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Politics

Roundtable: Candidates, Issues In 50th, 52nd & 53rd Congressional Districts

By Pat Finn / Producer ,  Mark Sauer / Host, The Roundtable
Published January 31, 2020 at 9:00 AM PST
This story was published more than 4 years ago.
Candidates for the 53rd Congressional District include Sara Jacobs (D), Georgette Gomez (D), Famela Ramos (R) and Janessa Goldbeck (D).
KPBS
Candidates for the 53rd Congressional District include Sara Jacobs (D), Georgette Gomez (D), Famela Ramos (R) and Janessa Goldbeck (D).

Priya Sridhar, KPBS News

Matt Hoffman, KPBS News

Amita Sharma, KPBS News

Michael Smolens, San Diego Union-Tribune

Campaign for the 50th increasingly fractious

San Diego County's 50th Congressional District seat is wide open for the first time in 40 years. Duncan Hunter, Jr., who succeeded his father in the seat, resigned in early January after pleading guilty to a campaign finance crime. Three of the four top contenders are Republicans: State Senator Brian Jones; former San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio; and former Congressman Darrell Issa. DeMaio and Issa, who do not live in the district, are currently engaged in a pitched battle of nasty campaign ads. Ammar Campa-Najar, who lives in the district and lost a close race to Hunter in 2018, is running as a fairly conservative Democrat. The 50th is a reliably red East County district.

Related: Four Candidates Vying For Duncan Hunter’s Vacated 50th District Seat

Climate change is big issue in 52nd District

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Democrat Scott Peters has represented this district since he beat incumbent Republican Congressman Brian Bilbray in 2012, winning by increasingly larger margins each election cycle since. The seat in this fairly affluent district could be considered safe, but Peters has drawn two reasonably well-known challengers. Democrat Nancy Casady is challenging Peters for not supporting the Green New Deal. Peters responds that battling climate change is a concern of everyone, and the GND will not bring others to the table. Republican Jim DeBello says “there is science on both sides” of the issue of man-made climate change.

Related: Congressman Peters Faces Challenge From Fellow Democrat Over Green New Deal

No shortage of candidates in 53rd district

Democrat Susan Davis' retirement announcement after 20 years in Congress drew a flock of office-seekers, 15 of whom qualified for the March ballot. The presumed front-runners in the heavily Democratic district are Democrats Sara Jacobs, who served in the State Department in the Obama Administration; Georgette Gomez, current president of the San Diego City Council; and Marine veteran Janessa Goldbeck. Republican challenger Famela Ramos works in high-tech. Big issues in this district are gun control and climate change.

Related: A Large Field Of Candidates Vying For The 53rd Congressional District Seat

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Pat Finn
Pat Finn previously served as a producer for KPBS Midday Edition and KPBS Evening Edition. Finn began her career in broadcasting at KTLA and KCET in Los Angeles. In 1979 she became KPBS’ Public Information Director, then Director of Advertising and Promotion, Program Director, and Director of Broadcasting. She oversaw the station’s local and national productions, including the one-hour documentary Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar, and Child Protective Services, a one-hour look inside the San Diego County agency responsible for the welfare of at risk children. Both programs also aired on public television stations nationwide. Finn has earned honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
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Mark Sauer
A newspaperman for more than 30 years, Mark Sauer joined KPBS in October 2010 and previously served as the host of the KPBS Roundtable. He spent 27 years as a reporter and editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune after stints at The Houston Post and at two papers in his native Michigan. A features/human-interest writer in the UT's Currents section for many years, Mark also spent about a third of his UT career as an editor and reporter on the Metro Desk. He has covered a wide range of events: Wild fires in Southern California and Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast; Super Bowls and the World Series; foster care and child-abuse issues; the Roman Catholic Diocese's sexual-abuse scandal and bankruptcy; royal visits of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Princess Diana; Republican and Democratic national conventions; high-profile criminal trials; and many other stories, from the silly to the sublime. Along the way, he interviewed everyone from presidents to pan-handlers. His work exposing the false accusations and prosecutions of several San Diegans for murder, rape and child abuse garnered Pulitzer Prize nominations and many regional and local journalism awards, including Best in the West, the Sol Price Award for Responsible Journalism and several San Diego and California bar-association awards. Mark has a degree in journalism from Michigan State University.
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