Council Candidate Went Down to Defeat Because He Was Out-of-Touch With District 2 Voters Despite Spending $80 Per Vote
By Paul Krueger / Special to OB Rag
Josh Coyne and his supporters raised more than $450,000 in his run for the San Diego District 2 City Council seat.
That money was not well spent.
Coyne finished a very distant third in the June primary, with just 5,622 votes. First place finisher Richard Bailey got 14,800 votes; Nicole Crosby was second with 14,325.
Bailey is a Republican-turned-Independent who raised and spent less than Coyne. He was also the target of $148,000 in negative ads sponsored by labor unions. But the former Coronado mayor still beat Coyne by more than 9,000 votes.
Democrat Crosby’s cost-per-vote total was even more impressive. She and her supporters raised $153,000 — one-third of Coyne’s war chest — but she beat him by almost 9,000 votes.
The starkest comparison is Coyne versus fourth-place finisher Mandy Havik, who raised just $45,000, or one-tenth of the money raised and spent on Coyne’s behalf.
Havlik is a long-time Democrat stalwart and beach-area activist who campaigned on limiting ADU and highrise development and empowering neighborhood planning groups. She captured 4,750 votes, at about $10 per vote, compared to Coyne’s $80 per vote.
We can extend our sympathies to Coyne for his dismal and very costly (under)performance. He’s intelligent and experienced, and he was laudably transparent about his political positions:
- Build more housing, everywhere, in every form;
- Support – without reservation — Midway Rising, with its high-rise towers, new arena, and proposed special exemption from environmental protections;
- An unyielding defense of underused bike lanes and parking exemptions for developers of high-density ADU projects on narrow and already-crowded cul-de-sacs.
What we can’t excuse is Coyne’s lack of awareness about the problems those policies have created and the anger they’ve generated in our neighborhoods. He thinks he lost because District 2 voters were out of touch with his priorities. In fact, he lost because he was out of touch with theirs.
In Voice of San Diego, a recent paywall-protected Q and A reveals[scroll to near end] how disconnected Coyne was with a majority of D2 voters and why he was flummoxed when voters unleashed their vitriol as he campaigned door-to-door in the Ocean and Mission Beach, Pt. Loma, Midway, and Clairemont communities.
“I wasn’t sure how to position my thoughts around the growing tension about housing and development in a district that has some challenges and has a big project (Midway Rising),” Coyne told VOSD editor Scott Lewis. “The idea of being anti-housing or anti-growth just wasn’t naturally aligned [with Coyne’s personal views].”
Well, Josh, you could try to understand why D2 voters are infuriated by ugly multi-unit ADU projects with no parking crammed on small lots in their neighborhoods – projects built by aggressive developers in a building industry that contributed generously to your campaign.
You could also try to comprehend why there is intense opposition to that one “big project” which proposes 4,250 high-rise apartments and a 16,000-seat arena built on unstable land in an area already choked with traffic.
But you’re probably blinded by the $308,000 independent expenditure packaged on your behalf by Labors’ Local 89 and other unions that will benefit hugely from Midway Rising’s “prevailing wage” provisions. And $30,000 from Brad Termini, the friend of Todd Gloria who heads the Midway Rising team, and his partners/ investors might also cloud your judgement. Not to mention the $25,000 spent on your behalf by AirBnB.
Coyne also told VOSD that he was “actually surprised by the anti-bike lane movement,” he confronted while canvassing voters. “It’s a deep-rooted misunderstanding and vitriol. I heard about it time and time again knocking (on) doors in that district.”
Well, Josh, if you’d look to your right or left while driving on most main thoroughfares in your district, you might realize that the backlash against bike lanes is not based on “deep-rooted misunderstanding” or “vitriol.” It’s a righteous frustration generated by mile-after-mile of consistently empty bike lanes on our busiest streets, when they could easily have been built nearby on parallel roadways with much less traffic.
Those bike lanes often remove a much-needed traffic lane, along with hundreds of parking spots, that local businesses depended on for customers.
So let’s be clear: There’s no “misunderstanding” about a process that actively ignores community concerns, won’t compromise on locations, and refuses to acknowledge that San Diego is not and never will be a “bikeable” city.
Josh also confided that “the hardest part for me was, as someone who worked at City Hall and knows how policy works, [explaining to voters] that the City Council has no ability to stop large-scale, outsized, neighborhood-busting developments [because] they’re all ministerially [approved].”
No, “the hardest part” would have been for you to acknowledge that you and your most visible supporters — including YIMBY Dems of San Diego, YIMBY Congressmember Scott Peters, and YIMBY State Assemblymember Chris Ward – created and continue to support the very system that you now claim you’re unable to modify.
You sounded like an arsonist who threw gasoline on dry brush and when the fire raged, said, “Sorry, I can’t do anything to put out those flames.”
It’s your coalition that stripped neighborhoods of their ability to learn about a planned high-rise project before the permits are approved and the construction fence is erected.
It’s your coalition that has muzzled democratically elected Community Planning Groups.
It’s your coalition that gutted design standards, shrunk set-backs from adjoining single-family homes, removed off-street parking requirements on the demonstrably false theory that anyone who lives up to a mile from a transit stop will not need a personal vehicle to navigate life in San Diego.
It’s your coalition that has failed to secure funding for parks, fire and police stations, and other much-needed infrastructure for this additional housing.
And it’s your coalition that assured approval of a state law that gutted local control of our coastal area and facilitates the proposed construction of a universally-hated 23-story highrise on a narrow street in Pacific Beach. (And sadly, the best response you and your colleagues can muster to the near unanimous rejection of the “Turquoise Tower” is to plead ignorance that the legislation would allow such an undesirable use and amend the law when it was too late to make a difference.)
No, Josh, you clearly didn’t have a clue about what issues matter most to District 2 voters. You couldn’t empathize with your neighbors when they voiced their frustrations with city hall. And you couldn’t see beyond the desires of your contributors and recognize your duty to represent the views of a majority of D2 residents.
That’s why even $450,000 wasn’t enough to stave off your humiliating defeat.
