The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board interviewed two candidates in the San Diego County Board of Supervisors District 3 race ahead of the March 3, 2020, primary election in which the top two vote-getters will advance to a runoff election in November. Below is the transcript of our Nov. 20, 2019 interview with Terra Lawson-Remer, who is running to succeed Kristin Gaspar in a district that represents residents in the northern part of the county, including San Diego neighborhoods of Carmel Mountain Ranch, Mira Mesa, Scripps Ranch, Tierrasanta and University City and the cities of Del Mar, Solana Beach and Encinitas. This interview was transcribed using the digital transcription service Temi and checked for accuracy by a staffer. To call any errors to our attention or to ask any questions about our interviews, please email matthew.hall@sduniontribune.com with the subject line “election interviews.” Gaspar scheduled a Nov. 21 interview with us, canceled while citing a conflict on Nov. 12 and ultimately declined to reschedule on Nov. 19 after multiple requests.
Union-Tribune: Tell us why you decided to run for county supervisor.
Terra Lawson-Remer: I think we have a once in a generation opportunity to chart a pretty bold new course for the future of San Diego County. I look at current leadership um Nathan Fletcher excepted and I do see, frankly, a legacy of inaction and do-nothing mentality that has prevailed at the county for a generation and has just really underserved our community on every single issue, from mental health to homelessness to public health, to climate change, to traffic congestion, sort of across the board. We’ve had, um, very much backward, uh, stagnant leadership and now that we have term limits and now with measure D and that the fact that you don’t have to just win in the primary, we have the opportunity for the first time since I was, I think, since I was born to flip the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and have new leadership in the county. Um, and that’s really exciting, you know, and I think we need different kinds of leadership, a different kind of vision, um, that’s willing to be brave and to take risks and to think outside the box and to, uh, help lead San Diego County in the direction that I think it deserves to go as the eighth largest metropolitan region in the country.
Q: You’ve got a pretty impressive, uh, background. What in it kind of do you think would help you as a supervisor and why run now as opposed to, you know, earlier?
A: Why run for office now?
Q: Correct yeah.
Meet another candidate running in this race:
The candidates interviewed by our editorial board for the San Diego County Board of Supervisors District 3 race are Olga Diaz and Terra Lawson-Remer.
A: Um, so a couple things. So first of all, I think everything in my background is going to be useful, uh, as an elected representative on the county board. Um, you know, I started my career as an organizer and spent time as an attorney. I’ve also been a professor, I have a Ph.D. in political economy. I’ve worked in the Obama administration, I’ve worked with the World Bank, worked with the United Nations, and I think that vast breadth and depth of experience starting from City Hall, my first job was just around the corner working for the San Diego City Council as a staffer to Washington and the Treasury Department to New York with the United nations, uh, allows me to bring experience from the local to the global, um, here back to San Diego and to look around at best practices in tackling many of the crises that we face here that are not only San Diego challenges thatwe have. These are challenges shared by many communities around the world that have done good work to try to confront these issues, confront issues like the climate crisis, confront issues like traffic congestion, urban sprawl. Um, and we can bring a lot of those lessons learned back to San Diego.
“I think we have a once in a generation opportunity to chart a pretty bold new course for the future of San Diego County.”
— Terra Lawson-Remer
I also know that my training as an economist and as a lawyer, uh, give me the skills to really think how do you invest resources wisely to improve the economy and the community of San Diego. It’s not just about balancing the books and just trying to stockpile and hoard reserves, which has been the modus operandi of our current board of supervisors, but rather looking at how we invest in the people and communities in San Diego so that we all can benefit in the long run. And that we have multiplier effects. So my educational background, my professional background, I think all of these are going to be great skills and also my background as an organizer because I think what it ultimately is going to take to get the job done and move agendas and move bold ideas is to organize people and get lots of folks who don’t necessarily realize that they share a common set of interests to identify those common interests and find synergies, find ways to work together and compromise to get the job done. And I think my background as an organizer will allow me to bring the community along with me on that journey.
Q: Had you contemplated politics before? Obviously this is your first foray, with the exception of your stint at City Hall when you were kind in the background, right? So...
A: Well, I’ve been involved in politics my whole life, so, you know. In the Obama administration, that was a political position as well. And I’ve ran campaigns. I think probably walked my, uh, first precinct when I was about nine years old knocking on doors. So I’ve always thought that contributing to public service was really important. Um, and in fact, I spent last cycle for the last two years running a group, an organization called Flip the 49th Neighbors In Action. It was a broad community movement and I was really honored to be able to participate in that, to essentially oust Darrell Issa, uh, and install a firewall in Congress to defend against Donald Trump by flipping our local congressional district from red to blue. We knocked on 50,000 doors. We called 60,000 voters. We had the largest ground operation in the state of California with 1,500 volunteers. So I just came off of a cycle of being deeply, deeply involved in electoral politics. Um, I never wanted to be the candidate before and I think there’s a couple of reasons why I’ve never wanted to do it before and why I decided that now is the time. Um, one reason I’ve never wanted to run is because I honestly believe that there’s so many ways that we can serve our community. It’s not that being a candidate is the only way and not that being an elected official is the only way. I think so highly of so many people who lead their PTAs and volunteer for their PTAs and, you know, do pro bono work defending people who are facing deportation and the countless ways in which we contribute and serve. And too often I see politicians jumping in front of a parade that’s already going in a direction and claiming to be leading. Um, and as a person who spent so much of my life organizing to push politicians to do the right thing, I don’t have that much respect for people who just jump into front of a prayer that’s already moving and say that they’re leading a parade. Um, and I think for me to step forward, I really did have to feel that I would have the ability to move an agenda and to do bold things. And that my particular set of experiences and my particular background would make a unique contribution at this moment to San Diego. And that there was no one else that I saw who I felt would do as good of a job as I believe that I can do for our community. And it is because I’m called by public service, I want to serve, I want to serve my community, and I believe that we have an opportunity to do something really different on the county board of supervisors that I don’t think anyone else is equipped to do. And it is when I look around at where I could make the biggest difference, the biggest contribution with my time in my life right now in serving my community, I think running for office and running for the county board is that moment and is that time. Um, but I don’t think in general that politics is the only way or even often the best way to make that contribution. And I see too often people who are career politicians who get sort of stuck in just trying to get elected to the next thing and keep their jobs and uh, get a seat and sit in it for 10 years and don’t get much done and then they count that as quote experience. And to me, you know, sitting in a job and not doing much for multiple decades like our current county board is the wrong kind of experience.
