San Diego’s District 7 Race Features Four Political Newcomers

January 22, 2020 at 9:27 AM PST

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:20 Speaker 3: 00:27 Speaker 2: 00:32 Speaker 1: 00:44 Speaker 2: 00:49 Speaker 1: 00:57 Speaker 2: 01:04 Speaker 4: 01:14 Speaker 2: 01:23 Speaker 3: 01:52 Speaker 2: 02:10 Speaker 3: 02:18 Speaker 2: 02:41 Speaker 1: 02:49 Speaker 2: 03:03 Speaker 1: 03:27 Speaker 2: 03:36 Speaker 4: 03:43 Speaker 2: 03:47 Speaker 4: 03:48 Speaker 2: 03:57 Speaker 1: 04:19 Speaker 1: 05:13 Speaker 1: 06:12 Speaker 1: 07:07 Speaker 1: 08:02 Speaker 1: 08:57 Speaker 1: 09:44 Speaker 5: 10:41 And now we turn to the upcoming election. This March, residents of Linda Vista, mission Valley allied gardens in Tierrasanta. We'll have four choices when voting for a new city council member. That top two vote getters will compete in November to replace termed out Councilman Scott Sherman. KPBS reporter Claire Traeger. Sir introduces us to the candidates. Four candidates means there's a lot to keep straight. So here's a quick rundown. First up is Knollies OSA. I am a partner in the, uh, popular restaurant group, dirty birds. He's also on the city's parks and recreation board and chairman of the Linda Vista planning group. He's the only Republican in the race. The rest are Democrats. Then roll can PO. Now I'm a deputy city attorney. I work in Mara Elliot's office and the criminal division. He used to be an elementary school teacher and has worked on democratic presidential campaigns. Next, there's Wendy Wheatcroft. I spent the past three and some years working in gun violence prevention at the local, state and federal levels. She volunteers with moms demand action for gun sense in America and also was an elementary school teacher. Finally, we have Monte McEntire. I practice law here since 1980 for 40 years next year and I've been a mediator and an arbitrator in the last 19 years. He also was president of the San Diego County bar association and works on a nonprofit that provides music therapy. The candidates mostly agreed that homelessness and a lack of affordable housing, our San Diego's most pressing issues, but their opinions differ when it comes to solutions. Knollies OSA says city leaders must better understand what homeless people are going through before deciding what they need. Really treating people as um, individuals and not data. Just providing a house or a housing for them or prefer feeding them is not enough. Um, there's, there's mental issues. There's substance abuse issues, there's alcohol related issues, there's relationship issues. There's so many different reasons why people are homeless. Sosa also wants the city to lower taxes on small business owners and cut its spending on bike lanes. Right now San Diego is spending, uh, 200, and I believe the figure is $276 million on building a bike lanes. And that money should have been spending, should be spent on roads. And expanding highways. 99% of the commuters in this city still use their car as their main mode of transportation. Housing and homelessness are tops for a row will come PO too, but he favors the approach the current city council is taking. Georgette Gomez said we're going to have a compromise plan on an inclusionary rate for housing costs. So when a new project comes up, uh, the developer has to set aside a percentage to keep the, either the rent or the housing cost. The purchase costs lower. He also wants more supportive housing for the homeless along with job training among compose. Other big issues are improving bus and trolley service and increasing pay for police officers. Wendy, we craft also puts homelessness as her top issue, but she says city leaders have to think big if they actually want to make a dent in the problem. We need sweeping regulatory and land use reform so that we contain some of the zoning and neighborhoods to allow us to build more houses. Monty MacIntyre is the only candidate who puts city hall culture, not a specific issue as his top priority. Do we have to try to make our decision making process better? And how would he do that? We really have to use a critical analysis process. So you have to first get all the facts, then you have to figure out if there are any best practices anybody has developed, then get expert opinions in analyze. He also wants to help housing affordability by removing red tape and changing community plans so more homes can be built and wants to boost salaries for city employees. The top two vote getters will face off against each other in the November general election. Joining me is KPBS investigative reporter Claire [inaudible]. Claire, welcome. Thank you. So city council district seven is currently represented by termed out council member Republican Scott Sherman. Uh, is district seven typically a Republican district? It has been in the past. Historically when Scott Sherman was first elected, I think he had a couple, um, Democrats running against him, but they didn't have much of a shot. So, so yeah, it's a big change to now have more Democrats than Republicans running. And can you gauge the level of interest in the council race in district seven? Well, a sort of, I mean I actually live in this district, um, and so I can say in allied gardens we've gotten some candidates knocking on doors. There's a few big signs out and there's going to be a candidate forum next week. But the mailers that we usually see flooding are our mailboxes haven't really started yet. I think people were kind of holding off for the holidays and now the campaigns are gearing up a little bit more. Uh, right before the mail in ballots get sent out. So who's backing