San Diego’s Blue Wave

Speaker 1: 00:01 Counting the votes took a while, but the presidential picture is coming into focus. What does it say about voters and the direction of our country? San Diego is blue wave election results. Bring a more progressive city and County. I will Democrats use their newly earned political power. And from Oceanside to Poway, we take a look at some of the under the radar results in North County. It's all part of our election recap show. I'm Mark Sauer and the KPBS round tables starts. Now. Speaker 2: 00:35 [inaudible] Speaker 1: 00:40 Welcome to our discussion of the week's top stories. I'm Mark Sauer and joining me on this remote edition of the round table, Michael Smolins columnist with the San Diego union Tribune, KPBS, investigative reporter, Amica Sharma and report a Kayla Jimenez of voice of San Diego as your head stopped spinning yet, it may take a little longer for a lot of us. The votes have been cast if some are still being counted, but the dust is yet to settle on this cacophonous masked up money, gusher of an election here to provide at least some insight as Michael Smolins columnist with the San Diego union Tribune. Michael, glad you could join us today. Thanks for having me on again, Mark. Well, it certainly is been quite a week. Now you observed in your election day column before it all happened. That two driving forces in the selection where the coronavirus pandemic and Donald Trump nationally inherence San Diego, let's take the pandemic first. How did it change so much in this election? Speaker 3: 01:34 Well, it, it changed a lot and it's just so interesting because politicians and political professionals were really worried at the beginning of the pandemic because they weren't going to be able to do so many things that they normally do. All of which involve, you know, personal contact, direct contact with voters. They actually adapted pretty well through, you know, the whole phenomenon, zoom and other platforms like that to hold events. They thought fundraising was going to be really hurt and it actually turned out pretty well. And so did you know, rallying the troops, uh, you know, there was concern that turnout wouldn't work out well, but it did as we've seen largely because of the mail ballot. So I think that they will also take from this when hopefully eventually COVID 19 is just a bad memory in our past and things are safer. They will take some of these, uh, new tactics that they took in this campaign. Uh, and we'll use them in the future. Speaker 1: 02:24 And Trump. The second part of that is you note this isn't Trump country, he lost in 2016 to Hillary Clinton and will, again, that to Joe Biden this time when votes are all figured out, how did Donald Trump still impact some local races? The County board of supervisors comes to mind. It's an important agency with a big budget. That's overshadowed by doings at city hall and big changes coming there is that all the Trump effect explain that Speaker 3: 02:47 Some of it is, uh, you know, for the last two election cycles. Trump has had a, you know, an outsize presence in local campaigns, unlike every president, any president I've seen, you know, back when Reagan was president and Obama, they were popular with certain groups and people would bring them up in a positive way. People were being attacked, you know, for County supervisor city council, uh, because of the potential ties to Trump and a incumbent supervisor, Republican, Kristin Gaspar really paid a price for that. As you recall, in 2018, she ran for Congress and she really ran as a Trump Republican. Now she represents the North coastal, uh, district three, which is, you know, a swing district, moderate, and, uh, you know, she didn't do well in that campaign. She came back to run for reelection and basically tried to reinvent herself a little bit and that didn't go over well. So that baggage along with other things really hurt her. And, uh, Tara, uh, Lawson reamer, a democratic attorney, uh, is leading her by like 20 points right now. She's going to be the new supervisor. And the key thing there with the importance is of course that means the Democrats take over the majority of the board of supervisors for the first time in decades, Speaker 1: 03:55 Decades. It's like, I've been in a long time. You have to, I can't remember when well let's move to the city of San Diego was certain, a Democrat would replace Republican Kevin Faulkner in the mayor's office and Democrats would control the council, but it's a super-duper majority now, where have you gone, Speaker 3: 04:09 Pete Wilson? Well, uh, you know, it seems all of a sudden, a big, you know, another blue wave hit, but this has been a trend, a demographic political trend that's been going on again for decades. Uh, as we know, San Diego voter registration in the city, uh, flipped to Democrat a long time ago or a Democrat, a dominant, you know, more recently, but still a while ago did so County wide. So that's being reflected as you see that, that while the city council is much more democratic, now it already had a super majority. Uh, and you know, let's not forget that. It seems like we haven't had a democratic mayor in a while, but you know, Bob Filner in 2012 was elected mayor, but of course he flamed out with the sexual harassment scandal and that opened the door in a special election for a Republican, uh, Kevin Faulkner back then people were predicting, Faulkner may be the last Republican