Q: I knew of your background in the treasury department, so I was surprised to read on your campaign website that you wrote that you served as a senior advisor to the Obama administration developing strict environmental regulations to cut pollution from mining, oil drilling and other extractive industries. You did that in theTreasury?
A: I did. I did.
Q: Well, the fact is is that Obama’s two energy secretaries Steven Chu and Ernest Moniz and his interior secretary, Sally Jewell, stuck up strongly for fracking, and fracking exploded under the Obama administration. So I’m not sure how to contrast your claim that you oversaw these policies with what the Obama administration actually did on fracking.
A: It’s a good question. And I think, uh, it definitely underscores the challenges of the federal government. And one of the reasons why I want to run for this seat, because I think there’s so much more opportunity to, uh, act, and with a five person board when you have a majority here locally, then when you’re at the federal level and you’re dealing with multiple agencies, multiple, uh, agendas, competing jurisdictions over similar issues. So I was not in the energy department. I was in the treasury department. We were definitely at loggerheads, over many things, fracking being one of them. Um, my, most of my work was focused on the investments that OPEC, EXIM and the World Bank were making in supporting development overseas rather than our domestic fracking industry. And you know, I agree. You know, it was hard. It was a hard situation to be in when there are so many competing interests. And I had an agenda and I didn’t always win.
Q: Well, I don’t necessarily buy the fracking is evil argument at all. So I’m not saying that’s...
A: No, I understand though. But I’m saying that I often was at loggerheads, like very fundamentally at loggerheads with other folks, and you know, we won some battles and we lost some battles.
Q: On housing, the, uh, the state is pursuing a variety of things to try to increase housing stock, but it’s not doing obvious things that have worked in other nations. In Japan and Great Britain, they have a new emphasis on prefab housing. It’s way stronger than it used to be. Why not just drop them in people’s backyards and do that? In Tokyo they have dorms for people just out of college where they share kitchens and bathrooms and no one has any problem with that. And yet here we just seem stuck on this model of incredibly expensive subsidized housing that amount to lotteries. So it almost feels like our policy is we care, we’re supporting affordable housing, but we’re not really laying a glove on the overall problem. What new ideas would you bring on how to create affordable housing?
A: I agree that you are not tackling the root of the challenge. I completely agree. I think we have an affordable housing crisis and everything we’ve been doing are Band-aids. Um, and if you look at the core of it, the core of the issue, is that it is expensive to build housing here in San Diego. The land is expensive. It’s a beautiful place. We all want to live here, that’s why, you know, we’re here. Um, but everything, all the inputs are expensive and we have this, you know, sort of piecemeal approach, which makes construction expenses as you pointed out, just a lot more expensive than prefab. Um, I think that this is a time and a place where we do need much bolder leadership. And what I would like to do is we’ve now been chartered, uh, sort of the state has now allowed for public banks to be chartered. And I think this is a perfect opportunity for a public bank, a county public bank focused on affordable housing. So it would do a couple things, which is one, we could finance affordable housing at lower rates because we would be able to take the risk capital, and if we take the risky position in a development project, then we’re going to reduce the interest rate and therefore reduce the cost of construction. It wouldn’t be that risky for the county because if we end up with housing, great. You know, that’s the thing we all need, right? So from our point of view, it isn’t as much of a risk as it might be from an investor’s point of view. So we can reduce the cost of construction. But I think it actually leverages much more than just making it less expensive to build. It also, if we’re doing things at scale, we can start requiring, um, new approaches that do look at economies of scale, like prefab housing that look at, uh, in, you know, in requiring environmental lead standards because it would be public money. And so then we can put constraints on it. We can use it as a pot to incentivize, uh, more creativity from the private sector who’s bidding for projects once they know that there’s actually going to be a buyer on the other end and they don’t need do one house at a time, that they might be able to do 30, 50, 250 houses a time. It helps incentivize them to be more aggressive in trying to reduce costs because they know there is a market for that. Right now, there’s no market. Uh, so I think we need to look at the role that government leadership and particularly financing can play in catalyzing much more creative solutions that look at borrowing from other countries. And this, I think for folks here, this might sound like a crazy idea. Um, I would say, I don’t think it’s a very crazy idea. Like this is actually what we would do in the Treasury Department. This is what OPEC and EXIM, these are two major levers to promote trade and to help us companies be competitive in global trade is we use government loans to help ensure that they are competitive and, by doing so, we do put environmental constraints and incentives and safeguards, safeguards around workers rights, safeguards around the environment so that we can push our private capital to be working in a direction that works for the community as a whole.
Q: But public banking has a very mixed record. In some places it works out really well and other places it’s just like redevelopment. The squeaky wheel, the influential people, the powerful people get favors. It hasn’t always worked out as well as the ideal of a public bank can do all these wonderful things. The testimony against the public banking bill before the legislature, I found, pretty, pretty impressive in saying, well, this just turns into a kitty under which you can reward people you want to reward. So how do you guard against that?
A: Uh, first of all, it doesn’t have actually a very spotty record. There’s only one other state that has a public bank. It’s North Dakota, which is our best parallel right in the U.S. And it’s actually been incredibly successful in North Dakota. North Dakota did a better job of withstanding the financial crisis in 2008 and2009 than the rest of the country at a lower rate of defaults on its mortgages. It’s one of the most profitable banks in the country with those returns going back to the state of North Dakota. So I think the point is, as someone who’s looked at these institutions pretty carefully, you can’t characterize them all with a broad brush stroke. Like a lot of this depends on how they’re structured. And of course, you know, if you’re running a banana republic, you’re going to get bananas. There’s no question. So I’m not advocating that, you know, we, we, uh, install a banana republic public bank, right? I’m saying that we need... If we’re going to have a public bank, you have to have an independent committee and independent oversight committee. Of course the county board elected officials can’t be deciding who gets loans. There has to be a clear fiduciary separation of responsibilities and you know, we don’t want bananas, but I do think we can look at North Dakota and see what success looks like and look at that as a model.
Q: You mentioned the county’s reserves. The County has always prided itself on how solidly it’s run in terms of it finances and its bond ratings and that sort of thing. Uh, what do you think of that in terms of the amount that they keep in their reserves? Is it right? Is it too much?
A: Uh, we’ve stockpiled significantly more reserves than we need. I mean, there is no question that we absolutely need to ensure the fiscal health of our county, right? And that we do need to make sure we have a good bond rating so that we can go to the markets and get loans at a reasonable rate. I mean, that’s really important, but the level of a $2 billion reserve for a $6.3 billion annual budget is dramatically more than we need. Uh, if you look at any of the independent analysis, uh, the recommendations are anything from somewhere between 20 to 80% less than we have currently in our bond reserves, uh I mean in, uh, reserves in our $2 billion, uh, kitty. So we need to not just stockpile those reserves. We should be looking at spending that appropriately on social services in our community, but also on investments for infrastructure and other major, major, major needs that we have. Um, but again, I do think it’s important to recognize that we have to, um, be careful, you know, you’re not going to just go in and spend down those reserves on day one. We have to make sure that we’re taking care of the longterm fiscal health of our county. But not just stockpiling reserve for the sake of putting money in the bank because it’s way excessive at this point.
