Mayor Todd Gloria and County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer appeared to have convincingly thwarted challenges Tuesday that were outliers from the norm of San Diego politics.

The fact that their re-election was in doubt was due to a set of circumstances unique to each race – difficult to replicate with future incumbents.

Gloria, a Democrat, was facing for the first time an unknown candidate who lacked the resources to run a citywide campaign. The mayor was running primarily against a protest candidate, Larry Turner, who had few concrete solutions.

Thus, the election of the chief executive of California’s second largest city was relegated to second place. Until an obscure Point Loma lawyer, Steven Richter, made the unprecedented decision to donate nearly $1.7 million to the Lincoln Club of San Diego County, a right-wing business group supporting Turner, who is not registered with any political party.

Lawson-Remer didn’t appear to have any significant challengers on the horizon, except perhaps Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey, until former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer suddenly appeared, making immediately from the contest the benchmark race in the county.

Faulconer, a Republican, was better known in the largely Democratic coastal district than the Democratic incumbent, and he attracted millions of dollars in campaign support from business and real estate interests. Faulconer had shown in the past that despite being registered with the GOP, he enjoyed cross-party appeal.

There is an old belief that incumbents don’t lose in San Diego, although there seems to be an increasing number of exceptions to this rule of thumb. Yes, old Mayor Dick Murphy resigned in 2005 after being re-elected on technical grounds and for one term Supervisor Dave Roberts They lost re-election in 2016, although both succumbed largely to high-profile scandals.

San Diego City Council member Lorie Zapf, a Republican, was rejected by voters in 2018 in an increasingly Democratic district after supporting Donald Trump for president in 2016. She was the first incumbent president in the council to lose re-election since 1992.

But a more important rule was emphatically reinforced Tuesday: San Diego is a Democratic city.

In the city of San Diego, the mayor, district attorney and all nine council members are Democrats. The county Board of Supervisors will maintain a 3-2 Democratic majority.

From a broader perspective, the election appears to seriously set back Republican hopes of gaining ground in California’s urban communities and many suburbs, as well as in coastal Democratic areas. Some across the state analysts viewed Faulconer as something of a canary in the coal mine as to whether Republicans had any potential to live in such areas across California, at least in the Trump era.

There doesn’t appear to be any other high-profile Republican in the state, much less locally, who fits that profile at the moment.

There’s no doubt that Faulconer’s carefully crafted moderate, nonpartisan image was affected by his shift from Trump skeptic in 2016 to supporter in 2020, as the former mayor prepared for a possible dismal run for office. governor.

Certainly, there are Republican enclaves in the interior regions of the North and East counties. Republicans appeared to make inroads in other cities Tuesday. Yet Democratic voter registration dominates across the county.

Tuesday’s results, assuming nothing strange is happening in the remaining tally, also highlight something that now seems obvious but is worth emphasizing: Neither Gloria nor Lawson-Remer were as vulnerable as claimed. their criticisms.

Gloria maintained the broad coalition of business, labor, Democratic and environmental groups that easily propelled him to the mayor’s office in 2020. His first term was marked by issues related to rising homelessness and disability. major infrastructure projects, among others. Local polls have shown that many San Diegans believe the city is not on the right track.

But here is a little recognized and above all forgotten sign of his strength: he frightened Faulconer. The former mayor was preparing to challenge Gloria this year. Faulconer even authored a ballot measure that would have required San Diego to provide a certain number of shelter beds for homeless people while cracking down on illegal encampments.

But some business interests generally aligned with Faulconer made it clear to him that they should stick with Gloria. The former mayor abandoned the city initiative and ran against Lawson-Remer.

Faulconer relied primarily on his record on homelessness, which had some positives but some glaring negatives, saying Lawson-Remer and the county weren’t doing enough. But this appeared to be what would have been his mayoral campaign grafted onto an oversight bid.

The county has evaded its responsibilities on homelessness for decades and still deserves criticism for it. But the county has stepped up its efforts, particularly to expand mental health care — after Democrats were elected to a Republican-dominated Board of Supervisors for decades.

It’s also worth mentioning that Lawson-Remer, backed by a strong Democratic-Labor coalition that she still maintains, defeated Republican Supervisor Kristen Gaspar in 2020 in a landslide.

Since then, District 3 has been realigned to account for census changes, moving further south. That gave an opening to Faulconer, a Point Loma resident, but benefited Lawson-Remer by getting rid of some of the previous district’s more conservative interior communities.

Gloria and Lawson-Remer will rightly view their re-election as validation of their first term.

The mayor banned homeless encampments, added hundreds of shelter beds and advocated fewer development restrictions to spur more housing. Its critics have described these measures, respectively, as counterproductive, insufficient and generating more congestion.

Lawson-Remer’s re-election will no doubt encourage the supervisor to continue his efforts to support working families and county employees, limit development in the county’s most remote rural areas, and provide financial assistance to prevent people from falling into homelessness.

Lawson-Remer could be in the running to succeed Nora Vargas as board chair, who was also re-elected Tuesday, although that remains to be seen. Regardless, the county could face tight budget constraints and other challenges ahead.

Gloria could also face budget shortfalls, but if the 1-cent sales tax proposal he supported, Measure E, is decided in his favor, city coffers could generate a $400 million windfall. dollars per year.

As for Turner and Faulconer, the future is of course uncertain. Turner could return to political obscurity. Faulconer may also move on, unless he finds a winnable seat to run for that may not currently exist.

Originally published: November 6, 2024 at 1:30 p.m. PST