Three incumbent San Diego Metropolis Council members will struggle to retain their seats Tuesday, whereas two candidates will vie for an open seat within the District 6 race.
In District 2, incumbent Jen Campbell will face dentist/professor/Realtor Linda Lukacs. They outpaced former Assemblywoman Lori Saldana — who positioned third — and three different candidates within the June main.
Metropolis Council races, like all municipal races in California, are ostensibly nonpartisan. District 2 — which encompasses Mission Seashore, Ocean Seashore, Level Loma and Clairemont neighborhoods — was flipped from Republican to Democrat by Campbell in 2018.
A doctor, Campbell obtained key endorsements from Mayor Todd Gloria and the vast majority of the county’s native and congressional representatives.
Campbell has in latest months received approval to manage and cut back the variety of short-term trip leases with the intent of releasing up tons of of residences for the strained housing market in San Diego. Moreover, she efficiently pushed for laws on sidewalk and pushcart distributors. She is among the main forces behind Measure C, which seeks to take away the coastal 30-foot peak restrict within the Halfway space to permit for a stadium and inexpensive housing mission there.
She has additionally joined efforts to ban flavored tobacco merchandise and declare San Diego a secure metropolis for reproductive freedoms and entry to abortion.
Campbell survived a recall effort in 2021, led by residents against her push to manage short-term trip leases. She served as Metropolis Council President for a yr earlier than being changed by Sean Elo-Rivera.
Lukacs has been endorsed by the San Diego County Republican Occasion however says she would lead in a nonpartisan method. She helps growth within the Halfway space as properly, however not by Measure C and solely as soon as “the correct infrastructure is in place.” She backs police and says she desires them pretty compensated in addition to to undertake a “group oriented policing” technique.
She mentioned she finds “The Individuals’s Ordinance” concerning trash pickup to be inequitable in its present state.
“We dwell in a district that we will and must be happy with,” Lukacs mentioned. “A spot wherein we really feel secure and may take pleasure in our treasured shoreline and limitless sunsets. A spot the place we will elevate our households, construct our companies and a spot the place we will depend on an environment friendly, up to date infrastructure that enhances our high quality of life.”
In District 4, in the meantime, incumbent Monica Montgomery Steppe will face off in November in opposition to Gloria Evangelista.
Montgomery Steppe is a Democrat who ousted an incumbent in 2018. She helps police reform and has pushed again in opposition to police exemptions to a surveillance ordinance.
Evangelista is a dietician and registered Republican.
“I shouldn’t have an allegiance to a political social gathering or a political agenda,” she advised KPBS. “My allegiance is to God first after which to the residents of San Diego, particularly to these in District 4.”
Within the District 6 race, nonprofit director Kent Lee and environmental activist Tommy Hough will sq. off of their bids to interchange termed-out Councilman Chris Cate — the one Republican presently on the San Diego Metropolis Council. Each males are Democrats, which leaves the very actual prospect of no Republican illustration on the technically nonpartisan nine-person council.
They share concepts in most arenas, however have drawn variations in latest months over housing and The Individuals’s Ordinance.
Hough, a former native radio host, serves as a county planning commissioner and has been actively campaigning for the place for a number of years, shedding to Cate for the seat in 2018. His priorities embrace a hyperlocal give attention to fixing roads and enhancing parks and libraries within the district.
He opposes the trouble to repeal the Individuals’s Ordinance, which might have each San Diegan — home-owner and renter alike — pay a payment for trash assortment. Presently, the 100-year-old ordinance implies that any resident who can get their trash to the curb doesn’t need to pay any payment for assortment, whereas these in house complexes or who use a shared trash receptacle should pay a third-party hauler to gather the trash.
“I’m uninterested in seeing our District 6 neighborhoods left behind by the town, and our considerations over fundamentals like parks and roads being dismissed by an more and more hubristic Metropolis Corridor that appears to have misplaced persistence for working with neighborhoods and extra targeted on implementing unrelated initiatives,” Hough advised the San Diego Union-Tribune.
He was endorsed by the Sierra Membership, League of Conservation Voters and San Diego Progressive Democratic Membership.
Lee is a first-generation immigrant who studied at UC San Diego. He was the manager director of Pacific Arts Motion, a media arts group specializing in Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander cinema and which hosts the annual San Diego Asian Movie Pageant. He stepped down from the function to marketing campaign.
His priorities embrace enhancing neighborhood companies, COVID-19 financial restoration, rising housing entry throughout all affordability ranges and investing in the way forward for the Convoy Pan Asian Cultural and Enterprise Innovation District.
“Over our final 16 years of residing in District 6, issues have modified dramatically,” Lee mentioned. “The price of housing, rates of interest, and different financial elements have made housing more difficult for all San Diegans. No single resolution exists to resolve the housing disaster, and so the management essential to avert this disaster will lie in coherent concepts, decisive motion, and strategic collaboration throughout our area.”
Lee was endorsed by the San Diego County Democratic Occasion, the San Diego Regional Chamber, Gloria and Elo-Rivera.
District 8 Councilwoman Vivian Moreno, in the meantime, is being challenged by Antonio Martinez.
Moreno, a Democrat, confronted Martinez in 2018 and received by simply over 600 votes. She earned council approval to pave grime roads and alleys within the metropolis’s poorer neighborhoods. She has been on maternity go away since giving beginning on Aug. 31.
Her priorities embrace ensuring the far-flung, noncontiguous District 8 — which covers Barrio Logan and Logan Heights in addition to the border- adjoining communities on San Ysidro and Otay Mes — will not be forgotten or ignored by way of metropolis funding and companies, because it has been traditionally.
“It has been a troublesome two years for our pals, household and neighbors,” Moreno mentioned. “As your council member, I’ve been preventing to make sure the restoration of our neighborhoods and households was and continues to be the main target of the town. We have to push the town to do extra.”
Martinez, a Democrat, is a staffer for Rep. Juan Vargas, D-San Diego, and is a board member of the San Ysidro Faculty District.
His priorities embrace establishing an infrastructure upkeep plan for the district, establishing a program for Individuals of Shade first-time homebuyers, cleansing the Tijuana River Valley and constructing extra inclusionary housing.
“In the event you’re working two or three jobs, if your loved ones is working two or three jobs, and you continue to can’t make ends meet, there’s one thing critically flawed with what we’re doing,” he advised KPBS.