“Funding the liabilities of the pension is an important priority and is one of the top things that we should do with those reserves.”
— Terra Lawson-Remer
Q: Just curious, you said you were knocking doors when you were nine. Which candidate was that for? Do you remember?
A: Uh, gosh, golly, gosh. I think that was [1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael] Dukakis. I think it was Dukakis. I certainly remember, um, the debate with, um, Dan Quayle and Lloyd Benson. So that I remember very well when....
Q: So you’ve been knocking on doors for a long time.
A: Yes.
Q: Are you knocking on doors now .. and what are the people opening the doors telling you are their primary concerns?
A: Absolutely. So that’s actually been the best part of the campaign. I’m sorry. I know it’s fun talking to you all, but I’d rather talk to my voters. So, um, lots of issues keep repeating themselves, which I think is great to hear that those issues are the same issues that are important to me. Um, traffic and congestion is a big issue. Uh, people care a lot about climate and the climate crisis and feel like we’re not doing enough. Um, this one might be particular to my neighborhood because I live in Encinitas, I’m a surfer, a lot of people are pretty upset about the pollution of our beaches and our coastline, which tackling that is one of my No. 1 issues. And that’s definitely shared by my neighbors. Um, homelessness comes up pretty repeatedly and, uh, not in a crackdown on homeless and ship these folks out of our community kind of way, but rather in a really compassionate way, uh, which reflects my agenda and my approach is to say, what, why are these folks homeless? Um, what kind of services do they need and how do we create longterm solutions to address the root of the homelessness problem in San Diego, which is growing to frankly epic proportions? When we start talking about homelessness, I start hearing a lot of stories about mental health because those connect very, very deeply. Um, you know, the mental health issue is a big, uh, root cause of our homelessness crisis in San Diego. About 40% of our homeless population, we think, suffers from mental health issues as well. I’ve heard a lot of stories that are pretty sad, um, about people’s relatives who couldn’t get the mental health, um, support that they needed in our county. And that is pretty heartbreaking. I think, um, certainly a set of issues I share, but that’s really, really personal. When someone says that, you know, my dad, my uncle, my child, um, you know, had depression or had schizophrenia and instead of getting the services that they needed, uh, there were no beds. They were in an emergency situation. They got booted out and there was no step-down services. They ended up getting arrested and put in jail. And so those kinds of personal stories I think do illustrate like the broad scope of ways in which the county, um, has a set of responsibility to our citizens that we have been failing to deliver on.
Q: The idea that the county has reserves that are way too big was challenged by another supervisorial candidate we interviewed earlier this month. He said if you look at our unfunded, the county’s unfunded retirement benefit liabilities, we hardly have sufficient reserves because the unfunded liabilities are easily equal to what the reserves are. So what do you say to that argument that the county needs to keep into account that it has all these unfunded benefits out there when it maintains reserves?
A: Uh, well I think it’s completely the wrong way to think about balancing the books, right? Like we should fund the liabilities and absolutely a portion of those reserves should go towards funding those liabilities, but not all of them. And you don’t, uh, fund the liabilities by keeping sort of like a slush fund of stockpiled money in a set of reserves that nobody’s accountable for. So funding the liabilities of the pension is an important priority and is one of the top things that we should do with those reserves. But that does not justify keeping these reserves essentially like off the balance sheet.
Q: For more than a decade, there have been excessive, at least compared to other counties, deaths at county jails. And yet we have a sheriff who appears to defend the fact that, oh, we’ve devoted more resources to this and we’re doing a good job. Well objectively speaking, compared to other counties, you’re not doing a good job. Historically, supervisors have reluctant to try to push around another elected official, but they can if they want through the budget. What is your feeling about Sheriff [Bill] Gore and county jails and how he’s dealt with the increase in deaths among inmates?
A: Um, this is, uh, something that I find actually really, really, really heartbreaking. So I think... Obviously Chris knows this issue backwards and forwards. But um, over the last 10 years since, uh, Bill Gore took power, we’ve had, I think it’s 140 deaths in our county jails. I feel like I should fact check that one with you because I think it’s your reporting. Um, and that is sad in itself, but you have to put it in perspective and look at other counties. We’re the worst. So not only is it a bad number, it’s just incomparably the worst county in California. And I know, to me, the thing that really struck me when I was looking into this, is that 115 of the people who have died in county custody were not even convicted. They were awaiting trial. So if we have a system where we believe that you are innocent until you’re proven guilty and then we are locking people up and then they are dying in custody, we are doing something very, very, very wrong. And I absolutely respect Sheriff Gore and I am sure that he believes that he is doing his best, but the facts do not align with best. Like that is clear. The facts and best are not on the same page. Um, so I think there’s a bunch of things that we can do. Uh, one of the things, um, is definitely again circling back to mental health issues. Why we end up locking up so many of our people who need mental health services and considering our county jails as a frontline provider of emergency mental health services is a question that no one has been able to answer for me. It makes absolutely no sense and that is a place where the board of supervisors can intervene in a couple of ways. One is we can reallocate some of our funding away from funding mental health services in jails to funding mental health services where they should be funded, which is in our mental health system. And second of all, I really like the model of the CAHOOTS model that they have in Eugene [Oregon] where instead of sending just law enforcement officials out when you have a 911 call, you send basically like a crisis emergency team. So you have an emergency first responder, you have a public safety officer, but you also have a mental health professional. So when they go, they evaluate the person and try to put them where they should go, try to get them the services that they need instead of just automatically booking them in county jail. Um, so I think those are some clear things that we can do right off the bat, but I also think we need, frankly, like another audit.
“If we have a system where we believe that you are innocent until you’re proven guilty and then we are locking people up and then they are dying in custody, we are doing something very, very, very wrong.”