mayor and a generation or two in San Diego, given the democratic trends and lo and behold, the first election to replace him. And now that he's termed out featured two Democrats in the runoff, that's unheard of in San Diego. Speaker 1: 05:11 And what are the biggest challenges facing the new democratic mayor and council? Speaker 3: 05:15 Well, first of all, it looks almost certain that it's going to be Todd Gloria, the assemblyman and former Councilman, uh, who will win the election. He's up by a little more than 12 points. We'll, you know, see as the vote count goes on, whether that shrinks or expand, uh, there's a lot of things there's there's housing and homelessness of course are huge. There's going to be, you know, issues with, with, uh, police reforms and police oversight as a, you know, a ballot measure passed that will strengthen that. But I think the first order of business really that supersedes everything of course is the Corona virus pandemic. Uh, we are going to see continued health problems and certainly economic problems. I think management of that is going to be a key challenge for both the new mayor and the city council. And finally, Speaker 1: 05:58 Let's talk about a couple of San Diego ballot measures that passed the measure B you referenced it just now it's a kind of police reform, a new oversight commission, so that one's going to finally have teeth. Yes, Speaker 3: 06:08 Well, there's a, there's a commission now that that isn't advisory, but they basically have to, what they do is review the investigation done by the police department and then people for a long time, don't think that's adequate. Uh, but they haven't been able to get an independent commission through, I think because of all the social protest, social justice protests, the police brutality protests, the desk that the hand is a police, uh, just change the, the body politic on that and, uh, measure be passed by like 50% or at least that's the margin right now. The real question though, is yes, there will be an independent commission, uh, be able to, you know, do independent investigations, have their own attorneys, but the city council has to approve a, an enacting ordinance. And I think that's where the rubber hits the road. And, you know, the police officer's association for the first time when neutral against, uh, you know, an independent, uh, commission, but they've endorsed people at city hall and, you know, they're going to try to exert their influence. They can't scrap the commission, but they will certainly I'm sure try to shape it to be, you know, in their best interest as best they can. Speaker 1: 07:10 Well, that's really an interesting to watch one to watch, I should say, as we go forward and finally measure E directly impacts a major development. The heart of the city briefly explained what developers will be able to do. And is this project going to embody the city's battle against sprawl and endless commutes going forward? Speaker 3: 07:27 Well, uh, it may, you know, do some of all that, uh, you know, this would allow a sweeping redevelopment of the midway district. We mostly, we call it the sports arena area, which is really not a pleasant place. Overall it's strip malls. It's not pedestrian friendly. Uh, you know, we've been going to the sports arena for, for 50 years, I think now, and there's been calls to do something there. What this does primarily is it lifts this 30 foot height limit, and that would allow for more flexibility. Now, you know, opponents suggest it's going to look like Hong Kong with these, you know, you know, a hundred story high rises. I don't think that's going to be the case. The market will dictate what people will build, but there's going to be, you know, just, it's a lot different there. They're going to try and do less car oriented transportation. Speaker 3: 08:14 Uh, there will be Parkland there. There's nothing there now. Uh, and, uh, you know, it will be a dense development and short of something like that, I guess, to start building in the, uh, the urban fringes and, you know, that's a dangerous fire area. Plus people have to commute a lot more. So that's the hope we'll see there, there needs to be a lot done with how it will ultimately be developed, but, uh, certainly the height limit, uh, moves things forward. And frankly, if they're going to rebuild or build a new sports arena that height limit probably would have prevented that. So that's one thing definitely that, uh, you know, Speaker 1: 08:48 Well, a lot to look forward to a lot of reporting to be done after this election. I've been speaking with San Diego union Tribune, Michael Smolins. Thanks, Michael. Thank you, Mark. Whether Joe Biden prevails in the electoral college, he's the seventh Democrat to win the popular vote in the past eight presidential elections yet more often than not. That translates into divided government where we may be headed again, joining me to try to cut through the fog of the national election results is investigative reporter Amica Sharma who co-hosted our election night special on KPBS television AMECO. Welcome back. It's good to be back with you, Mark. Well much has been made this year of demographics in the U S shifting away from Republicans, all major racial and ethnic voter groups, lean democratic, except whites who supported Trump over Biden by about 60 to 40%. What are the analysts saying about this being another cycle where whites are trying to maybe hang onto their