The catastrophic flooding in San Diego on Jan. 22 ruined hundreds of homes and upended the lives of those who lived in them.
Two weeks later, primary election ballots were sent to voters across the city.
That was a potential political nightmare for the person many people blamed for the extent of the devastation: Mayor Todd Gloria, who was up for re-election.
The level of culpability of the mayor, along with current and past officials, for not making long-recommended improvements to the city’s flood protection infrastructure will be long debated.
Regardless, Gloria was on the hot seat, which is not the place to be when voters are deciding whether to give you a second term.
With ballot tallies from Tuesday’s primary still being counted, the Democratic incumbent has 51 percent of the vote and seems destined to face police Officer Larry Turner, a political independent who appeals to Republicans, in November.
There’s a big caveat here. A pending lawsuit backed by Gloria ers claims Turner did not meet the residency requirements to run for mayor and should be disqualified. If a ruling goes against Turner, attorney and social justice advocate Geneviéve Jones-Wright will be on the ballot with Gloria in November. A hearing on the lawsuit has been scheduled for March 29.
Jones-Wright finished third, trailing Turner by nearly 10 points as of late Thursday. Short of some huge political gyration or scandal, Gloria was poised to win in November against either opponent, and that hasn’t changed.
There’s nothing magical about an incumbent gaining above or below 50 percent in a primary, but sometimes that’s viewed as a barometer of strength, or lack thereof.
Election comparisons are tricky, but it’s worth looking at the last San Diego mayor seeking re-election, Kevin Faulconer in 2016.
Faulconer received 57 percent of the vote during the primary, arguably against better-known opponents than Gloria’s — a former state Assembly member and a former interim City Council member.
But that was before a different catastrophe hit: the hepatitis A outbreak that killed 20 people and sickened nearly 600. There were repeated warnings that the large homeless population, lack of public restrooms and resulting sanitation problems would lead to just that kind of thing.
A lot of fingers were pointed at Faulconer, along with county officials. It’s impossible to say what would have happened if the hepatitis crisis had peaked just weeks before the 2016 primary. Would Faulconer have finished above 50 percent, which back then allowed him to win re-election outright in the primary?
(In 2016, a voter-approved change required city elections to go to a November runoff, regardless of primary vote percentages.)
This year, Gloria faced voters as the city was still reeling from the flooding, but that was just the latest in a string of problems for City Hall.
Monthly reports show homelessness continues to grow, while studies have determined the quality of roads is getting worse. The city’s purchase of the uninhabitable 101 Ash St. office building has been an equal opportunity blunder for both the Gloria and Faulconer istrations.
Private polls conducted in recent years for a committee ing Gloria have shown more voters believe the city is on the wrong track than the right one.
Given all that, winning half the votes on Tuesday could be viewed as a glass half-full for Gloria.
The half-empty argument is more nuanced. After all, the mayor was expected to prevail in November regardless of who his opponent is, so tea-leaf reading of the primary results only goes so far.
The term “enthusiasm gap” has been tossed around a lot in this election cycle and Gloria may have one of his own. But that doesn’t come with the kind of potential consequences confronting President Joe Biden this fall in a likely rematch with former President Donald Trump.
In an early January SurveyUSA poll, nearly half the voters were undecided in the mayor’s race. That’s a remarkably high number a month before voting starts when a well-known incumbent is running. That uncertainty was mirrored in private polling.
It could have been worse, of course, if there were fewer undecideds because more people were ing Gloria’s opponents.
The polls had Gloria with relatively low — 34 percent, according to SurveyUSA — which means a lot of undecided voters eventually went with the mayor.
But being deemed the best choice available doesn’t mean Gloria is riding a surge of popularity into November.
Still, the political atmosphere in the fall will be more favorable to the incumbent. The comparatively low turnout on Tuesday likely skewed Republican. A lot more voters will be casting ballots in November and Democrats tend to turn out more in fall presidential elections.
And whether or not Democrats are enthusiastic about Gloria or Biden, they have proved to be downright rabid when it comes to voting against Trump.
The fall election will determine what kind of threat Turner is, but, at the very least, he could make things uncomfortable. He is adept at gaining media coverage and channeling voter frustrations about homelessness, public safety and how city leaders are running things.
But Turner will have to come up with more specifics about what hard choices he’d make on key issues, such as where homeless shelters realistically can be located, whether to raise taxes or how to cut the ailing municipal budget. Short of that, he may be no more than a repository for protest votes against Gloria.
Meanwhile, the Gloria istration is in contract negotiations with the police union and searching for a replacement for retiring Police Chief David Nisleit. There’s no telling what impact, if any, running against a police officer would have on that for Gloria.
The San Diego Police Officers Association has not endorsed in the mayor’s race, though the union did back Gloria in 2020.
Turner could also take some of the potency out of Gloria’s recent tougher-on-crime stand.
For whatever reason, Gloria’s political operatives didn’t want Turner on the November ballot. They funded mailers for the lone Republican mayoral candidate, Jane Glasson, in an effort to knock Turner out in the primary, if not boost her into second place.
Whether or not winning is in question for Gloria, the intensity of public for what the mayor offers is.
That could matter moving forward as Gloria deals with a City Council majority that, while often on the same philosophical page as the mayor, is seeking to exercise more power.
Gloria’s real struggles may not be with the fall election, but at City Hall.
