San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer breezed through his primary election on Tuesday to win a full term outright by garnering more than 58% of the vote.
Republicans are celebrating Faulconer’s victory and declaring his strategy the “Faulconer Doctrine”; a moderate approach to governing that vanquished his two opponents in this race, Lori Saldaña and Ed Harris.
Faulconer’s success during the past two years, however, has been more a study in risk avoidance than decisive leadership. His “doctrine” has been to accept changes that the more progressive City Council was going to pass anyway, including the City’s aggressive Climate Action Plan. Rare among Republicans, Mayor Faulconer became an advocate in reducing the City’s emissions by half within 20 years and moving
to 100% use of alternative energy by 2035.
The Mayor has also been careful to stay out of the most vexing local issue; the Chargers’ quest for a new stadium. When the Chargers released their 110-page plan in April, the Mayor said he needed time to review it before taking a position on it. Two weeks later, the Mayor released a 15-page list of questions he asked the Chargers to answer before he could take a position on the issue.
That pushed his decision to after the primary election, and kept Faulconer from having to take any definitive positions on the stadium and risk alienating a large part of the electorate. The Mayor of San Diego gave no direction on one of the largest infrastructure projects in the City, and left the political playing field open for the Chargers, downtown developers, and even the most litigious lawyer in town to frame the public debate.
Now, local Republicans are hailing Faulconer something akin to a unicorn, a mythical creature of lore that won two elections in an increasingly Democratic city, when others like Carl DeMaio and even County Supervisor Ron Roberts failed to win mayoral campaigns. There’s even talk of Faulconer’s team gearing up for a future run for Governor or other statewide office.
Kevin Faulconer is an affable guy, with the right combination of timing and luck to end up leading a major US city when only 7 out
of the 35 largest cities are led by Republicans. He has a calm demeanor, good presentation, and even sprinkles some Spanish into his speeches, as he did during a recent campaign debate.
However, times have changed in California for Republicans since the heady days when San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson went on to win election to the US Senate, then two terms as Governor. Today, no Republican holds any of the eight statewide constitutional offices from Governor to Secretary of State. In the past eighteen years, the only Republican to win an election for Governor was Arnold Schwarzenegger, and that was only because, come on, he’s Arnold.
No offense to Faulconer, but he’s no super hero.
California is now a majority minority state. The voter base is made up of 40% Latinos and 15% Asians, most of them Democrats. Republicans make up only 28% of the registered voters in California. The demographics are becoming more diverse, younger, and more Democratic.
Raphael Sonenshein of the Edmund G. Brown Institute of Public Affairs at CSU Los Angeles says “things are catastrophic for Republicans in California” because the “problem is a combination of demographics and ideology, sort of a toxic combination of those two.”
Still, Faulconer has won twice, but his wins are more the failure
of the Democratic Party in not fielding more viable candidates, both in this Primary, as well as in the special election that gave him the mayor’s office in the first place in 2013.
First-term City Councilman David Alvarez, a 33-year old Democrat that represents Barrio Logan, Logan Heights, and San Ysidro, was in the special election run-off against Faulconer in 2013, and, despite millions of dollars in union and Party money, couldn’t convince voters to elevate him to the Mayor’s office. It just wasn’t his time yet, and voters chose the safer bet in Faulconer.
In this week’s election, Democrats couldn’t draft a top tier candidate and ended up with the late entry of Ed Harris, who was appointed to
fill the last year of Faulconer’s City Council seat, and former State Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña, who left the Democratic Party and ran
as an independent, with neither candidate raising any significant money for their campaigns.
No Toni Atkins. No Marty Block. No Todd Gloria. No Christine Kehoe, Juan Vargas, or Susan Davis. No popular candidates with proven track records of both winning elections and raising money stepped up to run.
So, now Kevin Faulconer has four and a half years to serve as Mayor. With this win, he has a chance to help lead San Diego in
a bipartisan, good government manner void of partisan politics. And he can lead on issues like the stadium, convention center expansion, and infrastructure improvements.
Or, he can play politics in hopes of a long-shot statewide run, and end up squandering the good will he’s build up so far. The unicorn could end up being nothing more than a Northern White Rhino; not mythic at all, just the last of a soon to be extinct breed.