Lawyers With Different Stances On City Issues Battle For San Diego District 5 Council Seat

Speaker 1: 00:00 Two lawyers, one, a Republican, the other, a Democrat are battling to represent San Diego city council district five. The district covers Northern San Diego neighborhoods, including black mountain ranch, Scripps ranch, Rancho Bernardo, and Rancho Penasquitos Republican Joe Leventhal and Democrat. Marnie Von Wilpert share similar positions on several issues, but they're differences on rent relief and housing density could influence the direction of San Diego's. Next city council. Joining me is KPBS investigative reporter, Claire triglyceride, and Claire. Welcome. Thank you so much. District five has been thought of as a predominantly Republican part of the city. Is that still the case? That's right. I mean, it's historically always been represented by a series of Republicans, including Carl de Mio. I think it's still thought of as the most, uh, Republican district, but by now it's actually, um, fairly balanced with 36% of the voters are registered as Democrats, 31% are Republicans and 28 are no party preference. Speaker 1: 01:08 And then it, right now it's held by, uh, Mark Kersey who's termed out and he was elected as a Republican, but has since become a no party preference voter. So if a Democrat wins in this race, it would give the Democrats one more C on the, on the council. So tell us about these candidates. Uh, what's the background of Marnie Von Wilpert? Sure. So she, uh, grew up in Scripps ranch, um, but then she left to get her undergrad from UC Berkeley and her law degree, uh, from Fordham university. And then she's kind of been all over the place. She served as a peace Corps volunteer in Botswana, and then, um, lived in Mississippi for a while where she founded a legal clinic, um, called the Mississippi center for justice. And then she moved back to San Diego and now she works as a deputy city attorney. Speaker 1: 02:01 And, uh, I know he's a lawyer, but what's Republican Joe Leventhal, his background. Sure. So he grew up in the Los Angeles area. Um, and then he went to UC San Diego. He left to get his law degree from Georgetown university. Um, but now he's been living in San Diego for awhile. Uh, he founded his own law firm, I think, eight years ago. And then his political involvement is that he served on the San Diego ethics commission. That's the city commission. I mentioned the somewhat similar positions the candidate share on some issues, both are opposed to defunding the police. What does Von Wilpert say about that? Right. So she pointed out that she works in law enforcement as a prosecutor, um, working for the city attorney. And so she has a good working relationship with police. Um, and so she says that they really need support and funding, not defunding. I also want to make sure that we are not Speaker 2: 03:00 Burdening our officers with problems that are not criminal. You know, we shouldn't the only response to homeless individuals should not be a nine 11 call with police officers. Speaker 1: 03:09 You say, Joe Leventhal agrees, the police should not be first responders for mental health calls, but does he support any police reforms? Well, he's also, uh, very much not in favor of defunding the police. Um, but he says he'd support additional training, including a deescalation training. Um, so here's a little more of what he said about that. Speaker 2: 03:31 Every institution needs to be looking at how to improve and, uh, figure out ways that we get rid of any implicit bias, uh, in our, in our department, Speaker 1: 03:41 The issue of potential city budget, cutting find some differences between these candidates, Joe Leventhal told you he would support cutting overtime for some city employees, right? So he said that he would look for cuts, um, by making city services more efficient. Um, and he points to data showing that the number of general employees in the, in the city has grown by, uh, 20% over the past decade while police and fire have only grown by 6%. So he wouldn't want to make any cuts there. Um, he explained a little bit more about the overtime. Here's what he said. Speaker 2: 04:15 So I would really want to maintain our current service levels in our police and fire. Uh, it may mean that we are saving money by trying to reduce overtime, which frankly might mean hiring additional police and firefighters. Speaker 1: 04:30 Marnie Von Wilpert takes another attack when it comes to city budget cutting. Right. Um, she also said she would not cut from police or fire departments, but she would look to cut outside vendors. Um, and that seems to be a common talking point. I've heard among different Democrats this year. Uh, so here's, here's what she said. Speaker 2: 04:48 We've spent over 200 million a year on outside services that we really could bring in-house such as new legal services or, um, architects surveying planning issues. Speaker 1: 05:00 Marnie Von Wilpert came in first in the March primary. So does she still have the momentum? Well, yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Cause she came in slightly ahead of Leventhal with about, uh, almost 40% of the vote compared to his almost 37% of the vote. And the third place finisher was a Democrat Isaac Wang. So you would think, well maybe all of his votes are then going to go to Marnie wa Von Wilpert. But the wrinkle in that is that Isaac Wang actually endorsed Joe Leventhal. Um, so I think it's, it's not entirely clear and Leventhal is slightly out fundraising, uh, Von Wilbert at this point. So I think this is going to be one of those really close races that maybe we won't know the resolution to for, uh, a few days. Okay. Then I've been speaking with KPBS, investigative reporter, Claire Traeger, sir. Claire. Thank you. Thank you.