Two San Diego County ballot measures that together would overhaul county government and raise the countywide sales tax strengthened their leads on Wednesday as election officials continued processing ballots. Both contests remain too close to call, but widening margins are generally an encouraging sign for the yes campaigns.
Measure A, placed on the ballot by county supervisors, would grant board members an additional term in office and expand their authority over the county bureaucracy, giving them more power to hire and fire key county leaders and new tools to shape the county budget. Supporters say it will let supervisors keep county bureaucrats focused on their political priorities.
Measure B, a citizens initiative, would generate an estimated $400 million to $450 million a year for healthcare and child care services and for efforts to resolve the Tijuana sewage crisis. As of Wednesday, both measures held about 52 percent of the vote and led the no campaigns by roughly 23,500 votes.
Wins for both would mark a significant victory for the Board of Supervisors' three-member Democratic majority. The three Democrats, along with allied organized labor groups, backed the pair of measures.
In Vista, Democratic Socialists of America member Kenneth Zuniga has pulled within 500 votes of former two-term Republican Councilmember Joe Green in the race for mayor. Thousands of votes remain to be counted, and Zuniga has narrowed Green's advantage with each new release of results.
Zuniga attributed his showing to his campaign's ground game. Since June, he said, he and his supporters have knocked on more than 13,000 doors and made more than 30,000 phone calls, often asking residents what they wanted to change in their city. Voters, he said, raised "the bread and butter issues of affordability" and the need for "a city government that is actually delivering results," from driving down housing costs to basic infrastructure improvements.
In San Diego, city officials have closed a loophole in the pending Midway Rising megadevelopment deal that could have allowed the developer to claim credit for affordable units that did not actually increase the neighborhood's overall supply of affordable homes, the Union-Tribune reported. The practice, known as off-siting, would have let the developer absorb affordable units already required to be built elsewhere. The City Council's independent budget analyst found that up to 800 such units could have qualified for the site without a prohibition. The change follows reporting last month that the project might not produce the 2,000 net-new affordable homes its developer initially promised.
North County also saw a Democratic surge. In Encinitas, conservative Mayor Bruce Ehlers is running neck and neck with Democratic challenger Rimga Viskanta, and two Democrats lead in City Council races that could flip the conservative-leaning council to a Democratic majority. A Democrat narrowly leads the contest to replace Republican San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones, who won her race for a vacant seat on the County Board of Supervisors, and a Democrat may also flip a seat on Escondido's conservative-leaning City Council.
San Diego Councilmember Marni von Wilpert, meanwhile, declared victory over Republican Jim Desmond in the race to represent the 48th Congressional District. She is expected to vacate her District 5 council seat, which covers neighborhoods including Black Mountain Ranch, Carmel Mountain Ranch and Scripps Ranch. Once she departs, her chief of staff will run the office and maintain constituent services, a candidate nomination process will take place within two weeks of the vacancy, and a special election must be held within 90 days, with a runoff if no candidate wins a majority.
