For the first half of the evening, Imperial Beach’s election forum was fairly lighthearted.
The September discussion, held at the local school district’s offices and organized by the League of Women Voters, had focused largely on small-town issues. Candidates for mayor and city council were asked about their positions on a new dog beach and action plans for addressing the summer’s mosquito swarms — a question that drew both laughs and groans.
But as the night drew on, the moderator turned to the existential crisis facing the beachfront city: The cross-border sewage flows from Mexico that for years have flooded the Tijuana River Valley.
As the November election approaches, the three-way race for mayor in Imperial Beach has revealed a diverging set of opinions on how the city’s elected officials should talk about the city’s long-running crisis.
One candidate for mayor, retired school district administrator Karl Bradley, said he wasn’t happy with the city’s current leadership. If elected, Bradley, a Democrat, said he would be more vocal about the crisis.
“Our previous two mayors were warriors,” Bradley said. “They stood on the rooftops and made this a national issue.”
Past mayors of the working-class town have built a reputation for relentless activism, filing lawsuits and lobbying Congress to bring attention to the sewage crisis. Now, the issue is making national headlines — and some, like Bradley, think the next mayor should be making more noise than ever.
But the other two candidates — including the city's interim mayor — have taken a quieter approach.
Matthew Leyba-Gonzalez, a current city councilmember and fellow Democrat, has not yet outlined any specific action plans of his own. Instead, Leyba-Gonzalez said he would focus on backing the efforts unfolding at the county level.
Mitch McKay, the city’s sitting mayor and a registered Independent, has held his own private meetings with federal and state officials and said he plans to continue pressing for action behind the scenes. But McKay says he favors a reserved approach over being “in the park with a bullhorn.”
“It’s very, very complex,” McKay said at that September forum. “I just think we need to keep pushing forward.”
A legacy of activism
The three mayoral candidates all agree on one thing: their role is primarily as an advocate.
The mayor of Imperial Beach has little jurisdiction over national borders and federal waterways. What they can do is speak to how the sewage flows are affecting the lives of residents who can’t access the beach or may be breathing toxic fumes.
For the two previous mayors, that advocacy has taken the form of persistent and fiery activism as they fought to draw a spotlight to the crisis.
Former-Mayor Paloma Aguirre led a delegation of local mayors to Washington D.C. and brought lawmakers to tour the valley. Her predecessor, Serge Dedina, demanded answers from the U.S. and Mexico officials, eventually suing the federal government. (Under Dedina, the city also joined other causes like suing oil and gas companies over damage from climate change.)
Dedina argues the mayor can wield great influence if they’re willing to get creative. During his term, he attended meetings with Mexico’s former president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the governor of Baja California.
“I assumed that I was essentially the ambassador of Imperial Beach to Mexico,” Dedina said. “So there's no limit to what a small-town, feisty, beach town mayor can do.”
The issue is finally getting traction in Washington D.C. The Trump administration, Mexican government officials and state leaders have committed new money to cleaning up the sewage flows. Over the fall, federal health researchers went door-to-door conducting surveys in the Tijuana River Valley.
This November, San Diego County voters will decide on a county-led sales tax. Aguirre — now a county supervisor — and her colleagues say it would allow them to borrow up to $1 billion to race ahead of the federal government and build their own sewage treatment facility.
So what’s the role for the next mayor of Imperial Beach?
‘There’s more productive ways’
McKay, a retired aerospace engineer, took office in August 2025.
That summer, Aguirre won a special election for county supervisor and stepped down. The remaining four city councilmembers, including McKay, voted to appoint him as a replacement.
In an interview with KPBS, McKay said he has met with over a dozen federal and state officials, taken lawmakers on tours of the river and arranged a local business roundtable. He said he favors face-to-face conversations over protests.
“If you come in guns ablazing and pitchforks and torches, human nature just doesn't work that way,” McKay said. “There’s more productive ways to do it, I think.”
McKay has also made a point of highlighting positive stories about Imperial Beach. In his March state of the city address, he spent his opening remarks talking about a new stadium at the local high school and the city’s coastal surf culture.
Seven minutes went by before McKay mentioned the sewage crisis. The previous year, Aguirre had focused on the crisis immediately — and spent half of her speech talking about it.
Still, McKay says his top two priorities as mayor are pressing for federal action on the sewage crisis and addressing the local economic impact. He doesn’t have a third priority.
“There's no excuse for them not to know and care about what's going on down here,” McKay said, brushing away tears in a recent interview. “Hopefully somebody doesn't have to die before we get the attention.”
A three-way race
Leyba-Gonzalez, the sitting councilmember, has yet to put forward a specific action plan on the sewage crisis.
At that September forum, he said he would focus on supporting elected officials with greater power to directly influence the flows — including Aguirre, who is now a county supervisor.
“I feel that we need to gravitate towards solutions,” Leyba-Gonzalez told the crowd. “Building infrastructure on our end to treat this sewage is the route to go.”
Bradley is pitching himself as someone who would bring an activist spirit back to city hall.
Upon taking office, Bradley said he would ask the city attorney to file Freedom of Information Act requests for documents from the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, the agency responsible for the Tijuana River. Specifically, Bradley said he would ask for construction timelines for pollution treatment infrastructure.
Bradley said he decided to run for mayor because he felt like McKay isn’t being transparent about his conversations with federal officials. He said McKay is failing to apply the kind of pressure Aguirre and Dedina achieved.
“The mayor has stated that he likes to work behind-the-scenes, but what I've seen is inaction,” Bradley said. “I would do proactive things to inform my community — to pressure our representation to fund these projects.”
Both Democrats, however, face some headwinds because of the math of the race.
Democratic voters hold an edge in Imperial Beach. But political observers think it’s likely that Bradley and Leyba-Gonzalez could split those votes, Voice of San Diego reported earlier this month.
If that happens, it would give McKay a clearer path to staying in office.
‘We have to push them’
To Imperial Beach’s two previous mayors, the city’s next leader can’t afford to stay quiet.
“I think our residents… absolutely expect to see a mayor being loud and proud,” Dedina said. “That’s just the kind of city we have.”
Despite the surge of national attention around the crisis, Dedina said he has deep concerns — particularly about flagging political will in Mexico. San Diego officials, he said, can’t be afraid to pressure Mexico’s government.
“The people that are polluting the river valley, businesses and the Mexican government, know exactly what they're doing,” Dedina said. “They've made a calculated decision to dump sewage on the United States.”
“We have to push them stronger than ever,” he added.
Aguirre, the current-county supervisor, feels similarly.
Back at that September forum, the former-mayor and Imperial Beach resident sat in the audience listening quietly. Afterward, Aguirre said she wanted to see her next mayor tackle the crisis head-on, including by investing in local businesses.
“This is not just an existential crisis to this town, but to the entire county,” she said.
