It was a big win. Bob Filner, Scott Peters, and Dave Roberts. Proposition Z, Prop 30, and Prop 32. Sherri Lightner, School Boards, Encinitas and Chula Vista City Council. It came thanks to an unprecedented campaign effort involving the Democratic Party, Labor, and community groups like San Diego has never seen, and provided a validation of the San Diego Left that hasn’t been seen in a generation. But it’s just a beginning; an opportunity.
The Republican brand is dead in California, and teetering on the edge in San Diego. It got to this point not because the party has turned militant against women or immigrants or union members or environmental conservationists, although identity politics are real and identity warfare doesn’t help. Rather, the GOP finds itself increasingly irrelevant because the result of the identity politics has been a party led by people who feel no obligation to address or even acknowledge the needs of women, immigrants, union members, conservationists, on and on. Identity politics provides the accessible surface, but the trouble is when these people can’t see a future for themselves in one party.
The challenge for Democrats, and particularly progressives within the Democratic coalition, is to make all those excluded people into effective contributors to the political process, not just orphans passing through. That means a good deal of work in the trenches building capacity and foundational infrastructure to bring them meaningfully into political relevance. Not just to provide them a seat at the table, but to empower them to be most effective once they’re at the table. That’s a real power shift.
That’s also why the DeMaio general election model should be deeply worrisome. While DeMaio was uncharacteristically devoid of substance in his own post-mortem, his model was extremely effective in spite of being transparently disingenuous. Head-fakes to environmentalists, choice advocates, affordable housing, and transit activists were almost enough to pass for an actual, reasonable moderate. And it’s an easily replicated plan.
In no small part, that’s because there’s at least one full political generation in San Diego that hasn’t even considered what life would be like if the city was seriously invested in lifting everyone up instead of benefiting downtown elites. And while everyone has goals, plans, and aspirations, far fewer know how much is possible. At the core of the challenge for those coming into office is establishing a clear story and line of policy that demonstrates what it means in practice for a city to commit to neighborhood empowerment, clean energy, conservation, women’s health, affordable housing, real transportation alternatives, expanding the middle class, and integrating all cultures and ethnic groups. Without that, the next right-wing charlatan who tries to pass off a fake to the center might find just enough traction to undo this opportunity.
Let’s remember there’s an electoral divide just as stark as the I-8: General elections vs everything else. Take a look at the current and incoming Republican elected officials at City Hall to bear this out: Mayor Jerry Sanders will be departing due to term limits without ever winning a regular November general election. Same for Councilmember Kevin Faulconer. Carl DeMaio has never won a November election, elected outright in June like incoming GOP councilmembers Kersey and Sherman. There are only two November success stories for the GOP: Lorie Zapf in 2010, and Jan Goldsmith’s successful 2008 Aguirre referendum.
For good measure, only three (Lightner, Zapf, Alvarez) of nine councilmembers will have been elected by a November election in their district. Make it four with Todd Gloria who originally made it in that way, but it’s still a minority. This raises a number of questions about the health of small-d democracy, but no matter how concerned you are about the principle, there is an inescapable result of all this: Hundreds of thousands of San Diegans have no electoral tie or stake in the person representing them at City Hall. That’s a major challenge for an incoming administration that has inclusiveness and empowerment at the top of the agenda.
While the 2012 election marked a high water mark for San Diego’s left-of-center coalition, it’s just as possible that, between Zapf and DeMaio’s overachieving, the GOP’s days of hiding in low-turnout affairs might be waning. DeMaio has laid the groundwork for an effective middle-of-the-road campaign, and the Right has the capacity to churn out candidates who aren’t burdened by DeMaio’s record.
And we know the death-by-1000-cuts playbook that’s coming. The Right still has the network of message generators and messengers to nitpick incoming Democrats into the ground. We have a media infrastructure that is, in many cases, built to be most successful in the old system of transactional downtown power politics and will likely remain sympathetic if not outright militant in its defense.
There will be no benefit of the doubt, there will be no grace period to get up to speed, and there will be little interest in highlighting successes if there’s anything lacking to be highlighted instead. Combating that known problem requires the same sort of grassroots organizing as the campaigns used so effectively: neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, person by person. Teaching San Diego what this moment means and how it’s being seized will go a long way to determining how long it lasts.
Ultimately, this election doesn’t indicate a shift in the electorate or even a ‘fixed’ infrastructure on the Left. Rather, it begins to establish a baseline of what the city can do. Bob Filner and others were right that a majority of San Diego was ready to say ‘enough,’ and the people stepped up and delivered. That in itself is a big step, but all of this electoral success is not victory. It’s an exciting chance to change how San Diego does business and prioritizes civic needs, but it’s hardly safe and the momentum is fragile.
We have the opportunity to tell our stories, to empower whole communities, to fundamentally change our civic perspective on how to build a city. But the work to seize that opportunity only begins now.
by Lucas O’Connor