Before the March primary, The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board endorsed incumbent county Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer in District 3, which includes communities from Carlsbad to Coronado. We cited her determined work with fellow board Democrats to make the county do a better job handling its public health responsibilities. The best example was adding 37 mobile crisis center teams to help individuals deal with mental health issues.
Since then, her case has weakened. Like other progressives, she’s taken to blaming “gouging” and corporate perfidy for housing and other societal problems. We very much doubt the former World Bank economist believes this populist pablum. She’s also been shown to be very cavalier about attending the meetings of many task forces. It’s a bad look.
But Lawson-Remer’s ace in the hole is Republican challenger Kevin Faulconer, who emerged as a truly awful mayor of San Diego from 2014 to 2020. The nadir: his blithe 2016 decision to enter into a lease-to-own deal for an uninspected Ash Street office tower that proved to be unusable. This will end up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Basic due diligence would have shown the building had been called “functionally obsolete” by a previous owner, but this was beyond Faulconer. A 2021 audit showed he subsequently hid damning key details from the City Council.
We wouldn’t trust Faulconer to run a lemonade stand. Lawson-Remer for supervisor.
