What does a San Diego County Supervisor do?
County supervisors are the elected officials that oversee the county government, which is responsible for administering state- and federally-funded social welfare programs, such as CalFresh (commonly known as food stamps), Medi-Cal and the foster care system. The county has limited control over how these programs are run.
The supervisors have much more direct control over the county's unincorporated areas — mostly rural communities that are outside of San Diego County's 18 cities and therefore don't elect their own mayors or city councils. In these areas the county government does everything a city government would otherwise do: trash collection, infrastructure planning, zoning and permitting, emergency services and more.
Some branches of the county government have their own elected officials, such as the San Diego County District Attorney's Office and the San Diego County Sheriff's Department. The DA and sheriff have autonomy over their own departments, but county supervisors approve their budgets and can pass laws that impact how they operate.
The District 1 supervisor represents the South Bay. That includes the cities of Chula Vista, Imperial Beach and National City. It also includes the San Diego neighborhoods of Barrio Logan, South Park, Nestor, San Ysidro and the unincorporated areas of Spring Valley and Bonita. District 1 does not include Coronado.
How much does a San Diego County Supervisor make?
San Diego County supervisors have a salary of $220,561 a year, according to the California State Controller’s Office.
Who are the candidates?
Paloma Aguirre
- Mayor of Imperial Beach
- Registered Democrat
- Former environmental conservation advocate
A closer look
Aguirre, the mayor of Imperial Beach, is best known for spearheading the fight to end the crossborder sewage flows that have closed beaches and polluted communities around the Tijuana River Valley for decades.
Since she was elected mayor in 2022, Aguirre has been the South Bay’s leading voice on the sewage crisis. She has also pushed for stronger tenant protections, programs to reduce homelessness and efforts to make Imperial Beach more resilient to climate change.
Before entering politics, Aguirre worked for the coastal and marine conservation nonprofit WILDCOAST, which was then-based in Imperial Beach, for more than a decade.
Aguirre first moved to the San Diego region to attend college and pursue competitive bodyboarding. She is Imperial Beach’s first Latina mayor and continues to surf today.
Key endorsements
- San Diego County Democratic Party
- San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council
- SEIU 221 County Workers Union
- State Senator Steve Padilla
John McCann
- Mayor of Chula Vista
- Registered Republican
- U.S. Navy reservist
A closer look
McCann, the mayor of Chula Vista, has been a steady presence on the City Council for close to two decades. Like Aguirre, he was elected mayor of his city in 2022, pitching himself to voters as the stable choice.
McCann grew up in Chula Vista and went to high school at Bonita Vista High.
As an elected official, he has led a push to bring more higher education programs to the South Bay and championed the long-awaited Gaylord Resort, which finally opened last month. He has also pushed for harsher measures on homelessness, including the city’s encampment ban.
McCann also serves as a commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve and was deployed to Iraq alongside an Army unit in 2009.
Key endorsements
- San Diego County Republican Party
- Former District 1 Supervisor Greg Cox
- Deputy Sheriffs’ Association
- Pacific Southwest Association of Realtors
What are the issues facing District 1?
Sewage crisis
Both candidates agreed that the county should be spending more on public health measures to support neighborhoods dealing with crossborder sewage pollution.
Aguirre said she is most concerned about what ongoing exposure to air and waterborne pollutants means for people living around the Tijuana River Valley.
She said she would push for the county to invest heavily in public health efforts to better understand the effects of the sewage flows. She wants the county to conduct studies on health monitoring and the economic impact of the crisis.
Aguirre also said she wants the county to look at preventative measures on parts of the Tijuana River where she said infrastructure is worsening the release of toxic gases.
McCann agreed that the county should be putting more funding towards public health measures around the valley.
He said he wants to hold politicians in Mexico accountable for Tijuana’s failing infrastructure, which has not kept pace with the city’s growth and is one of the factors fueling the sewage flows.
Aguirre has more than a decade of experience working on the Tijuana River Valley crisis. But McCann has become vocal about the sewage crisis in recent months, particularly after announcing his candidacy for supervisor.
Last month, he joined a senior Trump administration official, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, for a roundtable discussion alongside a number of other San Diego politicians.
Aguirre’s office said she was not invited to the roundtable.
Immigration
The two mayors have starkly different views on immigration policy.
The Board of Supervisors has taken several steps when it comes to immigration. The county runs the Immigrant Legal Defense Program, which provides free legal representation to people who are in San Diego County and are facing deportation.
Supervisors also recently passed a stronger sanctuary policy, which bars county agencies like the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office from working with federal immigration authorities — except when they have an arrest warrant signed by a state or federal judge.
Aguirre said she supports the county’s stronger sanctuary policy, although she said she thinks it should have been designed better with more collaboration between supervisors and the sheriff’s office.
“I don't want to see in any shape or form our county resources being used to do ICE's work or the federal government's work,” she said.
Aguirre previously told Voice of San Diego that she did not support the policy.
However, Aguirre was clear that she would vote to continue funding the Immigrant Legal Defense Program. That decision, she said, was about ensuring that everyone in the county has access to legal representation and due process rights — especially amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort.
“We're seeing even citizens being deported,” Aguirre said. “Where does that stop?”
McCann opposed the county’s stronger sanctuary policy.