— Terra Lawson-Remer
There was one, I think it was about four or five years ago, but I think there’s time for another one, to look at what’s going on in our jails and why are we having this rate of deaths and what are the specific changes that we need to make. And I know that the ones that were recommended in the last audit, many of them haven’t been implemented and seem like pretty low hanging fruit, like putting fences in place or making sure someone who is arrested because they’ve threatened to jump off the Coronado Bridge isn’t put in a room that has a balcony that they can jump from, you know, both of these things are documented. So, um, I just want to say, I think this is a priority. I think there’s some like obvious low hanging fruit that the county can do immediately. And then prioritizing, tackling this by actually doing the work, figuring out what’s wrong, and then spending the money in the ways that we need to spend the money to fix the problems that are in jails has to be a priority. And let me say one more thing. You know, I come at this from a humanitarian angle, from a person who you know, has an incredibly deep empathy for someone who is literally like awaiting trial, the guys in our jails. But this is also a taxpayer issue. You know, we continue, we keep getting sued, we keep getting sued and losing the civil rights cases and paying out big sums of money because we’re not addressing these problems. So I bet if we went back and we looked at how much it would’ve cost on the front end, to address this problem on the front end, rather than pay damages from lawsuits on the backend, even someone with a heart of stone who only cares about balancing the books is going to want to invest in solving the problems on the front end because that’s the fiscally responsible thing to do.
Q: For more than a dozen years, we’ve written editorials criticizing the county for being amazingly complacent about different problems. And so then in 2017 we have a hepatitis crisis and 20 people die and the county actually puts out a report the next year that says we did a good job. I don’t think it’s enough to have three supervisors pressuring them to change, as one candidate told us. I think we need to start firing people at the upper level of the county government. If we have a level of complaceny that’s so high, they look at their hepatitis A response and say it was a good thing? Twenty people died. So what is your response to the idea that maybe we need a shakeup at the upper levels of county government and that it’s not enough to have supervisors dedicated to reform? You have to have public servants who actually care about their performance.
A: I think that’s right. I mean, I don’t think there’s a very complicated answer to that, right? A part of leadership is setting an example and setting priorities. But part of leadership is also creating accountability and um, you know, one of the things I would be doing as your county supervisor is ensuring that the folks who work for the county are accountable to the people who live here. And if that accountability is not there, then you know, they’re not the right person for the job.
Q: SANDAG has proposed a transit heavy approach to dealing with the area’s transportation issues.Yet we’ve had reporting over the summer that shows that transit is down across California and is down at 17 of the 20 largest cities in America. Isn’t there kind of a square peg in a round hole kind of problem here? We see transit as an answer but we can offer no real life examples of transit being the answer except in dense cities on the East Coast.
A: Um, a couple of things. So I am actually pretty heartened. I think the compromise they reached a couple of weeks ago, it makes sense, right? Like we’re not going to pull money out of things that have already been allocated in our 2004 bond measure. Um, we’re going to continue ahead with what was promised to voters, but we’re going to study what might make sense in the future. I do think that’s the right approach. Uh, and partly why I think that’s the right approach is I have reviewed the SANDAG proposals pretty carefully and I’m inspired by them. I sort of like them in principle, but there’s not enough details. So I actually would not at all be interested in moving forward with a set of visions that don’t have the empirical analysis that we need to see if it’s workable and feasible in San Diego in particular. Um, by training, I’m a researcher, right? Like I’ve sort of spent many, many, many years looking at data and making my arguments about what’s true and what’s right and what’s good policy based on the data. And right now we just don’t have the data. We absolutely need to do the work to figure out what makes sense for San Diego to do those feasibility studies. And if we don’t have the numbers and we don’t have the analysis, we can’t be spending hundreds of millions or maybe billions of dollars on investments without real hard analysis about how that’s going to stack up. And we just, we actually don’t have it now. None. It doesn’t exist. Um, so that’s, I think, my broad approach and thinking, and I think we’re doing the right thing by funding the studies and that’s the step they took. Very supportive of funding the studies. I’ll be really eager to find out what the studies come back with. I don’t think we can um, just write something off because we could say, you know, transit is down in other countries, in other cities, nor could we move forward with it. Just cause transit’s up. Like to me that’s not sufficient. That’s very anecdotal. We have to look at um, growth patterns, projected growth patterns. We have to think about how we’re going to realign our housing policy to, you know, to match and to mesh with transit policy. You can’t just think about transit policy in a vacuum. You have to think about how these things go together. Um, and I also think we need to look. The best case studies are places that sort of started in a similar set of circumstances of San Diego and look at what they’ve done because we can’t just look at broad broadly at parallels because many places are not parallel to San Diego. We need to look at other uh, communities that are sort of.... Compare apples to apples. And I haven’t seen the apples and apples yet.
Q: This fire season, we saw a lot of communities in the backcountry had their power turned off for fear of starting fires. And I’m wondering what role the county should be playing and ensuring that everybody has a sustainable energy that they can actually have all the time rather than just when SDG&E is available to give it to.
A: It’s a great question. I think there’s a couple things. First of all, I’m a big proponent of community choice energy. And I think it’s an important part of the solution because when consumers have choices that incentivizes our providers to do what they should do, which is serve their customers. Uh, right now when you have an monopoly, um, it’s a problem right? Unless it’s being like really, really appropriately regulated, which I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job at, then you’re going to inherently end up with, um, misaligned incentives and failure of being accountable to the folks who need energy and who need to have their lights turned on. Um, so I think the community choice energy is a big piece of the puzzle. I think another part of is... I’m really interested in, uh, some of these incentive programs and expanding our incentive programs around solar and off-grid energy and looking at where we as a county can do more. Uh, and to me, it’s not just about energy sufficiency when the lights go off. It’s also about a transition to a lower carbon economy and ensuring that investments in alternative energy are part of our climate action plan, which is pretty much a joke right now. Uh, but under my leadership on the board would be spending a lot of time and energy investing in a better climate action plan and the incentives for homeowners to look for alternative energy sources including off-grid solar would be a piece of the puzzle. Um, I think the third thing, and this is going to be a little bit less popular, a little more controversial, but you know, obviously some people live where they live and we got to do what we need to do to protect them, you know, where they live. But there’s also places in San Diego we shouldn’t be building. Like there are parts of San Diego that are fire-prone fire hazards. It’s going to get worse with climate change. Um, it’s already bad. There’s no inroads and outwards for egress, for escape, and they’re not really defensible. Um, building in those places creates a pretty significant, not just fire risk for the people who are now gonna move in and live there, but creates big burdens on taxpayers as a whole because now we’re building roads that are, you know, not very frequently used but are required for purposes of public safety. And so it’s an unfair burden on taxpayers. Uh, it’s a fire risk, it’s a safety risk, and also it increases our traffic challenge here in San Diego because now you have people driving long distances to get to work from where they live. Um, so I think that’s another piece of the puzzle, although certainly doesn’t help the folks who already live there. But sort of looking forward to the future is making sure we’re not building in the wrong places.
