Last month, attendees of Chula Vista’s annual State of the City speech watched in amazement as Mayor John McCann, in a pre-recorded video segment before the speech, strapped on a parachute and leaped out of an airplane in midair.
The stunt was part of a Hollywood-style movie starring McCann that warmed up the crowd at the city’s Elite Athlete Training Center.
As McCann, in the video, rocketed toward the earth with his usually carefully combed hair flying straight up from his head, a caption at the bottom of a pair of jumbo-sized screens inadvertently summed up one reason McCann has lasted more than two decades in the rough and tumble world of South San Diego County politics.
“John McCann,” the caption said, “will do anything to promote the city of Chula Vista.”
McCann, a Republican, first won a seat on the Chula Vista City Council in 2002. He ascended to the mayor’s office four years ago and now is campaigning for a second term.
With a reputation as Chula Vista’s booster-in-chief, McCann has won six elections in the city, despite Democrats’ nearly two-to-one voter registration dominance. Until just a few months ago, he appeared on a glide path toward re-election unopposed.
All of a sudden, he has become a political target.
With clouds darkening for Republicans in a volatile election year, and Democrats eager to flip a strategically important seat, opponents are coalescing around a last-minute challenger and seeking to transform the mayoral race into a referendum on hot-button national issues.
They are assailing what they call McCann’s failure to support his city’s immigrant community and blaming the mayor for what they describe as a widening gap between rich and poor. And they are working to turn McCann’s strengths, including his promotional zeal and his closeness with the city’s business community, into weaknesses.
They are even targeting the State of the City speech.
Democrats on the City Council last week ordered up an inquiry into the speech’s corporate backers and accused McCann of cozying up to monied interests to promote his re-election.
After surviving more than two decades in city leadership, McCann now finds himself in the odd position of presiding over a city on an upswing – and fighting for his political survival.
Asked about the sudden shift in political terrain, McCann brushed off his critics and said he was confident of his record in city leadership.
Citing recent bayfront redevelopment projects, a series of park overhauls in lower-income neighborhoods, new affordable housing developments and a citywide reduction in homelessness, he said he has delivered results for all residents no matter their background or net worth.
“As the son of a single mother who grew up in the older parts of Chula Vista, I’ve had a great concern for ensuring we bring new infrastructure and home[-buying] opportunities,” he said.
“Petty critics can try to rewrite history, but the record is clear. I consistently advocated for these projects, worked to build support and helped move them forward when others doubted they could happen.”
McCann has been preparing for his re-election campaign since last summer, when he filed to begin collecting campaign donations.
For months, political observers waited for a challenger to materialize. None did.
As a March candidate filing deadline neared, politicos marveled that McCann appeared headed toward a guaranteed second term. Democratic insiders, who asked to remain unnamed to discuss internal party dynamics, said no one entered the race because no one thought they could beat McCann.
Behind the scenes, however, party leaders were growing increasingly frustrated that not a single South County city is currently led by a Democrat. Following national trends, majority-Latino voters in the region have tilted rightwards in recent years.
Accounts differ about whether party leaders made an effort to recruit candidates, or simply vetted volunteers who stepped forward.
Regardless, Democrats ultimately settled on – or resigned themselves to, depending on who you talk to – Francisco Tamayo, a Chula Vista Elementary School District trustee with a checkered background but a strong conviction that McCann was vulnerable on two key issues: Immigration and the rising cost of living.
“He’s not governing for the majority of Chula Vistans,” Tamayo said.
Tamayo entered the race on March 6, the last day to register his candidacy. Since then, he has consolidated support from organized labor groups and hammered on two main criticisms of McCann.
The mayor, Tamayo said, has refused to stand up for the city’s immigrant community.
And he favors wealthy donors and big-ticket development projects that ordinary residents can’t afford.
“We need a mayor who is going to focus on working families,” Tamayo said.
McCann, an officer in the United States Naval Reserves, said his military service has prevented him from taking stands on city immigration policies, such as a beefed-up sanctuary ordinance adopted earlier this year, that could contravene federal law – a claim some military experts have questioned.
McCann said he actually does support immigrants in Chula Vista – provided they are law-abiding.
“I voted for Chula Vista to become a welcoming city for legal immigrants,” he said.
“Immigrants and their families want violent criminals, rapists and pedophiles out of their neighborhood. I have made Chula Vista a safe city for all residents and that’s why the Latino American Political Association has endorsed me.”
The Latino American Political Association is a conservative-leaning Latino advocacy group.
Asked whether he supported a recent lawsuit filed by the city of El Cajon seeking to overturn California’s immigration sanctuary laws, McCann said he did not.
“I definitely would not support a similar legal action in Chula Vista,” he said. “The Chula Vista Police Department does an excellent job at keeping our city safe, and they accomplish that within the guidelines of state law.”
Tamayo and other critics said what they described as McCann’s mixed messages on immigration are not good enough and could cost him the election.
Last year, McCann lost a race for County Supervisor in part because he struggled to articulate a clear response to a high-profile immigration raid in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego.
Until the raid, a political consultant who worked on the race said McCann actually led in the polls. Then McCann stayed silent while his Democratic rival, Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre, seized on the raid and made it a galvanizing issue.
