Kevin Faulconer has been a dominant figure on the San Diego political scene for the past decade.
It has been a constant, while at the same time it has been discovered a little.
He was elected mayor in a special election in 2014 and soon received statewide attention as a possible Republican candidate for governor, which increased after his re-election in 2016. He did not discourage this speculation and gave speeches on broad California topics throughout the state.
Faulconer did not run for governor in 2018, but set his sights on running in 2022. He then jumped into the race to replace Democratic incumbent Gavin Newsom in the 2021 recall election. Newsom easily thwarted the recall and Faulconer’s performance was, to put it charitably, underwhelming: third place with just 8 percent of the vote.
Faulconer appeared to be contemplating another mayoral bid against incumbent Todd Gloria next year. The former mayor also spearheaded the drafting of an initiative to combat homelessness in the city of San Diego, which appeared designed to fit in with a mayoral campaign.
But the prospect of defeating Glòria did not look promising. The initiative also faded, partly due to a lack of financial support, as Faulconer’s focus shifted elsewhere.
As expected, Faulconer formally announced last week that she is running for county supervisor against Democratic incumbent Terra Lawson-Remer in Coastal District 3.
There may be second, third and even fourth acts in politics, but it’s hard to imagine what opportunities Faulconer would have if he doesn’t defeat Lawson-Remer next year.
The fact that he has been bouncing around in recent years might suggest that running for supervisor was an afterthought. But it is not uncommon for politicians who are unsuccessful in one endeavor to turn their sights to another.
The fact that many are elected after coming in nowhere suggests that voters may not be too concerned about internal criticism of district shopping and political opportunism.
Typically, the record of an incumbent running for re-election is central to these campaigns, and that will certainly be the case for Lawson-Remer. But it will be a battle of framing, with Lawson-Remer highlighting the county’s successes over the past four years and Faulconer maintaining they fell short.
But Faulconer’s record as mayor will come under critical scrutiny, possibly as much or even more than Lawson-Remer’s.
Lawson-Remer has already brought up, among other things, the city real estate deal that failed under Faulconer for the 101 Ash St. office tower, which remains unused and will likely cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars at the end.
Many other players were involved in this debacle, but it was engineered by the Faulconer administration and financially benefited one of its main financial backers, developer Doug Manchester.
This was one of the few real estate deals under Faulconer that went awry. The decision to transform a former indoor skydiving building in the city center into a housing navigation center brought about both the acquisition process and the agreement with the influential previous owners.
Faulconer also privately negotiated with developers tied to his political supporters to build the SoccerCity housing, retail and stadium project on the site of the former Qualcomm Stadium in Mission Valley. This led to dueling ballot measures, with SoccerCity losing out to a San Diego State University-backed plan for a soccer stadium, housing, commercial and educational buildings, and commercial facilities.
There were others, most notably the proposed renovation of the sports arena/Midway District and the conversion of a city maintenance yard.
The implication here is that the record could make it harder for Faulconer to suggest he will bring stronger management and political experience to the county, which has generally received high marks for how well it operates.
Faulconer has made it clear that he will try to argue that the county has done too little on homelessness — perhaps the top issue for local voters — and that as mayor he began to point the city in the right direction on that front.
The city’s annual count of one-time homeless people fell under Faulconer, though not enough to suggest the city was close to solving the problem. Still, at one point the count showed a double-digit decline in the homeless population, which skyrocketed in other cities across the state.
Critics point out that the count’s methodology had changed, though it did elsewhere, and that at least one year of police sweeps in San Diego disbursed people living on the street shortly before the count was taken.
However, Faulconer claimed to advance where others had not. His policy of increasing shelter beds and insisting that the homeless be forced to use them and other services has gained favor these days among Democratic mayors in California, including Gloria.
In addition, the city under Faulconer, and Gloria, has been credited with obtaining all of its housing vouchers for people in need. The county has had similar unused resources.
However, the county has strengthened mental health services and substance abuse programs that are considered essential in the fight against homelessness.
Addressing homelessness didn’t appear to be a top priority for Faulconer until the 2016-18 hepatitis A outbreak, which ultimately killed 20 and sickened nearly 600 people. That sad episode will always be a ready counterlist to prove that it affirms the fight against homelessness.
The debate about the achievements of the city and the county will be only one aspect of the campaign, and perhaps not the determining factor.
District 3 stretches from Carlsbad to the Silver Strand south of Coronado and extends inland to Rancho Santa Fe, Rancho Peñasquitos and Mira Mesa. It’s heavily Democratic, but not nearly as much as the city of San Diego, where Faulconer was elected mayor twice.
Faulconer had built an image as a moderate, business-friendly Republican who crossed party lines on a number of issues, including environmental protection, abortion rights and support for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
He often publicly avoided partisanship, a practical approach in a Democratic city, until he didn’t.
After his re-election in 2016, Faulconer said, “I could never vote for Trump.”
But then he reached out to Trump and voted for him in 2020, a bare-knuckle bid to garner GOP support for his gubernatorial bid. He visited Trump in the Oval Office, and a photo of the two of them there went viral.
San Diego County and most of the communities in the 3rd District voted strongly for President Joe Biden and against Trump, who remains one of the most effective tools Democrats have to motivate their troops, in the national, state and local elections.
In most scenarios, Faulconer faces an uphill battle next year. The hill gets much steeper if Trump is on the November ballot.
