann and a coordinated effort by organized labor and the Democratic Party to gain control of South County’s largest city.
The race started competitive, with one of San Diego County’s most influential labor unions spending close to $160,000 to power Tamayo through a June primary election.
Then…nothing. Tamayo created a campaign website and, he said, knocked on doors.
But since the primary, he has raised no money and, by his own admission, has not engaged in a full barrage of campaigning. The labor organization that backed him during the primary turned its funding spigot toward other races.
McCann, who has raised close to $270,000, has had the field mostly to himself.
What happened?
Democrats, including Tamayo himself, said, ultimately, they came to believe McCann was just too hard to beat.
Various Democratic insiders quoted large sums of money they said might have enabled a strong candidate to topple McCann.
But no less than Brigette Browning, head of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council and a staunch supporter of Democratic candidates, said in an interview earlier this month that McCann has proved politically durable in majority-Democratic Chula Vista because he’s not “like your typical Republican.”
Browning, who lives in Chula Vista, said she does not share McCann’s political views.
But, she said, “In general, people feel positive about McCann…[He] has this folksy way about him. He’s good at retail politics. He gets people’s streets fixed and addresses their concerns in an effective way.”
McCann said he is not taking the race for granted and plans to campaign until polls close on Tuesday evening.
“We’re going to continue extensive outreach to listen to voters and talk about how we’ve elevated Chula Vista’s quality of life,” he said. “We have to earn the votes…[Residents] will make that [election] decision and I appreciate their support.”
Ultimately, the race reflects an interesting fact about Chula Vista. Though majority Democratic, the city’s politics are not reflexively progressive. As I’ve written before, the city exhibits the hybrid, and sometimes surprisingly conservative, political identity of many majority-Latino communities in America.
Imperial Beach
Imperial Beach’s population is heterogeneous, and so is its mayoral race.
The city is home to everyone from surfers to members of the military, retirees and brand-new immigrants to the United States.
The race for mayor is correspondingly complex. Two Democrats are squaring off against incumbent Mayor Mitch McKay, a conservative-leaning independent.
As I wrote earlier, some Democratic observers have written off the race as a lost cause because, they say, the presence of two Democrats on the ballot will split voters and ensure victory for McKay.
Try telling that to the two Democrats.
“This race in Imperial Beach is closer than people think,” said Karl Bradley, a retired school construction manager and one of the two Democratic candidates.
Bradley said he plans to campaign until Election Day. And he said he feels he has momentum on his side.
“There is a lot of word of mouth [backing me] in Imperial Beach,” he said. “I knock on doors and I have people say, ‘I’m already voting for you.’”
Bradley does not have financial resources to match the tens of thousands of dollars backing his Democratic rival, City Councilmember Matthew Leyba-Gonzalez.
Leyba-Gonzalez, a former unionized construction worker who now works as a business officer for a building trades union, has benefited from $80,000 in support from the same union that formerly backed Tamayo in Chula Vista.
The money has paid for a campaign website, mailers and a social media campaign.
Bradley said he thinks his old-fashioned person-to-person campaigning will win the race.
“When I knock on doors, I’m not feeling a huge outpouring of love for the other two candidates,” he said. “I’ve had positive and open-minded conversations with people that make me think they’re open to voting for me.”
Leyba-Gonzalez said he, too, plans to campaign to the finish line.
“That’s what I do after work,” he said. “I go to work and then knock on doors until it’s dark. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. And if it’s not, it’s been an experience…I’m very fortunate and blessed to have this opportunity.”
Judging solely by the number and prevalence of yard signs in the city, McKay appears to have widespread support.
In an earlier interview, he said he planned to run a positive campaign in line with his low-key style.
“My strategy and platform doesn’t change,” he said. “I want civic engagement. I don’t want to throw mud.”