OB Rag

By Bill B

I am writing to urgently report a persistent safety hazard near the Barnes Tennis Center.

Drivers visiting the facility are continuously running the stop sign on the street, often with minors in their vehicles.

This has become a major safety issue. I have nearly been hit by vehicles multiple times just attempting to walk to the bus stop, and the situation has led to verbal altercations.

Editordude: A big backer of Richard Bailey, Richard S Richter, has published attack mailers that call Democrat Nicole Crosby the “Flock Candidate” — despite her opposition to the cameras. Richter is the top funder of the mailer’s ad committee.

by Jakob McWhinney / Voice of San Diego / October 28, 2026

Everyone seems to be against Flock these days.

[Please go to original for important links]

Look no further than the heated race in San Diego’s District 2 between Democrat Nicole Crosby and Republican-turned-independent Richard Bailey. Support of Flock cameras has become a standard line of attack in the race — what’s surprising is who is on the receiving end.

Supporters of Bailey have sent several mailers slamming Crosby for her support of Flock, dubbing her “San Diego’s Flock camera candidate.”

“San Diego has over 500 Flock cameras monitoring you every time you drive. With Nicole Crosby on the City Council, San Diego will get MORE,” one anti-Crosby mailer reads. Beside the text, an oversized Flock camera is positioned to capture the reader.

There’s just one problem: Crosby is a vocal opponent of Flock.

By Jude Joffe-Block / NPR / October 28, 2026

A federal judge has denied an unprecedented, emergency request by the Department of Justice to segregate thousands of California ballots in the midterm elections.

The Justice Department wants California election officials to stop processing ballots pertaining to 20,000 individuals that federal officials say are “likely” noncitizens.

State and local officials in California have countered that the DOJ’s list of “likely” noncitizens is unreliable, with a preliminary analysis by Los Angeles County showing that many on the list do not have active voter registrations. The officials also claim that setting aside ballots just days before Election Day, when voting and processing mailed ballots are already underway, would be unlawful and infeasible and would disenfranchise eligible voters.

In his 26-page ruling issued Wednesday evening, U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee, denied the Justice Department’s request for a temporary restraining order to stop processing the ballots in question.

“Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” he wrote.

Carter also expressed concern about taking action that could disenfranchise eligible voters and create chaos.

by Jake Kincaid / inewsource / October 28, 2026

The San Diego County Registrar of Voters told the U.S. Justice Department that it won’t comply with a demand — accompanied by a legal threat — to turn over private voter information like Social Security numbers and to not count ballots from 1,709 San Diego voters until their citizenship can be verified.

In a defiant letter Tuesday, the county said it is “legally prohibited” from doing so. And it offered a legal threat of its own: “The County reserves its rights to pursue all legal remedies against DOJ for its unlawful intimidation of election officials and California voters.”

The letter from County Counsel Damon Brown to California Southern District U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said,

“The DOJ’s request is a thinly veiled voter purge and request for confidential voter information without a proper purpose.” [Our emphasis]

The San Diego County Registrar of Voters Office received Gordon’s demand letter Friday with a 48-hour deadline and a warning that “the legal consequences for either facilitating or ignoring federal crimes are significant.”

Every county in California received a similar letter.

The Imperial County Registrar of Voters also told the DOJ it would not comply with a request to withhold the ballots and provide confidential information of 161 Imperial County voters.

Both San Diego and Imperial county’s deadlines lapsed Sunday. The responses, obtained by inewsource, went out Tuesday evening.

The county said the federal government’s request was an “invitation to violate both state and federal law based on nothing more than unsubstantiated suspicions regarding a person’s citizenship.” The county also said the requested actions “would be a breach of voters’ trust of the highest order.”

A fight at OB’s famous seawall turned deadly deadly Wednesday night, authorities said.

Polce responded around 8:30 pm to a report of an injured person near Abbott Street and Newport Avenue, and found a critically injured man believed to be in his 50s. He was taken to a hospital where he later died from his injuries. Neither he nor the suspected assailant have been publicly identified.

SDPD Lt. Christopher Leahy, with the Homicide Unit, said witnesses told officers that the victim and another individual were involved in a verbal argument that escalated into a physical altercation. The fight is believed to have occurred at the low-slung seawall at the foot of Newport Avenue. It’s not clear yet whether some kind of weapon was used, or even who was the instigator.

Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego / October 28, 2026

Kelly Davis was an award-winning investigative journalist whose work exposed injustice, challenged powerful institutions and gave voice to people too often overlooked.

After Kelly passed away July 1 after a years-long cancer battle, the San Diego Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and others who love her partnered with the Rancho Santa Fe Foundation to create the Kelly Davis Prize for Courage and Compassion in Journalism to fuel important work like hers. The goal is to recognize outstanding journalism that advances public understanding of social justice issues and to foster future reporting projects that reflect Kelly’s values and reporting legacy.

From Save Our Heritage Organisation

In June of this year, we first alerted you to this issue and asked for your help. SDG&E has released new information about its proposed Golden Pacific Powerlink transmission project, including three alternative routes, and has announced a series of community open houses. This is an important opportunity to learn more, ask questions, and make your concerns known.

The Golden Pacific Powerlink is a proposed 150-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission corridor. extending from the Imperial Valley to Orange County. With an estimated cost of $1.62 billion, it would be SDG&E’s largest capital project and the longest 500-kilovolt transmission line in its service territory.

It is important to understand that these lines would simply transmit SDG&E’s power to Orange County and the Los Angeles area. They would provide no electricity to anywhere in San Diego County, yet SDG&E customers would shoulder part of the financial burden.

By Kate Callen

The strangest 2026 City Council race is taking place in San Diego’s most underserved district, and it is scrambling political alliances in portentous ways.

Nothing about the District 4 face-off between incumbent Henry Foster III and challenger Martha Abraham could have been predicted. Before 2024, Foster was chief of staff to then-D4 Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe, and Abraham was a full-time neonatal nurse. Neither had ever run for elected office.

On March 5, 2024, Foster won a special election to replace his boss after she became a county supervisor. One year later, the Council repealed the infamous Footnote 7 that targeted two D4 communities for overdensity. Abraham, a community activist who helped draw attention to Footnote 7, was preparing to oppose Foster in the D4 primary.

At that point in election cycles, the incumbent would build a campaign war chest and call in favors from powerbrokers. The challenger would pound the pavements with stalwart volunteers and raise modest money. The outcome would be pre-ordained.

That has not happened in District 4. Abraham now has clear momentum and appears to be ahead of Foster. Why has the race become such an outlier?

How Insults, Lawsuits, and Attack Ads Seduce Some Voters

By Bill Eddy / Bill Eddy’s Substack / October 22, 2026

This column builds on my prior column, Right Brain Politics.

What a week!

Yesterday, President Trump spent two hours at a rally in Michigan repeatedly insulting the Democratic Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed. Trump gleefully used his middle name, saying “I call him Mohamed because that is his name—his middle name.” He also calls him a “jihadist” with no basis except that he is trying to tie these words to the fact that he is Muslim. Former President Barack Hussein Obama also spoke in Michigan, pointing out that the same approach (calling him by his middle name) failed to defeat him in two elections.

Neighbors for a Better San Diego (NFABSD) continues its leadership of community empowerment with this “Update on 2026 State Legislation.”

The California Legislature introduces thousands of bills every year, and 2026 was no exception.

Working with a statewide coalition of policy analysts, NFABSD tracked more than 100 bills relating to land use and housing development, which were boiled down to the ones that we predict will have the greatest impact on the lives of Californians.

Click here to review the list of bills and see how your state legislators voted.

OB Staff Report

With a week to go before the November 3 elections, the Rag is taking one last look at how much money candidates have raised in the Council District 2, 4, 6, and 8 races. The data are taken from Follow the Money.org (FTM), a self-described “coalition of non-partisan organizations working together to create transparency for campaign contributions and expenditures with local San Diego candidates.”

To help the public fully understand campaign finance, FTM, where one of the key groups is the League of Women Voters, reports what has been spent in support of a candidate (“why you should vote for X”) and what has been spent in opposition to the candidate (“why you should not vote for X”).

Money spent in support is generally considered “campaign contributions” that are given directly to the candidate or party. They are subject to contribution limits, and they must be publicly disclosed.

Money spent in opposition typically comes through “independent expenditures” by outside groups or individuals for public communications (ads or mailers) for or against a candidate. There are no spending limits, but funders must file disclosure reports and identify themselves in the materials, almost always in small print.

Here are the races:

by Ernie McCray

Chicago.

A wonderful city, in my view,

as far as towns go.

My earliest recollection

of visiting the windy city

is one of me, as a little lad,

in the 40’s,

back when racism

was ever so systemic.