He said he felt that cooperating with federal officials was necessary to stop fentanyl smuggling and human trafficking. He also said he supports deporting immigrants without legal status who have been convicted of violent crimes.
“We want to be able to go ahead and stop those issues as a team,” he said.
McCann agrees that local law enforcement should not be doing federal immigration work, but said local agencies should be able to tell immigration officials if they have someone in custody who committed a violent crime.
He said he supports the U.S. Constitution and the public’s right to due process.
McCann opposes continuing the Immigrant Legal Defense Program. He said the decision was about the need to balance the county’s budget and find places to cut back on spending.
“I believe that we should be supporting the citizens first over people who are not citizens,” he said.
Homelessness
Aguirre and McCann both emphasized their records on homelessness and agreed that the county should be taking more of a lead on the crisis.
The number of unhoused people living on the street in both Imperial Beach and Chula Vista fell last year, according to the annual homelessness census. It was part of a regional decline in homelessness across the county — the first since the pandemic.
Chula Vista saw the number of unsheltered unhoused people in the city fall by 6.5%. In Imperial Beach, unsheltered homelessness fell by 15%.
McCann touted Chula Vista’s construction of the Otay Bridge Shelter, a small transitional housing village. He also said they had worked closely with Governor Gavin Newsom’s office to evict people living on state-owned land around highways.
McCann was an ardent supporter of Chula Vista’s camping ban, which restricts where people can sleep or set up tents outside.
“We need that ability to give people help and then also hold them accountable,” he said.
Aguirre said Imperial Beach officials have also worked hard to reduce homelessness under her leadership, including by establishing a task force to provide unhoused people with case management and other services like P.O. boxes where they could receive mail.
Aguirre said it was a difficult decision to support Imperial Beach's encampment restrictions in 2019.
“You don't want to take this approach when we don't have enough beds in our county to give our unsheltered residents a place to sleep or spend the night,” she said.
Aguirre said the county needs to do more case work and provide more wraparound services to put people on the road to permanent housing.
Housing
Aguirre has been a forceful advocate for renters and lower-income households. Earlier this year, she pushed for a new housing law that added protections for tenants while trying to balance the priorities of small landlords
If elected supervisor, she said her focus would be on adding more homes that are affordable for renters and low-income families. She emphasized that District 1 has some of the lowest household incomes in the county.
“What we need is working-class housing,” she said.
McCann’s focus is largely on home ownership.
In Chula Vista, he said he helped block the construction of two apartment complexes that were proposed for parts of the west side of the city and the Sunbow neighborhood in Otay Ranch.
“You should have the ability to actually have home ownership and have a stake in the community,” he said.
McCann is a landlord himself and owns a real estate company in Chula Vista. He has received endorsements and campaign contributions from landlord industry groups in his bid for supervisor.
In recent weeks, McCann has faced questions over his involvement with that company and whether it has introduced conflicts of interest with his support of massive developments along the city’s bayfront.
Criminal justice
The two candidates would also take different approaches to overseeing county law enforcement.
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office oversees the county’s jails, which are among the deadliest in California, according to an analysis by the news organization CalMatters. That means people who haven’t been convicted of a crime are dying in custody, including from overdoses and by suicide.
The Board of Supervisors recently considered granting the Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) more power to investigate medical staff after an in-custody death.
McCann said he feels the Sheriff’s Office is underfunded and said he would focus on hiring new deputies and guards. He said additional staffing would help prevent in-custody deaths to have more monitoring of people in custody.
McCann said he supported having an outside law enforcement agency review the jail system. But he declined to say whether he thought CLERB should have more oversight power.
“I think the number one challenge that they have is hiring more additional deputy sheriffs and more guards to be able to manage it,” he said.
Aguirre strongly criticized the rate of in-custody deaths.
“Nobody should fear death while they're being held in jail,” she said.
Aguirre said the county should be looking at the type of medical services they offer, especially if someone is intoxicated or under the influence of drugs.
Aguirre said she supported giving CLERB more oversight power. But she said that she would work with Sheriff Kelly Martinez to ensure that any changes were realistic and that Martinez was prepared to implement them.
“I would support it, but I want something to be effective,” Aguirre said.
County spending
The Board of Supervisors has looked at several proposals to help balance the county’s budget and fill any gaps left by cuts to federal funding.
Those proposals include asking voters to consider new sales taxes and drawing funds from the county’s financial reserves.
Aguirre said she opposes adding any new taxes but supports leaning on the county’s reserves in order to continue to fund social services.
“This is a full-blown storm that we're living, thanks to Trump and DOGE and Elon Musk,” she said, referring to the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency. “We need to make sure that we don't cut essential public services that people heavily rely on.”
McCann also said he did not support raising sales taxes and touted the health of Chula Vista’s budget, which the City Council adopted last month.
He said he did not support using the county’s reserve funds.
“Those reserves are for when there's an emergency situation or a major economic down crisis,” McCann said. “So if you suddenly get rid of those reserves, you now have no safety net.”
Instead, he said he would look at making cuts to other county services, including the Immigrant Legal Defense Program and a program that allows people in jail to make free phone and video calls.
“I think we need to go through and … use those funds instead for law-abiding citizens,” McCann said.