Q: Tell us a little bit more about that, because that’s... Ending urban sprawl is how you frame it on your website. People need to live all over the county, not just in transit centers in downtown San Diego. Now, how would you end urban sprawl and is that a realistic thing to do given that we’re so far behind in housing to make it affordable for everyone?
A: First of all, we have a general plan at the County. If we adhere to the general plan of the county, I would be very happy. I would think we were taking a giant leap forward in terms of ending urban sprawl. It doesn’t mean we’re going to stop building. It means we’re going to stop building in places that are currently zoned for wildlife. Right? We’re going to build in places that are already identified as where we should be building in the county. So to be clear, we have a plan that I think would not end urban sprawl, but take us quite a bit in the right direction of preventing this sort of like unplanned explosion and Los Angelization of our county, which is what we’re seeing. Um, so if we just did what was already on the paper, which was already agreed to in 2011, it would be a great step forward. No. 1. No. 2, the notion that we need to build all over willy-nilly in fire prone areas under the scrub brush, um, because we need housing is just not true. When we look at the allocation and assessment of housing stock availability in San Diego County, um, so basically this is where we have sites that are already zoned and for being available for building. There are more of those. There’s about, I think, 170,000 places that are zoned for housing, um, in already the areas that have been identified within the general plan as appropriate for building. We only would need 161,000 to meet our RHNA [Regional Housing Needs Assessment] target allocations for the fifth RHNA cycle. So if we build only in the places that have already been identified to being available for building, we would still have room, some wiggle room, in meeting our RHNA targets. And to top it off in the last, in the fifth cycle, the, the RHNA cycle we’re currently in, we’re supposed to be building homes for 161,000 people. Uh, as of 2017, which was the last assessment, we built homes for 51,000 people, which means if you do the math, we have over 110,000 slots available in the places that are already zoned for building. So this is like a complete fallacy that we need to be building under the scrub brush in the fire zones in order to meet our housing crunch. We don’t. What we do is we need to be building where we’ve already decided that we need to be building. And if we just did, just stuck to the plan and like had the political will to do that and uh, we could put the resources together to ensure that we were investing in making sure that building is affordable housing instead of, uh, unaffordable housing, then we would be on track. We don’t need to pave our wildlands.
“We absolutely need homes in San Diego, but we need to reset their expectations about where it’s going to be profitable to build.”
— Terra Lawson-Remer
Q: So the SOS initiative that’s coming out, how are you coming down on that? I think I know....
A: Um, well I would say this to start with, I don’t in general think that making land use decisions by ballot box makes a lot of sense. Um, I think my job and my commitment as a member of the county board of supervisors would be an immediate moratorium on amendments to the general plan. Um, and I think that that’s the appropriate way of governing is that we elect representatives to make good decisions and they should not be amending the general plan willy-nilly. That being said, we have a problem because they have been amending it willy-nilly and they have been allowing amendments to just go forward that aren’t called for or justified. So I think about this as an economist thinks about things. There’s something called game theory, right? You sort of think about if you make a move, how does the next person make a move? And so we need to make a move on the county level to change the set of expectations that developers have. Because right now developers have a set of expectations that if you go and you buy farmland on the cheap and you put the time and the resources in to develop a proposal, you can then take it to the county board lobby for a general plan amendment and get it upzoned. We’ve created that set of expectations. We need to realign those expectations. We need to reset those expectations. So developers know that they’re not going to get an amendment, so they shouldn’t go buy that cheap farmland. But instead they should go and do what Chris said, like let’s look at some prefab housing in an area that’s already been zoned for housing. Because if they want to make a profitable investment, they better look at a place that they’re allowed to build because they’re not going to be building out in that farmland. So that’s a very long way of answering your question. Let’s just say that in the particular circumstance in which we start currently stand, where, uh, we have done such a bad job of kowtowing to, uh, developers lobbying for so long that they now expect that the board is going to fold at every instance. It does make sense to have an SOS initiative because we have to reset those expectations. And so in that sense, in this case, I do support it, but I wanted to put this in larger context, right? But just, it’s not that I think this is best way to govern. I think we need to, uh, understand how we have a reset of expectations with the folks who are trying to build homes, which we need. We absolutely need homes in San Diego, but we need to reset their expectations about where it’s going to be profitable to build. Because if I’m a developer, I’m going to decide where to build based on where I can have a reasonable rate of return because that’s reasonable. And that’s what I would do as an investor. And we need to change that set of expectations so that we can incentivize folks to be building the places we need to be building. And not the places we don’t.
Q: The game theory on it is a little uncertain to me, like I think it’s... The proposition is that it would make it harder to get general plan changes. And I think about the mechanics of that. I’m not sure if I’m persuaded. It maybe be making it easier. Like all you need is money to get people to vote at a certain level. So this is now opening up, I want to get something done in some little part of the county, I’m going to pour in a lot of propaganda money, big social media spend. Next thing you know it’s good for everybody,
A: But you could still do that now. Right? So it doesn’t allow new ballot initiatives to occur. It disallows amendments without a ballot initiative. So I actually think you’re making a good point.
Q: Yeah. But I’d just be careful with this. I don’t know, just my two cents. I don’t know.
A: No, it’s an interesting... I hear you. I think it’s an interesting point, but already you could bring a ballot initiative.
Q: Correct.
A: So you’re not allowing additional ballot initiatives, right? You’re saying that you can’t just, uh, lobby three supervisors. So you might have another policy proposal up your sleeve. It has nothing to do with the SOS initiative. Um, but it, you know, you do make an interesting point. I don’t think it’s like particularly relevant to like the efficacy of this initiative, but, you know, you’re right. You know, maybe you’ll get together with other people who want to do a different ballot initiative.
Q: Well, your framing is interesting about resetting expectations, but when you say the ballot box plan... This doesn’t sunset in 10 years, when the supervisors are going to be making great decisions for the past decade, right? It’s in perpituity, right? So how do you square those two things?
A: Well, I do think if you were doing a good job, you know, maybe in 10 years we have another ballot initiative and we take the handcuffs off. Right?
Q: But it’s easier to give people power than to take power away.
A: I think you earn the trust, right? I think the current board of supervisors did not earn the trust at the end of the day.
Q: But as you point out, there’s a lot of property that already under the general plan is land banked for a lot of this development. And yet it still isn’t being developed in a market where there’s a lot of money to be made by a smart developer. So how would you incentivize people to actually go after that more expensive land?
