Category: Election

By Tanja Kropf / Explore Clairemont / April 22, 2026

This is the second in a two-part series of interviews with candidates for the San Diego City Council’s District 2 seat, currently occupied by Jennifer Campbell. District 2 includes Clairemont, Midway, Mission Beach, Mission Bay, Old Town, Ocean Beach, and Point Loma.

Part Two of this series includes candidate interview summaries of Mandy Havlik, Josh Coyne, Jacob Mitchell, and Paul Suppa.

Explore Clairemont interviewed all the candidates. All the questions asked of the candidates were submitted by Explore Clairemont’s audience, ensuring the candidates answered only the questions their future constituents wanted to hear.

Last week’s interviews included Richard Bailey, Nicole Crosby, and Mike Rickey.

The election will be held on June 2, 2026.

Ocean Beach has entered a time period that in less than two weeks, the coastal neighborhood celebrates the 50th anniversary of the very first community-wide democratic election to its OB Planning Board — a volunteer board that still exists to this day, Earth Day 2026.

May 4th, 1976 was a day when thousands of Ocean Beach residents, property owners and business owners voted on candidates for a 14-member board to help make urban planning and infrastructure decisions and recommendations to the city.

Not only was it the first election of the OB Planning Board, it was the first democratic election of ANY community planning group in San Diego’s history. So, May 4th ought to be celebrated by the over 40 community planning groups across the city.

Nine months before the scheduled election, on July 3, 1975, the San Diego City Council heard presentations about a so-called “OB Plan.”

It was standing room only in the Council Chambers, which brimmed with residents, property-owners and merchants from OB. After all the public testimony and speeches, after more discussion among councilmembers and staff, the Council – with Republican Mayor Pete Wilson at the ceremonial helm – took a vote and passed the OB Precise Plan — which included a number of amendments made by an OB grassroots organization, called the Community Planning Group.

The most important of these amendments was the provision for a community election of a planning committee. The City Planning Department was ordered to implement a Planned District for Ocean Beach, from the motion itself:

“the new committee formed for the purposes of implementing the Plan, should be elected by the citizens of Ocean Beach in a democratic fashion, using a process monitored by a neutral party to be appointed by the Mayor and Council.”

Could Kamala Harris become the next governor of California?

What with Swalwell’s exit from the race and now Betty Yee’s departure, suddenly there is renewed speculation and interest in the former vice-president and defeated 2024 presidential candidate being a candidate for governor of the arguably bluest state in the union. As many have observed, there aren’t any stand-out top-tiered faces in the crowded race, and now Kamala’s is being visualized.

Certainly she has great name recognition — for good and bad reasons — and as she makes signs of joining the 2028 presidential race, there are sounds of groans within Democratic — and generally progressive — ranks of voters. And the ranks of voters not enthusiastic for Harris to run for the White House again are thick — and this gambit — having her run for governor, might just solve a couple of problems.

By Steve Rodriguez

Up until last week, even critics of President Donald Trump found it hard to accept that his war rhetoric could get much more extreme, or his threats against both enemies and traditional allies more outrageous. However, recent news about the Pentagon’s interaction with the Vatican, along with Trump comments made in the past few days that are highly critical of Pope Leo XIV, have proven such concepts wrong.

Fortunately for the Vatican, I contend the Pope, a critic of Trump’s actions and words related to the Iranian War, does possess a unique advantage he can employ to escape our president’s wrath.

According to reports in the Free Press, the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S. was summoned in January to the Pentagon, where he was advised the Vatican needs to play ball with the Trump administration’s efforts in the area of national security. Pentagon officials supposedly asserted the U.S. has the military power to “do whatever it wants” and that “the Church had better take its side.” while making references to “the period in the 1300’s when the French Crown leveraged its military power to dominate the Avignon Papacy.” The threat sounds right out of The Sopranos, something akin to a thug character threatening …“Nice Sistine Chapel you got there, padre. Be a real shame if it should be damaged in a bombing.”

Here’s more on the District 2 candidates — first in a video of the April 7 Ocean Beach Planning Board meeting where 3 candidates were questioned, and second, in interviews of 3 candidates by the editor of Explore Clairemont, an online platform.

OB Planning Board video

— Only three were present as per plan by the OBPB. They will interview others at the next board meeting. See OBPB for the video.

h4>Interviews of Bailey, Rickey and Crosby by Explore Clairemont publisher Tanja Kropf

By Joni Halpern

We have a new savior. We saw his picture on the holy card of Truth Social.

He wasn’t exactly like the old Jesus, but the new look was brighter overall. The new savior’s hair was shiny blond and precisely coiffed, as if he had emerged from a salon only minutes before ministering to the crowd of sick people and worshipers. His white cassock looked as if it were a discard from a “Call the Midwife” scene, just before the wet, bloody baby is hauled into the world, spoiling the bleached white garment of the imperturbable midwife.

The red shawl that draped over the new savior’s shoulders was only shades darker than the ruddy red complexion of his face. In this picture, the new savior’s eyes were nothing like those in the portrait that presently adorns the walls of federal buildings. None of that glowering, sinister presence that dares his supplicants to ask for mercy.

