1 week Ago
Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre wasted no time in resetting the direction of her campaign for the decisive round of the special election for county supervisor. “This runoff is a clear choice between Democratic values that put working people first, and a Trump Republican agenda that would be a complete disaster for all of San Diego County,” she said in a statement Tuesday night as soon as primary results made it clear she will advance to a July 1 face-off with Chula Vista Mayor John McCann, a Republican. That same night, McCann suggested he will focus on his record in Chula Vista, where he says he has helped improve public safety, reduce homelessness, bolster the local economy and bring more housing to the region.
“I’ve been a leader to help elevate the image and job growth in Chula Vista, where Chula Vista is an economic engine for the region,” said McCann , who also is certain to take aim at Aguirre’s record. “I want to make sure we create innovation and jobs in all of South County.” At stake is partisan control of the county Board of Supervisors, where an empty seat has left a 2-2 split between Democrats and Republicans.
The vacancy was created at the start of the year when then-board chair Nora Vargas, a Democrat, stepped down with little explanation despite winning a landslide re-election in November. The runoff will be an entirely different affair than the primary, which from the start was a competition among three Democratic elected officials to make it to July. McCann had an easy ride to the runoff.
That won’t be the case in a one-on-one race in the heavily Democratic district, where Republicans account for just over 20 percent of registered voters and are outnumbered more than 2-to-1 by Democrats. McCann has defied partisan odds before in becoming mayor of Democratic Chula Vista and, prior to that, serving on the City Council. He finished first with 43 percent of the vote as of Thursday, as a small percentage of ballots were still being counted.
Aguirre received about 32 percent of the vote, with San Diego City Councilmember Vivian Moreno at 13 percent and Chula Vista Councilmember Carolina Chavez with nearly 8 percent, followed by three others. A candidate could have won the seat outright by gaining a majority of the vote in the primary, but that was never much of a consideration during the campaign. It might seem that McCann doesn’t have far to go to get over the top in July, but the political and demographic dynamics make the hill much steeper from here.
For one thing, most voters for the other Democrats may coalesce around Aguirre. However, it’s often been suggested that the county’s South Bay District 1 is not as liberal as other Democratic districts, in part because of its large working-class and heavily Latino population. Last November, President Donald Trump again lost big there, but he received more votes against Kamala Harris than he did against Joe Biden in 2020.
But sometimes lost in that analysis is that the bigger factor may have been a lack of enthusiasm for Harris. While Trump received 5,330 more votes than he did four years earlier in District 1, Harris received 34,125 fewer votes than Biden. Meanwhile, there may have been Democratic malaise about the Biden-Harris administration, but that pales in comparison to the current political firestorm over Trump’s spending cuts, tariffs and other legally questionable policies, all of which could significantly impact county residents.
We may not know how relevant any of that is until the July 1 election results are in. It’s tricky to graft dynamics of a presidential race – which have large turnouts – onto local special elections in off-years, where turnout is very low. Some local analysts predict the turnout for Tuesday’s primary eventually will be around 17 percent, though there’s some disagreement about whether turnout will increase a bit or drop in July.
In any case, voter participation will still be low and that would seem to work in McCann’s favor, under the notion that Republicans have stronger proportional turnout. Further, McCann, a Navy veteran, has developed a moderate, pro-business image and has proved an adept campaigner over the years who has not been wedded to the Republican brand. But he didn’t face much scrutiny from opponents during what essentially was a rough-and-tumble Democratic primary, where Aguirre not only survived but won in a blowout with a broad coalition of labor, environmentalists and the local Democratic Party behind her.
A key to the runoff may be to what degree the Aguirre campaign can identify McCann with Trump’s unpopular policies or make him answer for them. Despite last year’s election, Trump remains a key motivator for Democrats to vote. Another key will be how well McCann burnishes his record (and fends off Aguirre’s certain efforts to poke holes in it) while questioning her accomplishments as mayor and a council member in Imperial Beach.
Aguirre has received praise for her efforts to seek funding and solutions to the decades-long cross-border sewage spills from Tijuana, which has been the centerpiece of her campaign. McCann may well try to turn that into a negative, noting that the situation has gotten worse since she’s been mayor. But Moreno’s backers spent hundreds of thousands of dollars attempting to do just that, with not much to show for it.
More broadly, McCann has raised concerns about how the county is led, contending supervisors have been ineffective on homelessness and housing while running a budget deficit. He has noted that Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, an Aguirre ally, is considering proposals to raise taxes, something he opposes. Yet McCann will be pressed to say what should be done, including what cuts he would make.
Party politics have long played a role in technically nonpartisan elections like those for county supervisor. But the polarization of the country has led to more sharply partisan local politics in recent years, especially now when edicts out of Washington, D.C.
, seem to have more jarring local impacts than ever before. What both candidates say they’ll do to improve the county will be central to the campaign — but so will the presence of Trump..