A: Um, well, okay. So first of all, I think part of it is you’re going to look not just for a place where you can make a return, you’re gonna look for the place where you can make the highest return. So if you take off the table buying the cheapest land and then lobbying to get it upzoned, well then that option of making an astronomical return is off the table. So it makes a moderate return much more attractive because awesome, amazing, astronomical return is now no longer an option, right? We’re not, you’re never going to put your money in 5% when you can make 25%. But you’re going to put your money in 5% when the other option is 0%. Right? So that’s part of it is like we have to change the options available and we set expectations. So places that could be lucrative to invest but not, you know, monopoly money become more lucrative to invest.
Q: What about affordability? So adding 100,000 units or housing 100,000 people? Certainly something that looks like needs to be done. And I guess I’m not persuaded that that’s going to move the median price at all.
A: I think it’s a great question.
Q: So what is the county’s role? What can be done?
A: Um, this is a great question. I think it’s an incredibly important point that’s always overlooked and in fact is one of the major problems I have with the whole sort of framework around RHNA allocations at all is to say that just because it’s dense and there’s more homes and they’re denser, that suddenly they’re like lower income. It’s not necessarily true. Some of our most expensive units that are being built, they’re condos and they’re condos and they’re small and amazing. Right?
Q: Right. By that logic, you would expect the largest cities would be the most affordable. Definitely not true. Or the ones that have the most units would be the most affordable. Completely untrue. So I’m not sure we really have our hands around this. What can the county do.
A: It’s such a good question because I do agree that in general, this entire conversation is focused on this like proxy. We say it’s affordable if it’s dense and that is actually not true. Um, there’s a lot of empirical work that shows that there’s a loose correlation and very tenuous relationship between density and, um, affordability. So, uh, a couple things. This is what I was talking before about the public bank and not because I want a banana republic, but uh, so we were talking about the role that a public bank could play and uh, what I’m interested in is the role that county financing could play in reducing the cost of housing and in part by reducing the cost of capital in part by reducing the risks associated with a project in part by doing projects at scale. So you incentivize, you know, uses of prefab housing, other kinds of alternatives that we already utilize, uh, public investments to move the needle on big infrastructure projects and incentivize big infrastructure. But we haven’t done that in the housing.
Q: Is the issue of housing the cost or the price, meaning it’s not the cost of the inputs that are governing the ticket price of housing.
A: It’s both.
Q: It’s the demand in the marketplace and the willingness to pay.
A: It’s both. It’s both. Okay. And I think that’s right. So the, what the, the backend side of this is that you don’t just reduce the cost because then it’s just a giveaway to a developer. You would have access to reduce cost inputs if the housing is then deed restricted to be affordable. Absolutely good question because if you just reduce the cost of the inputs, um, all you’ve done is give a subsidy and then you’re going to sell or rent at market price and then there’s going to be a windfall and there’ll be essentially like a public subsidy to a private developer. You have to deed restrict, um or....
Q: It’s going on now basically, look, we’re going to relax all the restrictions so more building can happen. Great. So now we can all make even more money and the housing...
A: Correct. You have to deed restrict. Yeah. You have to deed restrict because, let’s remember we’re talking about trying to affect the consumer market, the consumer market being, you know, the intersection between homeowners or renters and providers of properties by affect, by, uh, by impacting the production market, which is the cost of the inputs. Well, if you just affect the cost of the inputs, now I’m feeling like a professor and I want to draw y’all a graph, but we just affected the cost of the inputs. We’re not going to move the intersection of the supply and demand curve on the consumer output side and therefore we’re just going to end up with like a big windfall profit. So you have to, you know, if you’re going to affect the price of the inputs, you have to deed restrict, and you have to put, um, constraints on to ensure that the ultimate beneficiaries are, you know, low income and moderate income people. I think that’s the other piece of the puzzle is that if you...
Q: The county has those powers?
A: Uh, we have some of them in the unincorporated areas and we certainly could, if we wanted to do a public bank in partnership with the cities, then we could have a regional public bank. It doesn’t have to only be the county. Right? Um, and if what we wanted to do, is really look at who’s on the losing end on the affordable housing crisis in San Diego, we’re on track for people who are at low and very low income to hit probably about 25% of our goal. That was for the fifth RHNA cycle. That’s pretty abysmal. Okay. But for folks who are at moderate income, which is 80 to 120% of AMI -- area median income -- we’re on track for about 10%. So we’ve got like a hole in the doughnut because then, um, if you look at folks who are at housing built for people at 120% of AMI or above, uh, the last assessment that was done in the end of 2016, we had 62% of target out of a 10 year cycle. So say we have four more years and we had 62% we’ll probably hit 100% of what we need at, sort of like the goal for housing for folks at above 120% of AMI, and maybe 25 to 30% of people who are 80% or below AMI, but maybe 10 to 12% for people who are at median income in San Diego. So part of what’s going on is that we have this sort of notion that affordable housing is like really people are really poor. It’s not, it’s basically like all of us, everyone who’s below 120% and we’re all crunched. So this is not like a special interest argument that it’s just like for a few people who are going to sort of run off with the store. This is like, how do we make San Diego livable for the majority of San Diegans and particularly for young people who want to move here, who want to live here, who want to raise families here. Because right now they’re completely squeezed out. Right now. There’s no way for... I mean, when we’re talking about reading allocations, this is all, um, homeowner market, but let’s talk about the rental market. In the rental market, we have about 60% of people in San Diego are rent burdened, which means they’re paying more than 30% of their income in rent. 30% of people in San Diego are paying more than 50% in rent. So, you know, the rental crisis, it goes along with the crisis in terms of buying housing. And this is not just about, you know, people not being able to have, you know, a fancy house. This is about the economic vitality and the economic future of our county because if young people have no place to live, what kind of industry are we going to have here? What kind of jobs?
Q: Well, your community used to be the flower capital of the world. I don’t know if it still is, but, uh, agriculture amounts to a huge, uh, part of San Diego’s economy, $1.7 million. The fifth largest, uh, part of the economy, supposedly. Um, is there still a future for agriculture in San Diego after we start doing all of these, uh, developments that we’re talking about? Is there something that the county do to ensure that we still have that industry?
A: Um, absolutely. And I think this is why I keep going back to this, the same question I answered that you asked before, right? 100%. If we stop building where we have farmland, which is what we’re doing now, we’re building the farmland. So if we start building the farmland and we build in the places that have been zoned for building, then we actually do have an opportunity to support and nurture the continuation of a vibrant agricultural sector. It’s when we try to build everywhere and live nowhere that everyone loses.
Q: For 30 years, McKinsey has been putting out reports that basically say “Governments, follow the best practices.” And yet on the fire issue, we’re not following best practices. In Orange County, they have close to 100% record on having defensible space because they started fining people who didn’t clear up their homes In San Diego County, we have nowhere near that kind of record. Statewide, we have nowhere near that kind of record because they don’t fine people, they just warn people. So if we’re serious about fire safety, why don’t we follow best practices? Why don’t we follow best practices on so many other things? Why is government after all these years still the repository of people who don’t believe in following best practices? Or is that unfair to government?