The image of the new savior does contain some anomalies, of course: fighter jets and warriors riding the rays of the sun above a battle flag; the Statute of Liberty stuffed into a small space between the worshipful face of a soldier gazing at the new savior; an adoring nurse looking upward at the new savior’s right hand, which lies upon the forehead of a presumably sick fellow slumbering on a pillow, his head emitting rays of blinding light due to his contact with the new savior; the palm of the new savior’s left hand holding a concentrated source of light, and finally, a couple of other contented admirers whose faces and prayerful hands suggest they have finally contacted the Real Thing.

Today, we’re having fun and games with Richard Bailey, a candidate for District 2 of the San Diego City Council.

First, a new PAC for Bailey has just been announced. This is serious stuff. But it’s also a game. Steven Richter, a semi-retired tax attorney, is the principal officer for ‘SD Policy over Politics’, the new PAC.

Here’s Arturo Castañares’ write up about the new PAC, published April 13. Castañares is the editor at large of La Prensa.

A longtime Point Loma resident has launched a new political action committee (PAC) to support a candidate in the upcoming election for San Diego City Council, according to documents filed with the California Secretary of State last week.

By Mandy Havlik, Candidate for San Diego City Council District 2

I didn’t decide to run for City Council sitting behind a desk or at a political event. I decided to run after years of standing and advocating with neighbors asking, why is this still not fixed?

After watching people I care about feeling ignored by a system that’s supposed to serve them. And one of those moments that really stayed with me happened at my kids’ school. As a new parent and the elementary school garden coordinator at Ocean Beach Elementary, I started noticing traffic safety issues along Santa Monica and Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. Cars moving too fast. Lack of signage. No designated pick and drop off area. Kids walking and biking through an area that didn’t feel designed to protect them and keep them safe.

It wasn’t something difficult. It was about protecting my kids and other children in the neighborhood. So I did what I’ve always done, I spoke up. I went to the school administration, thinking this would be something we could work on together. Protecting children shouldn’t be complicated or controversial. But instead of support, I was met with hesitation. Questions about liability. Deflection. A sense that this wasn’t really the school’s responsibility, that it belonged somewhere else.

The daily news can’t adequately convey the administration’s sabotaging of our government, economy, alliances and environment

By Rebecca Solnit / The Guardian / April 12, 2026

The United States is being murdered, and it’s an inside job. Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled. All this is common knowledge, but because it dribbles out in news stories about this specific incident or department, the reports never adequately describe an administration sabotaging the functioning of the federal government and also trashing the global economy, international alliances and relationships, and the national and global environment in ways that will have downstream consequences for decades and perhaps, especially when it comes to climate, centuries.

Across the branches of government, the services that are supposed to protect us – nuclear stockpile monitoring, cybersecurity, counter-terrorism – are being undermined, understaffed or trashed. A different kind of protection that consists of public health, vaccination programs, food safety, clean air and water, social services, civil rights and the rule of law is also under attack. The federal government that serves us is being starved while the federal government that serves the Trump agenda and the oligarchy is glutting itself on taxpayer money, including the grotesque sums dumped on the Department of Homeland Security and the US military now being warped into Pete Hegseth’s twisted vision of a ruthless mercenary force. Hegseth has reportedly stood in the way of promotions for more than a dozen Black and female officers.

Here are samples of photos sent to us last weekend, too late for the live-blog (that shut down about 5:30 pm after beginning at 8:15 in the morning) that we now would like to share.

Downtown San Diego — Waterfront Park

From Change Begins With ME .Indivisible.

Commentary — From the Trenches

By JW August –– Special to the OB Rag

When President Donald Trump’s calliope of confusion is at its noisiest, we’ve learned a game is afoot in numerous places.  This particular game comes with a warning from a source who has a highly placed position in a large federal agency.

The source is named “S” and says an end-of-March announcement about moving the U.S. Forest Service out of Washington, D.C. is a foreshadowing of a massive reorganization effort of the federal government. The suggested agency suspected of being the next ordered to move will be the Bureau of Land Management, according to my source.

The overall goal, made in the name of efficiency, is to punish the cities and states that vote Democratic and reward Trump loyalists with jobs and money, says our source. By creating these new offices, away from D.C., there will be far less oversight, and far more access.

The source says that “as long as it’s a Republican town, they’re going to get an infusion of cash and jobs because their plan is to go out to isolated areas of the country so that they can do whatever they want.”

Postal Service Would Mail Ballots Only to Those on Official Voters List

By Jane C. Timm and Ryan J. Reilly / NBC News / March 31, 2026

President Donald Trump is again trying to exert control over American elections, signing an executive order Tuesday that aims to create federal lists of citizens and ask the U.S. Postal Service to transmit mail ballots to only those people.

The executive order, his second related to elections since he retook office last year, is sure to be quickly challenged in court. The U.S. Constitution gives states the power to set voting rules and administer their own elections, though Congress has the ability to set some regulations, too.

“That’s a big deal,” Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office, adding that he didn’t believe the courts could overturn it. “I think this will help a lot with elections. We’d like to have voter ID. We’d like to have proof of citizenship, and that’ll be another subject for another time. We’re working on that. You would think it’d be easy.”