About a month ago, Steve Cushman said he was feeling pretty good about Mayor Todd Gloria’s re-election prospects.
The longtime San Diego businessman, philanthropist and political player was the chief fundraiser for the Gloria campaign, which had pulled in about $350,000 with another $60,000 expected from a fundraiser just days away.
The incumbent was facing a little-known challenger with little money, San Diego police Officer Larry Turner.
Then the campaign was thunderstruck as a seemingly unbelievable rumor came true: An obscure Point Loma attorney made an unheard-of $1 million donation, most or all of which is being spent to help Turner.
That forced the Gloria camp into a new course of action. Cushman stepped away from the candidate’s campaign to retool and raise money for an existing independent political committee that is largely unfettered by the city’s strict contribution limits — same as the committee ing Turner.
Big donations have been flying in ever since, with “San Diegans for Fairness ing Todd Gloria for Mayor & Stephen Whitburn for Council 2024,” which said it has raised more than $800,000 and allocated $500,000 for television as of Thursday.
With other independent committees, Democratic Party and the mayor’s own campaign, a cautious optimism has set in among some of Gloria’s ers.
“We will certainly be able to compete on an equal or higher level,” Cushman said this week.
San Diego’s political world was turned upside down when attorney Steve Richter contributed $1 million to the political arm of the Lincoln Club of San Diego County, a Republican-leaning business group. In a letter to the club, Richter and his wife, Carol, put no conditions on the money, saying the club should spend it as it sees fit.
Club officials swore high and low that the money wasn’t earmarked to elect Turner, but that’s where it’s going.
Richter denied interview requests last month from The San Diego Union-Tribune and as of Thursday had not responded to an email sent this week.
As of Oct. 11, the committee named “Turn San Diego Around in of Larry Turner for Mayor 2024” had spent about $700,000 on various forms of advertising, including print, signs, social media and video ads, according to campaign reports filed with the San Diego clerk’s office.
The law forbids independent committees from communicating or coordinating with their favored candidate or the candidate’s campaign. But they’re often familiar with each other’s spending and strategy. Cushman, after all, was at the top of the Gloria campaign until recently.
Independent campaigns can coordinate with each other, however.
Much of the money raised by the Cushman-chaired committee comes from Gloria’s long list of endorsers, which include labor unions, teacher organizations, business associations and developer groups. The mayor also is backed by groups such as Planned Parenthood Action Fund of the Pacific Southwest, LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, and San Diegans for Gun Violence Prevention.
Here’s a smattering of some of the contributions to the committee: $175,000 from the California Apartment Association, $85,100 from the Coalition for Patient Access & Innovation sponsored by California Life Sciences, $85,000 from the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce PAC, $50,000 from the United Nurses Association of California, and $25,00 from the Building Industry Association of San Diego.
Several individuals also have donated five-figure sums.
Jared Sclar, committee spokesperson and consultant, said what the opposition “failed to realize is that there would be an equal and opposite reaction.”
Raising big money so late in a campaign can be a challenge, because big donors tend to create campaign budgets earlier.
“This is a difficult time,” Cushman said. “Everybody’s already committed money to this election. People thought they were done. Yes, people had to dig deep.”
He said that “it’s going far greater than expected” and added something unlikely heard in previous San Diego political eras: “Business and labor have really coalesced well in the past few years.”
The Lincoln Club committee for Turner continues to collect smaller donations and, not surprisingly, there’s a rumor afoot about another big one. Turner has further attracted grassroots from neighborhood groups and critics of the mayor, including La Prensa, which has endorsed the challenger.
It may sound odd, but campaign professionals say it can be difficult to spend a lot of new money that wasn’t planned for late in campaigns, though many political strategists would like to have that problem.
Money isn’t everything in politics, but it’s necessary to have enough to run a competitive campaign. With both the Gloria and Turner forces well resourced, the election may rest on political fundamentals.
For an incumbent with a heretofore unknown opponent, Gloria’s polling has been weak. In recent years, surveys have shown either majorities or pluralities of San Diegans believe the city is on the “wrong track.”
Increasing homelessness and the high cost of housing have been top voter concerns, and the city’s ill-fated land transactions (think 101 Ash St.) and inadequate stormwater drainage system exposed during the January flood have received broad media attention.
But in recent mailers that sometimes also feature Councilmember Whitburn, Gloria is credited with ridding downtown of more than 80 percent of the homeless tents after a public camping ban took effect, while expanding shelters.
Gloria further has institutional advantages. He’s running as a Democrat in a heavily Democratic city. Turner, though not ed with a political party, is now identified with one of the region’s best known conservative groups, the Lincoln Club.
Then there’s the power of incumbency. The mayor recently has made official pronouncements on such things as arts funding opportunities, extensive road repairs and securing more than $1 billion in grants. Granted, Gloria and other elected officials do that kind of promotion all the time, but it dovetails nicely with a campaign.
Finally, in a move that must have stung Turner, Gloria was recently endorsed by the San Diego Police Officers Association, which expressed concern over the challenger’s comments to the Voice of San Diego about reconsidering pensions for future police and fire department hires and police staffing.
Nobody’s going to feel too sorry for a candidate ed by $1 million, but it’s starting to feel like the empire is striking back.
