On Tuesday, the region’s most powerful labor organization released a letter from 14 elected officials to Nora Vargas, chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.
The missive under the label of the San Diego & Imperial Counties said several things, but the key point was a call for the board to include a candidate favored by unions among the finalists to fill the the county’s top executive position — chief istrative officer.
On the same day, the county posted a statement that the board, which has a 3-2 Democratic and largely labor-friendly majority, had voted unanimously to move on to the final round of the selection process with two candidates. The labor-backed hopeful, Santa Clara Supervisor Cindy Chavez, apparently isn’t one of them.
None of the job applicants has been identified by the county throughout the process, with the board citing the need for confidentiality to attract top-quality candidates. But Chavez, a former labor leader in Northern California, told local union officials she already had been eliminated from the running.
Subsequent rallies, attack mailers and insulting comments from a union leader aimed at Vargas don’t appear to have changed that.
While this isn’t over until a new CAO is formally hired, it’s hard to think Vargas or any of the supervisors would reverse course at this stage, the recent letter notwithstanding.
It seems labor’s strategy to get Chavez the job was perhaps too late, too public and too much.
Unions aren’t bashful about displaying such a show of force, which has achieved labor’s ends before. But here the open pressure may have further steeled Vargas and other supervisors in their positions. Caving after all that would not be a good look.
Meanwhile, the big push for Chavez — and against Vargas — and not getting their way could be seen as a public display of weakness by the politically muscular unions. Then again, it could serve as a warning to other Democrats, even if it doesn’t move Vargas on this.
Vargas seems headed for a relatively easy re-election in November that might be hard for unions to derail, even if they put on a full-court press. But there are always potential consequences down the line. Assuming Vargas wins, the supervisor will be termed out after the next four-year term, and moving on politically might become more difficult.
That’s a long way off, and whether relationships have been burned beyond repair remains to be seen.
In the here and now, there’s the caveat that a lot likely has happened behind the scenes, out of the public eye.
No doubt there have been private discussions among interested parties.
It has been a tumultuous path getting to this point.
Labor’s outrage is understandable. Chavez literally had the job.
Early last year, Chavez, a former leader of the South Bay Labor Council, received a conditional offer from the county for the executive post. About the same time, then-Supervisor Nathan Fletcher announced his resignation following a lawsuit accusing him of sexual misconduct. (Fletcher has denied the claims and has sued his acc, Grecia Figueroa, for defamation.)
Some county business, including the hiring of a CAO, was temporarily upended by the scandal.
The recruitment process and Chavez’s tentative hiring were largely seen as being driven by Fletcher, a Democratic rising star who had become a regional leader with close ties to labor. His wife, Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, is head of the California Labor Federation. Fletcher and Gonzalez were considered allies of Chavez, along with Brigette Browning, head of the labor council.
There has been lots of debate — then and now — about whether Chavez has the istrative experience for the job. Regardless, it seemed Chavez was being grooved for the post.
That’s why the howls from labor — and the officials in the recent letter — about wanting a more transparent process ring somewhat hollow. There was arguably less transparency during the first go-round and no union complaints. Little was known about the process until La Prensa reported Chavez was the front-runner.
There was no publicly recorded board vote regarding the job offer. It was assumed that at least Fletcher, Vargas and fellow Democrat Terra Lawson-Remer ed hiring Chavez.
If that was the case, Vargas isn’t talking publicly about why the change. In any case, labor is blaming Vargas for Chavez being bounced from the competition.
After former San Diego City Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe, a Democrat, was elected to fill Fletcher’s vacant seat last fall, the hiring process started anew.
Labor appeared to be caught flat-footed when Chavez didn’t make the final cut. The rally outside the County istration Center was then scheduled. To publicize the April 30 event, unions circulated flyers with a photo of Vargas superimposed in front of the board’s two Republicans, Joel Anderson and Jim Desmond. The headline read: “Nora, will you stand with working people?”
During the rally, Browning addressed the crowd using Spanish slang to mock Vargas, which riled some Latino groups. Browning on Tuesday put out a statement noting that that “choice of words has offended some in the community” and acknowledged “the hurt” some people have expressed.
Most of the elected officials on the letter circulated by the labor council are Latino. In addition to advocating for Chavez, they said they were writing “in of Browning and the 200,000 working families she represents” as secretary-treasurer of the labor council.
They also expressed for “the right of union and all community to advocate ionately for the causes they believe in.”
There was no mention of Browning’s controversial comments about Vargas.
Meanwhile, more than 130 leaders of Latino and “cross-racial” organizations across the state called for Browning’s resignation in a letter dated Wednesday.
Shortly before the rally, the San Diego County Democratic Central Committee endorsed Chavez for the job at the request of SEIU Local 221, which represents more than 10,000 county workers.
Bolstered by favorable demographic shifts over the decades, organized labor has been successful in helping turn the once-Republican county into solidly Democratic territory. As underscored by the county CAO dispute, unions aren’t just interested in getting people elected to office, but in having more of a say about the appointed s.
Democrats who go against labor priorities have been known to pay a price. Vargas, the first Latina board chair, is certainly aware of that.
Former National City Mayor Alejandra Sotelo-Solis is a Democrat who also made history in 2018 by becoming the city’s first Latina mayor — with labor’s help.
But Sotelo-Solis ran into political trouble for, among other things, not ing a demand by employees to oust the city manager. In 2022, much of the labor-Democratic coalition backed City Councilmember Jose Rodriguez for mayor.
Out of that split, longtime National City politician Ron Morrison, a right-of-center independent, emerged the victor.
That’s quite a sacrifice for the cause.