these candidates? Who's got the biggest war chest? Well, so there's the, the San Diego County democratic party has endorsed role can PO, they've given his campaign about $11,000. Um, as far as I can tell, the Republican party have not made any donations yet. Maybe they're waiting til after the primary when there's just down to two candidates and then no OSA. The Republican had raised the most money, but those numbers only date back to the middle of the summer. We don't have new numbers yet. For the last six months. So, uh, we can't really tell at this point really who has the most money. So has there been any polling yet? No, there's, I mean campaigns might do internal polling that, that they release, but these city council races are pretty small so there isn't really polling that people do. So in some ways it's, it's, you know, it's kind of a surprise when the, when the votes are counted on election day, you, you may not really be able to tell who is actually going to, um, advanced to the November election. So are there similar campaign themes among these candidates and other local candidates? Yeah, so it's interesting because I've been interviewing candidates for this race as well as some of the other city council races and the San Diego mayor's race. And I noticed a few things I'm among, especially among the Republican candidates. One big talking point was more of a focus on tough love on homelessness is what people are calling it. I'm saying, you know, maybe we've been doing too much compassion. I think what that means is criminalizing or you know, not allowing people to really be sleeping outside. And another common Republican talking point I noticed was calling out bike lanes for being a waste of money. Um, I heard that from a couple of different candidates. Among the Democrats, it's not, I mean people are talking a lot about housing affordability, especially in these districts where prices have just gone up and up and then working on homelessness, you know, providing more services, things like that. And then everyone always talks about roads because that's popular. We need to improve roads, more people. This election, I feel like we're talking about also improving transit than I've heard in past elections. And you also recently reported on the race in city council district five where three major candidates are battling to replace termed out council member Mark Kersey that covers black mountain ranch, Carmel mountain ranch, Rancho Bernardo and Rancho Penasquitos. Did you find differences in the priorities of those city council candidates and the candidates in district seven? Um, not really because I think district five and district seven are pretty similar in some ways. So their candidates are also talking about housing affordability. I think they're less willing to say, you know, we need to build a lot of housing in this district because that district is so kind of suburban residential spread out. I don't think that people who live in that district may be very receptive to that message. But in general, yeah. You kind of hear talking points along similar lines and last year, current district five council member Mark Kersey switched parties from Republican to independent. Does that tell us anything about the changing politics in district five? Yeah, I mean it's interesting he did that. He obviously he couldn't run again, so it's not like he was trying to align himself necessarily with his district. Maybe he's scoping out of future political move that we don't know about yet. But that district had always been a Republican stronghold. No one ran against Mark Kersey in either of the past two times that he was elected. But now the latest registration numbers show that there actually are more Democrats now in that district than Republicans, which is a big change in both of these races. You know, like you're saying there, there's only one major Republican candidate, so it's possible that after the primary two Democrats could be on the ballot in November. That would be a big change for these districts, wouldn't it? Oh, I mean now it'd be an incredible change to have districts where typically you've always had Republicans elected all of a sudden you don't even have a Republican in the general election. I don't really expect that would happen because there's still a good chunk of Republicans and if there's only one Republican candidate in each race, then all the Republicans usually line up behind that person. Plus they may be able to attract a lot of the no party preference voters as well. And so then you would have the typical kind of runoff with a Democrat and a Republican, even though the city council seats are supposed to be nonpartisan. Wa what will it mean for the council if either of these districts goes from Republican to a democratic representation? Yeah, I mean we're going to see, because like you said, it's supposed to be nonpartisan already. Right now, the Democrats have the six, three super majority on the city council, so they can override a veto from a Republican mayor. We may not have a Republican mayor after the next election, and so then if there's even more Democrats, they may end up kind of splitting into groups of like maybe a more moderate and a more liberal and fighting against each other. Um, it'll just be a huge change for the city politics overall if that happens. I've been speaking with KPBS investigative reporter Claire Traeger, sir Claire. Thank you. Thank you. [inaudible].

By KPBS Public Media

The primary field includes three Democrats and one Republican. Voter registration numbers favor the Democrats who hope to build on their 6-3 council majority.