majority status in America? Speaker 4: 09:44 You're saying that Trumpism remains strong with almost half of the country's voters. Most of whom are white voters, you know, uh, many analysts thought, or I should say hoped that there would be a Biden landslide, just an outright repudiation of president Trump because of his handling, the COVID-19 pandemic, a pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 people. You know, this country saw a record setting 120,000 new cases yesterday alone. And then there's the economic fallout from this pandemic that has left 30 million people who were either unemployed, outright, or have had their hours reduced because of the Corona virus. A quarter of Americans cannot pay their rent. And 100,000 businesses have closed not to mention the president's incendiary comments on racial strife, the locking up of Latino children, migrant children, uh, in cages and his status, the president's status as a climate change denier, what Tuesday's presidential vote revealed was despite all of that. And the president's impeachment, the scandals, very little of his support eroded he's about at 47 to 48%, Speaker 1: 11:08 Right? I wanted to talk a little bit about some, what some analysts are saying is surprising, uh, black men edge toward Trump, more in 2016, 18% supported him and Trump won over 36% of Latino men along with 58% of white men, not a surprise there. And Biden's running mate is of course, a black woman, Senator Kamala Harris of California will massage uni again, be a post-mortem topic of discussion as it was in 2016. Speaker 4: 11:33 Well, it already has been, I mean, Senator Harris certainly observed a lot of misogynistic and racially tinge attacks like mocking the pronunciation of her first name, not just from the president who called her a monster and nasty, but his allies and non allies. I mean, I have to say former Republican speech writer, Peggy Noonan described Harris's dancing on the campaign trail as embarrassing. I don't recall Noonan saying anything publicly when former Republican presidential candidate, Carly Fiorina broke into a lullaby onstage. So there's been a lot of talk already on what's perceived as the license that people take in bashing women, but in terms of black voters expressing their misogyny through their vote for Trump, I don't know. I don't know that that is clear. I think that they're dwindling support for democratic candidates might just be that they, you know, every group, regardless of how they are treated as a group has their own individuals in that group have their own personal preferences. They're not voting as a monolithic. Speaker 1: 12:38 Great, right now in the 2016 campaign, Trump famously said, I could stand in the middle of fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters. Okay. He's presiding over the first net loss of jobs in a term since world war two, Trump's been widely criticized for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. And as you noted, he's verbally bash immigrants and the kids in cages and accused of sabotaging the postal service in an effort to suppress democratic votes. Uh, and then there's of course the endless lies. Now, Joe Biden says, this is not who we are. We're better than this. What are the pundits saying now about Trumpism surviving of Trump leaves, the white house? Speaker 4: 13:14 I think what you can take away from that is that Trump's appointment of three new justices to the Supreme court. Lower taxes certainly went a long way in keeping voters, because it can't be ignored that a lot of voters were fine with the president style of governance, including the daily dose of documented lies that the president has told the, the, you know, as we discussed the incendiary comments on race, he has made, uh, the threats to jail, his opponents and, and the insults that he is lobbed at people. He doesn't like including military heroes, uh, Washington post columnist, max boot, who is a known conservative wrote this week. And I quote the election reveals that nearly half of the nation in habits and alternative reality built by Fox news and Facebook, where Trump is a successful president and Biden is a dangerous socialist that does not Augur well for our future, even if the likely defeat of Trump himself is an enormous achievement. So what it means is that Joe Biden's message of this is not who we are. We're better than this plainly, and simply does not resonate with these voters, which again, make up nearly half of the country. Speaker 1: 14:31 Well, let's look ahead. If Biden is sworn in come January, will he really be able to work across the aisle in the Senate, drawing on his decades of working there himself? And of course that assumes the Senate is narrowly held by Republicans, which looks likely now, but it may change. Speaker 4: 14:48 Well, if you look at a country as a collection, people who are not just bound together by, by, by nationality and citizenship, but by common experiences. And by that, I mean, people's finances, their health. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of division on certain issues. The majority of Americans are unified on a mask mandate. They're unified on keeping the affordable care act on passing around another round of stimulus money to help people struggling because of the pandemic. And they're also unified on having a climate change plan. So sometimes you have to wonder whether we're actually as divided as we think. Speaker 1: 15:33 Well, that's a good point. And I hate to say it since we're all kind of exhausted here this week, we haven't even decided this election fully yet, and people are already looking ahead to 2022 to, uh, the, the Senate race then, and even 2024, we do have a, uh, perhaps a president elect who's, uh, in his late seventies and may not run again. Uh, are we ready to start all this again? And would Donald Trump be running again in 20, 24? Should he lose now? Speaker 4: 16:01 You know, I've heard a lot of talk about people saying Donald Trump, isn't going to go away. He's going to continue to tweet he, if he loses the election and he may just be a thorn in the side of, um, president Biden, if you should win. I don't know about that. I mean, there are a number of criminal cases. He could be the target of, and already is he could be investigated for tax fraud and New York times series on his taxes expose some potential criminal exposure. There's the case of the hush money. He allegedly paid to a porn star. In that case, he's listed as co-conspirator number one, there's a federal cases. There's a lot of talk of the president pardoning himself or resigning early and having a, uh, president Mike Pence, pardon him, uh, on those cases and on the state side where a strategy like that would not work. The DA's office in New York is investigating whether the president committed bank and insurance fraud related to the Trump organization. There had been bribery and obstruction of justice allegations stemming from the Mueller investigation, which was barred from looking into the president's finances. And finally, there has been talk by one former federal prosecutor who says Trump should be prosecuted for negligent homicide for the way he managed the Corona virus pandemic. So that chapter has not yet been written. Speaker 1: 17:21 We're almost out of time, but briefly he's still going to have 10 or 11 weeks here. Uh, if, if, uh, Biden is, uh, elected till he lead until Trump leaves office, uh, what's happened then, Speaker 4: 17:31 Well, it depends, uh, he is not going to leave without a fight. Um, I imagine that any remaining work he wanted to get done on regulations, environmental regulations, uh, through executive orders, he might just continue to do. Um, and it doesn't sound like he's going away, uh, in the court fight alleging that there was widespread election fraud or voter fraud in this election, Speaker 1: 18:02 Right. We'll have to see it all, how all that plays out a lot of news to cover yet. I've been speaking with KPBS, investigative reporter and meet the Sharma. Thanks to Martha. Thank you, Mark. We spent much of this show focusing on the high profile campaigns and results, but as the saying goes, all politics is local in North County voters decided on new leadership and made important decisions on how their neighborhoods will grow in the years to come joining us to talk about some of the results flying just below the radar is Kayla Jimenez, North County reporter for voice of San Diego. Hi Kayla. Hi there. Thanks for having me. Well, we'll start with a couple of big choices up in Oceanside. First, you wrote about the crowded field for mayor initial results show Esther Sanchez as the apparent winner. What do we know about her and her plan should the results. Speaker 5: 18:48 Yeah, so that was a crowded, um, mayor's racist, 12 candidates, time Oceanside council, and the tests are Sanchez. Looks like she's in the lead now. And she'll be the first woman and first Latina to serve in quite a while. I had a long sit down conversation with Sanchez before the results. And she said some of her top priorities are affordable housing and buying land for the city to house veterans and seniors. She was against the controversial North river farms project or measure owl, but she said she wants the council to take control of the housing of the future and stop letting the developer community decide homelessness with also a big priority of hers and adding in shelter beds for ocean side, which are completely full right now. And then she also suggested that the police department could do more to build trust within the community and said she supports an independent oversight board. So we'll see what she will do for that. But that's a big change for the city. She was very different than a lot of the candidates that we thought in that race. Speaker 1: 19:56 We'll see how much of that she can get through with the council up there. Now you talk with voters for part of your story. What got your attention or stood out from those conversations? Speaker 5: 20:04 It was interesting talking to voters on Tuesday morning because there were so many candidates, a lot of voters chose who that they closely identified with, and many of them were in supportive Sanchez. And then also Councilman Christopher Rodriguez, who came in second that we're seeing from the result. A lot of people voted for who they identified with, whether they were women. They saw that yes, there was only women on the ballot, or if she supported, um, fixing a homelessness and housing crisis, or they voted for a Rodriguez, um, who the veteran, who a lot of people in Oceanside identify with, uh, veterans and small business owners. And then it was kind of around Cobra across the board for the other candidate. Speaker 1: 20:44 And, uh, housing was also on the ballot and ocean side. Uh, voters rejected the measure. L you'd mentioned that that would have allowed zoning for a