A: I think it’s a great question. It’s one I have for [incumbent Supervisor] Kristin Gaspar, and it’s why I’m running against her.
Q: I had a question for you, but I jumped on Kristy’s question earlier. Do you want to...
Q: Oh, you said the climate action plan was a joke. I was just wondering why and what you’d like to change about it?
A: So our climate action plan has been found legally deficient twice, um, in a lawsuit led by the Sierra Club, but also joined by a number of different, um, conservation groups in San Diego and San Diego County. And in fact, um, we’re now being sued by ... The amicus [curae brief] was filed by the state of California against San Diego County for our climate action plan. Um, Xavier Bacerra’s concerned that we’re not only bringing down the ratings for San Diego for being an embarrassment. We’re sort of at risk of bringing down all of California, and California as a whole, in our ability to meet our climate targets. Um, so it’s a joke for a lot of reasons. Um, I want to talk a little bit about the thing that I think is the most absurd, which is the offshoring of carbon offsets. I mean, to be frank, I didn’t even know you could offshore an offset. I knew you could offshore a job but not an offset.
Q: Well, it’s one environment. We’re one earth.
A: One earth, one earth. Um, when I was working with the World Bank on the climate action facility, I did a lot of work looking at, um, carbon offsets in developing countries. And one thing that I came away from that time with was a pretty clear understanding that the regulatory environment really matters in the reliability of an offset. If you decide that you’re going to not build in some rain forest area because that’s going to offset your carbon mission from a factory, but then your government changes hands and there’s no legal frameworks and legal structures to ensure that that commitment that was previously made can endure this change of power, then it’s an unreliable commitment and it is not a reasonable offset because the carbon emissions are forever and then this offset, 10 years later, you have a new president, and it’s out the window. And so that’s a problem globally. That’s a problem I identified when I was working with the World Bank. It’s a reason that we recommended against some of these, you know, carbon cap and trade schemes globally because they weren’t really feasible or workable because of the poor regulatory frameworks. So then I come home to San Diego and I see that our county government has ignored best practices, again, as Chris identified, I already as recommended by the World Bank on a program I had previously worked on, to offset our carbon offsets to countries that have no appropriate regulatory framework. So this is why we’re being sued.
Q: So let me ask you about that though, because yeah, I think that’s clear and generally accepted, but isn’t the argument about the county’s plan that the offsets would need to be inside the county? Doesn’t that seem like an artificial and sort of arbitrary construct when we’re talking about the environment?
A: This is a very existential question. I mean, our country’s arbitrary. Our state’s arbitrary. It’s bordered. I mean, we live in jurisdictions and communities, right? And so this is our community and I do think it’s pretty imperative that if we are polluting our air here in San Diego and we’re we’re allowing some kind of development project that’s going to have a negative externality in economist speak on our community, that we need a positive externality here. Yes because we’re the ones who have to live with those externalities.
Q: But it’s not going to get the greatest return, right?
A: So I want to talk about that.
Q: I’m not sure I’m persuaded.
A: I want to talk about that. So I want to talk about that. I think that there is a concern that if you say, okay, we’re going to have all the offsets or the carbon mitigation here in San Diego County, that someone’s going to build some kind of development and then do some sort of podunky silly offset that doesn’t really amount to much around the corner and they don’t really know anything about um, habitat restoration and it’s going to be sort of like a joke and it’s going to be, you know, some stream under a freeway overpass or something.
Q: Right, like it’s out in the desert. We could’ve done something. No, no, no sir. That’s over the line.
A: So what I do think is really exciting is something I would want to implement on the county board, which is a carbon mitigation bank because we do have a lot of need for carbon offset right? And habitat restoration in the county. But sometimes the developers don’t know where those greatest needs are. And you could get pretty big inefficiencies with people doing an offset project that doesn’t really make sense or add up. But if instead we have a carbon mitigation bank, which means that instead of sort of having to go to do the project by yourself without any relevant expertise, the developer or the entity that’s liable for the offset pays into the carbon mitigation bank, then this bank can look around everywhere in San Diego County and identify the place with the greatest need where you’re going to have, you know, again, talking like an economist, but the highest marginal benefit for the lowest marginal cost. Right?
Q: But if you’re an economist, why don’t we just do it do what Steve Levitt says. I mean geoengineering is so much more likely to be successful than what we’re doing, all these little things we’re trying to do to duck duck this incoming tsunami. We were told by Scripps Institute scientists 10 years ago that even if we don’t do anything global warming will continue for the rest of the century because of the forces that are already set in motion. So as an economist and best practices, I think Steve Levitt makes the best sense in the world. Why not try something bold that will work as opposed to something that’s amounts to trying and delay the inevitable?
A: Two things. First of all, I do believe you have to think globally and act locally. I think we have to do everything we can and everything in our power in our local community to do the right thing for our community, but also for future generations. And that does not mean looking to pass the buck because what I hear you saying is passing the buck saying, I don’t know, I can’t do much. Someone else who can do more should do more. And I think we all have to do the best and the most that we can, and we don’t pass the buck. That’s No. 1. And No, 2, um, I think you’re probably interviewing a lot of candidates for Congress and you should talk to them about that. But I’m running for county board of supervisor
Q: You talked about rent for a little bit, and this discussion that’s taking place on the state level with rent control. But what are your thoughts on rent control as an economist?
A: I don’t think it’s a longterm solution at all, right? I mean it’s a Band-aid. It’s a Band-aid and sometimes you need a Band-aid because you’re bleeding, but um, it’s not a good solution in the longterm. There’s a lot of negative, um, impacts in terms of, uh, folks who get lucky and get stuck in a great apartment. And end up paying like almost no rent, and other people who are unlucky who are, you know, maybe small land owners or land holders and were being really nice and renting out for below market rates and they get trapped at their below market rate. You know, they might’ve been just being nice to someone who’s, who’s been a longterm tenant, renting it out at like thousands of dollars below market and then they’re sort of stuck there. Um, and it also can have pretty negative impacts in terms of housing production. That said when you’re bleeding, sometimes you need a Band-aid. And I think we’re bleeding right now in, in California. Um, and I think that, you know, the, the bill that was just passed, which is the rent cap, not rent control, but the rent cap, uh, to me is an appropriate solution in the immediate term given the crisis, but absolutely not a solution. And in fact presents a danger of people thinking we’ve sort of solved a problem that we haven’t solved.