Aguirre went on to win by nine points.
McCann said his record of success on bread-and-butter issues mattered more to voters than ginned-up attacks from opponents who have no accomplishments of their own to run on.
Though he lost to Aguirre in the Supervisor race, McCann actually carried the Chula Vista vote by a slight margin, according to an analysis of precinct results.
“My opponent has done nothing but drive the [Chula Vista Elementary School District] into the ground, voting to lay off 41 classroom teachers just this past month and creating what he calls an ‘intentional $33 million deficit,’” McCann said of Tamayo.
In contrast, said McCann, Chula Vista has prospered under his leadership.
The city is currently in the process of finalizing a budget for next year that includes rising revenues in most categories, a modest rise in expenses and – in a notable contrast with surrounding cities – no cuts and no raids on the city’s reserves.
For a city its size – 283,000 residents, according to the California Department of Finance – Chula Vista is festooned with large-scale construction projects, ranging from new subdivisions and a four-story library on the city’s east side to luxury high rises, office complexes and revamped parks along the bayfront.
In a year when many California cities, especially along the coast, lost population, Chula Vista gained more than 1,000 new residents.
Asked to name his most significant accomplishments as mayor, McCann suggested meeting a reporter at Citrus Bay, a new housing development nearing completion in a rapidly evolving part of Chula Vista’s lower-income historic core.
The development features 244 for-sale townhomes next door to the Chula Vista Center, an aging central-city mall that itself is in the early stages of a full-scale makeover.
Walking past rows of neatly kept three-story homes, McCann said developers initially wanted Citrus Bay, built on the site of a former Sears department store, to be high-rise rental apartments.
“They’re more profitable,” McCann said of apartments. “But I wanted to make sure we’re prioritizing quality homeownership opportunities so we can provide the American Dream. I said, ‘That’s nice, but I won’t support it unless it’s home ownership.’”
Three-bedroom units in the development now sell for roughly $687,000.
Though McCann technically has no more power over city policy than Chula Vista’s other four city councilmembers, he said he tries to use his mayoral bully pulpit to set a tone of pragmatism, cooperation and small-d democratic openness to all people and all ideas.
“I want to hear from people,” he said. “I’m very open.”
In practice, McCann has focused much of his time in office on moving large-scale development projects forward, promoting the police and fire departments and advocating for a stricter approach to homelessness that includes a stiff no-camping ordinance and a city shelter that requires residents to work on achieving sobriety and self-sufficiency.
Last year, the number of unsheltered people in Chula Vista declined by nearly 25 percent, according to the latest countywide homelessness survey. Other cities in the South County region saw their homeless populations rise.
“Chula Vista has become a regional leader in getting people off the streets,” McCann said.
Crime also has declined during McCann’s mayoral tenure.
Though Chula Vista is not a national crime-rate standout for a city its size, as McCann frequently claims (it’s about in the middle of the pack among similarly sized California cities, according to FBI crime reporting data), all major violent crimes declined since 2022.
Under ordinary circumstances, economic growth coupled with falling crime and homelessness would spell good news for an incumbent seeking re-election.
Democrats said they believe this year is different. Even McCann’s City Council colleagues have begun piling on against him, voicing publicly complaints they once expressed only privately and seeking to chip away at what they said is the mayor’s carefully cultivated public persona.
City Councilmember Michael Inzunza, who has sparred with McCann on the Council dais, was especially harsh.
McCann, he said, is a far more calculating and ruthless politician than his sunny public demeanor suggests. He exaggerates his accomplishments, takes credit for other people’s work and “has a reputation for throwing people under the bus when he doesn’t get his way,” Inzunza said.
Referring to a claim McCann made in news interviews earlier this year that “political” machinations may have contributed to the controversial exit of Chula Vista’s popular police chief, Inzunza was unsparing.
Inzunza called McCann’s efforts to insinuate that councilmembers conspired against the chief “absurd” and “unbecoming of any elected official.”
McCann said his opponents’ determination to find leverage against him is driving them to accuse him of things that simply aren’t true.
He denied exaggerating his achievements and said he frequently gives credit to city staff, fellow city councilmembers and past city leaders when celebrating city milestones.
“Major projects and reforms are never achieved by one person alone,” he said.
He said he has voiced support for the police chief not to undermine his Council colleagues but because “under [the chief’s] leadership, and the fine work of the men and women in the police department, our residents know that public safety is priority number one for our city.”
It remains unclear whether Democrats are right about McCann’s supposed political peril.
At the State of the City speech, a cross-section of residents interviewed before and after the speech – including several Democrats – seemed delighted by the spectacle and happy with McCann’s leadership.
“I need a mayor who will speak to the whole community,” said JoAnn Fields, a Democrat who worked with McCann on efforts to name a new city park in honor of Filipino military veterans.
“He’s open to working with everyone,” said Fields. “We need more of that and I see that in him.”
Fields said she didn’t want to reveal publicly who she’ll vote for in November. But she made it clear she likes the job McCann is doing.
“This is my hometown,” McCann said, explaining why he has persisted in city politics for more than two decades.
“I married here and raised children, and now a grandchild and another on the way…I have my eye on Chula Vista.”