Primary Results and Recent Poll Show San Diego Establishment Just How Unhappy People Are with City Hall

Reporter David Garrick at the Union-Tribune today wrote an article entitled, “Public displeasure with San Diego City Hall boils over in early election results.”

He wrote that the primary results “show notable voter backlash against San Diego City Hall, with outsiders leading in three out of four council races as some well-funded insiders struggled and incumbents fared worse than usual.”

He’s right, of course, as ‘public displeasure’ with City Hall has been building dramatically over this last year or two. All one has to do to survey this building displeasure — or even rage — is to peruse the pages of the OB Rag. From the devastating San Diego extremist rules for bonus ADUs, the increased fees for paid parking, the trash fee debacle to the paid parking in Balboa Park quagmire, the budget crisis and threats to libraries and rec centers, the cuts to arts funding, to the general sense by the San Diego public that city hall is trying to “nickel and dime” them to death.

This “displeasure” with downtown San Diego political leaders has finally surfaced in results that the establishment can recognize — voting tabulations and results.

Garrick quoted local political science professor Carl Luna:

“These results amplify a general trend against incumbents. You screw up the trash fees and the Balboa Park fees, and you have no real record to run on as a City Council.”

Garrick pointed out: “That may be partly why outsiders are leading in three out of the four races on the ballot: Richard Bailey in District 2, Martha Abraham in District 4 and Antonio Martinez in District 8.”

Garrick dug into the details of the four city council races:

Bailey, a former Coronado mayor who’s new to San Diego politics, leads two candidates who have worked for the city — Nicole Crosby, a staff lawyer under City Attorney Heather Ferbert, and Josh Coyne, a former council staffer.

Martinez, a San Ysidro schools trustee and neighborhood volunteer, leads two council insiders: Gerardo Ramirez, who is chief of staff to Councilmember Vivian Moreno, and Venus Molina, chief of staff to Councilmember Jennifer Campbell.

Abraham, a nurse with no political experience, on Wednesday held a narrow 249-vote lead over incumbent Henry Foster, who appeared set to advance with her to a November runoff. But it’s arguably more notable than the larger leads posted by Bailey and Martinez, because only two incumbents have lost San Diego council re-election bids since 1992.

And even the fourth race, a battle in District 6 where incumbent Kent Lee was leading challenger Mark Powell by nearly 2,000 votes, could offer evidence of backlash

So, the primary finally laid out in a way that pols and their supporters can understand. San Diego residents have been fed up, dissatisfied, displeased with city hall for quite some time and the primary was the first election, obviously, since 2024 when Todd Gloria won a second term and city councilmembers successfully fought off a couple of insurgent campaigns.

This building dissatisfaction has been manifested with the growth of numerous neighborhood and community groups and coalitions that have emerged — all focused on resisting over-developments, huge projects, ADU extremism — and many of them have mobilized their supporters to pack city council chambers around these issues. Groups like Neighbors for a Better San Diego centered in northern Mid-City, a spin-off named group called Neighbors for a Better California focused on the Pacific Beach “Tower”, and groups have formed in University City, Clairemont, North Park, Point Loma, Encanto, Mission Hills.

There was even an attempt to unify all the disparate groups into a coalition and in April of 2025 the San Diego Community Coalition was formed. After about 5 to 6 months, however, the coalition began to splinter around partisan lines, and a break-away group that backed Richard Bailey in the months before he announced his intentions formed its own network. They became a virtual stalking horse for the future candidate for District 2. (The SD Community Coalition is still around — and mainly organizes speakers on hot topics and town halls, and publishes an alert each week on city hall hearings.)

Back to the District 2 primary results, Garrick analyzed:

“Crosby’s success in District 2 — she held a huge lead over Coyne for the second slot in the runoff — arguably contradicts the backlash trend. She’s a deputy city attorney and she was endorsed by the county Democratic Party for a seat on an all-Democrat City Council. It’s possible her role as a prosecutor and litigator — with no direct connection to the council or Mayor Todd Gloria — made a difference to voters frustrated with alleged mismanagement by bureaucrats.

Garrick also made a comparison with the 2022 primary because then Jen Campbell “took first place in the 2022 primary with only 30%” while Bailey has nearly 39%. That’s a cause for concern for Crosby, Garrick believes. Yet, as the Rag reported yesterday:

So, if one adds up Crosby’s numbers with Coyne’s and Havlik’s, you arrive at 12,557 — or 53.16% of the vote, clearly able to overpower Bailey’s 38.8% and 9100 votes — if all else remains the same come November.

Garrick agrees in the end: “Crosby is likely to benefit from Democrats’ registration advantage in the district — they outnumber Republicans by nearly 2 to 1.”

There’s also the chance that by time November rolls around, public frustration with city hall “will die down”, says expert Luna, as the trash fees and Balboa Park parking issues have been settled nominally. “Less frustration over those issues could tone down the backlash and soften voter frustration, said Luna, director of the University of San Diego’s Institute for Civil Civic Engagement.”

But Luna has a warning for Crosby. She “must also alert voters to Bailey’s history as a longtime right-wing Republican. “He’s a chameleon, and she needs to work on exposing that,” Luna said. “He was playing a MAGA Republican in Coronado, and now he’s an independent.”

Garrick also quotes Margaret Virissimo, whose group endorsed Bailey and a couple of Republicans, as well as a couple of Democrats, who said “I feel like the [election] results are a critical step toward change.”

Finally, Garrick writes:

Luna said a key factor in whether local backlash matters as much in November as June will be national politics — particularly how much excitement Democrats can generate for their quest to retake the U.S. Congress. One San Diego County congressional race featuring a San Diego City Council incumbent is key to that push.

“The national backlash may trump the local backlash,” Luna said.

All of this — all this dissatisfaction with city hall — is definitely reflected in a recent poll that shows 69% of San Diegans say the city is on the wrong track. Axios San Diego reports, “The share of San Diegans who think the city is on the wrong track has spiked since last year, according to a new poll….up from 49% last September.”

The poll was paid for by the city’s white collar union, the San Diego Municipal Employees Association and obtained by Axios.

“Just 19% said the city was going in the right direction, the lowest number since the union started polling on that question in 2020.”

The primary results and polls like this put hard data behind just how unhappy people are with the city. November is 5 months away and one can argue a lot could happen between now and then.

The budget crisis will still be with us — in one form or another. And some of the issues will still be with us, as the settlement on Balboa Park fees and trash fees will not go into effect until January 2027. On the national level, we’ll still have Trump with his daily outrages, the price of gas and everything else will still be up. The revulsion against him will grow and anyone, even local pols, tainted with his odor will be increasingly vulnerable, proving Luna’s adage, that indeed “The national backlash may trump the local backlash.”