Q: And the actual details of it, 4% plus inflation, I mean, that means you could raise the rent, you know, 8% a year. And if you’ve got someone paying $2,000 for a one bedroom apartment and it goes up to $2,160. That to me doesn’t seem like it’s obvious that it’s going to provide as much relief as people may be thinking. They think of it as a freeze. They don’t realize that they can get 4% plus... I mean, I don’t know, it just didn’t seem like it as powerful.... It doesn’t seem nearly as strong as people think it is.
A: I think it was a good compromise because what it does is it protects against sort of really extreme changes so that you don’t have someone who one year is paying $2,000 a month and then the next year they’re paying $3,000 a month and they clearly can’t afford that or they’re going to get booted out of their apartment. So I actually think it does a good job in that regard of protecting against sort of like extreme movements. Um, but it doesn’t have like a hard rent control cap, which I think is a problem for all the reasons that I just discussed. So I actually think they did a pretty good job of like finding a middle ground, which is why I support that particular bill. But I think the broader point is, is that we have a housing crisis and rent control is a Band-aid and sometimes you need that, but that’s just not actually the solution that is going to help most of us in the longterm.
Q: A lot of people are getting evicted this month, the next month.... Um, we didn’t talk about um, foster care. I noticed on your website you have some kind of childcare initiative. Tell us a little bit about that.
A: I do. I I have 13 policy proposals. I’m about to have 14 because every time I knock on a door, a neighbor has a good idea. Um, so the new one that’s not on the website, I was talking to one of my neighbors about the need for arts funding in the county. Um, and I think that’s a great idea. It’s something I’m putting together, but I do have 13 plans for when I’m elected. One of them is on childcare. Um, so I think we have a pretty big problem on childcare in San Diego, and it’s a national problem, but it’s pretty acute here in our own community. And families who have children under the age of 5 spend on average about 25% of their income on childcare. So if we’re looking for thinking that people are spending 30% of their income on rent and another 25 to 30% of their income on childcare, this is 60% of their income. So this is a huge, huge squeeze. Um, at the same time, there’s been, uh, some exciting movement in terms of, uh, raising the quality standards for childcare providers at the state level and the accreditation process and the support for training for childcare providers. Um, and this is a statewide initiative that just passed. There’s a childcare bill that just passed. I think San Diego is in a really great position to look at how can we, um, extend some subsidies to low and middle income San Diegans who are facing that kind of childcare crunch, um, in a way that will allow us to draw on this new framework that’s been put in place at the state level to scale up accreditation and training, um, for childcare providers and also ensure that they’re, you know, getting paid a living wage and getting treated fairly for the job that they do in our communities.
“This is home and I love home ... Nothing would be more incredible than to be able to serve my community with the lifetime of experience that I can bring.”
— Terra Lawson-Remer
Um, I think for me it’s not only about the benefits to the folks who are really squeezed with childcare, which anyone who has a kid goes through this, goes through this like four-year period, which is like really tough. Um, but it’s also about better understanding what’s going on in our economy as a whole. So if you look at the economy, the structure of the U S economy and where we’re at, over the last 20 years, we’ve seen like a pretty significant, um, retraction of skilled routine labor. So basically like people who have, you know, middle income jobs that aren’t, you know, upper management but are sort of middle income jobs, we’ve seen the same kind of retrenchment that we saw previously in manufacturing and industry where a lot of those jobs have been automated. Well now we’re seeing that automation of many of what we call cognitive tasks. So previously we saw automation of routine manual tasks. Now we’re seeing automation of routine cognitive tasks. So if you look at a graph of job growth, you’re seeing a hollowing out of middle income jobs that are routine cognitive tasks. What we are seeing the growth in is jobs in the caring economy and jobs in like very, very high upper management. So what is more important for investing in our future then the future of our children? And that’s also where we are going to see increasing job opportunities and job growth. And so I think we in San Diego need to like, not wait for that tsunami to hit, but instead get ahead of the game, look at how we can actually structure our county investments to provide services that people desperately need in terms of caring for their children, but also create a much more reasonable set of job opportunities and an onramp to good jobs and a good career in our caring economy here in San Diego where we know that we are going to see job growth looking forward.
Q: Um, last question from me. In this coming election, in the March election, is your opponent [Republican incumbent] Kristin [Gaspar] or [fellow challenger and Democrat] Olga Diaz? Only two of you guys can advance. Your website mentions Kristin and Donald Trump kind of Republicanism. Um, it doesn’t mention Olga. Do you think two Dems can slide through or who are you running against this time around?
A: Um, well, I mean I’m running against Kristin Gaspar. I mean, I’m running to flip the county from, from red to blue, and I’m running to defend San Diego County from the Trump agenda. I think I’m the best Democrat to do that. And I think that’s why people will vote for me over Olga in the March primary, um, so that I’m the one who is able to take on Kristin come November. Um, you know, of course Democrats are going to have a choice between Olga and myself. And, you know, I think I bring the breadth and depth of experience and the vision, um, and also the commitment and the bravery to do what we have to do in San Diego to lead San Diego in a new generation and for the 21st century. And I think most voters who share my values are gonna see that and aren’t going to vote for me to take on Kristin, um, and instead of Olga.
Q: When you flipped the 49th, did you think you’d see [50th Congressional District candidate Darrell] Issa in Congress so soon?
A: No.
Q: Do you think you’ll see him soon or no?
A: I hope not. I’m real. I’m rooting for [50th Congressional District candidate] Ammar [Campa-Najjar].
Q: Um, any last questions? Give us your kind of closing elevator pitch.
A: Okay. You asked so many good questions. I don’t know that I have all that much to say that you haven’t asked. I mean, I think big picture, I am just really excited. I’m excited about the opportunity to lead San Diego County. I’m third generation San Diegan and my grandpa was stationed at Camp Pendleton and my mom grew up in Oceanside and Vista and she always talks about how it used to be orange groves and avocado trees up there. Um, and I grew up in all over San Diego. Now I live in Encinitas and I just like love San Diego. I love this community and, um, it’s an honor to have the opportunity to step forward, to bring a lifetime of experience working in public service at every level of government in the private sector, uh, with, you know, the various social justice movements with the environmental movement, um, as an outsider, as an insider, and bring that set of experiences that I’ve built, uh, back to my own community. Because I think, you know, it was a great honor to be in the Obama administration and work in the Treasury Department, and it was really incredible to be able to help shape the sustainable development goals for the whole world when I was working with the United nations. But this is home and I love home. Um, and I think it would, nothing would be, um, more incredible than to be able to serve my community with the lifetime of experience that I can bring.
Q: Thanks for coming in.
A: Thank you.
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