large development known as North river farms. What were the dynamics at play and why do you think it lost by such a wide margin? Speaker 5: 20:58 North river us was definitely one of the most contentious ballot measures up in North County. That was a 585 home. I, our culture, Dan, with the mixed use development for the rural neighborhood in Morell Hills, it was highly contested from the beginning. It was a split three to vote Oceanside city council voted to approve that in the beginning. And then residents fought hard to get signatures for a referendum. So it's not too shocking that the project with the post because the residents were highly opposed the project when the city council approved that. And a lot of them said they didn't want that projects. We built there because they want to keep the agricultural land and moral Hills. And I were concerned about flooding and sire concerns Speaker 1: 21:39 And Poway has its own housing question that was measure P and that turned out differently. The vote there, how will a, it redevelop the abandoned Stoneridge country club. Speaker 5: 21:48 That's interesting cause this is one of the few housing, um, projects that we've seen pass up in North County recently. And that project will bring 160 new homes to that Stoneridge area, which used to be a golf course and plush country club building. And that could be because voters knew what they were voting for in that project. Supporters had said they had an associates specific plan, environmental impact report, and a map that was completely approved and put in stone ahead of time. And that did also receive unanimous approval and support from the council. So we saw early on that there was a lot of support for the project Speaker 1: 22:22 And there's also a couple of County supervisor seats up for grabs district two stretches into parts of North County, including Poway, Ramona, and Julian. How's that shaping up to be a night Nailbiter Speaker 5: 22:33 Yeah, it's pretty close to right now. Um, both of the, uh, Steve Voss, Angela Anderson are running for that position. They're both Republicans running on historically red district, but they've emphasized different things. Lots of said, he'd like to streamline the home construction process to shorten costly delays. And Andrew had tested that he, the County shouldn't increase funding for law enforcement and the teams that respond to mental health crisis loss has a lot of support. Um, here in the County, he's the mayor of Poway currently and the head of the SANDAG or, and Anderson has experienced and is supported by the San Diego County Republican party. So that's a tight race that we're still watching. Speaker 1: 23:16 Anderson's in spirit experiences up in Sacramento quite a bit, actually. And we just talked with Michael Smolan about district three, which covers parts of Encinitas and Escondido. What were your takeaways for how the race played out between the incumbent Kristen gas bar? And of course she's a Republican and the Democrat Tara Lawson greener. Speaker 5: 23:34 Yeah. So this was a big race because ultimately the winning of Tara Lawson, Riemer flip partisan control and the County on that County board of supervisors. And I think that showed that people weren't too happy with how the County, the direction the County was going loss. And remember some of her points that she plans to spend, um, more of the counties reserved on critical issues like homelessness set a gold standard for climate action plans and put Aleisha on that country development Speaker 1: 24:04 And that, uh, reserved there that you referenced for the County supervisors, that's in the neighborhood of $6 billion. There's a lot of things that could happen with a democratic control board now. Speaker 5: 24:14 Correct? Definitely. Uh, we're going to see some changes playing out in the County coming up. Speaker 1: 24:19 Yeah, we should note, that's a five member board and now three Democrats first time in forever. I've been here a long time. He can't remember that. Well, there's a lot more we could get to, but, uh, is there a particular result or race that stands out to you that we haven't touched on up in North? Speaker 5: 24:33 Yeah, I think another one that it was very contentious with the InstaMeet is mayoral and city council race, the three incumbents mayor, Catherine Politik spear, um, council members, Kelly Hinsey and Tony Krantz ended up winning. Those are there. We see in the early results that they're winning. And that's an interesting one because a lot of people have been upset about their leadership and there were some tight, um, racist, um, up there as well. So that's interesting to see and see how the they'll respond to that opposition from citizens there who have been against their campaigns. Speaker 1: 25:11 Well, of course, we're still waiting on the presidential race, some other tight races around the country, and there's some tight ones here in San Diego County to report on going forward. I've been speaking with Kaylee Jimenez who covers North County for voice of San Diego. Thank you, Kayla, that wraps up another week of stories on the KPBS round table. I'd like to thank my guests, Michael Smolins of the San Diego union Tribune, KPBS reporter Amica Sharma and reporter Kayla Jimenez, a voice of San Diego for comprehensive election results analysis and stories about the candidates and issues go to kpbs.org. I'm Mark Sauer. Thanks for joining us today. Speaker 5: 25:56 [inaudible].