Category: Election

Here are some brief thoughts and observations about the candidates running for District 2 of the San Diego City Council. I attended the candidate forum last night in Liberty Station — and the cavernous hall was packed — a great turnout. Someone told me the hall had a capacity of 200 or 250. Lots of gray heads. Six candidates were on the stage: Richard Bailey, Paul Suppa, Mandy Havlik, Jacob Mitchell, Nicolle Crosby and Josh Coyne.

League of Women Voters did a great job in organizing the forum, which was co-hosted by the Point Loma Association.

Opening Statements

Bailey wants us to “stand up to city hall,” as does Suppa and Havlik. Suppa says San Diego is in a state of crisis due to its budgetary problems. Our city, he says, spends twice the national average on the police department, and that we need to “stop overtime for police.”

Havlik knows the city is in trouble. She expressed her love for the community, has spent years serving the community, has stood up against bad projects and her campaign is “grassroots and people-powered.”

The youngest candidate on the stage was Jacob Mitchell, who became the crowd favorite for his honesty and naivete. But nobody thinks he can win.

SPLC Instrumental in Crack-Down on San Diego’s KKK in Eighties

By JW August / Special to OB Rag

The United States Department of Justice has indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Mobile, Alabama based civil rights organization has a historically important tie to San Diego, the birthplace of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), forerunners of current day white supremacists.  Additionally, the San Diego region has a long history of Ku Klux Klan activity, at one time serving as the base of operations for the Imperial Wizard of California.

President Trump’s Acting Attorney Todd Blanche said the indictment is to address long simmering issues. Some media reports believe the ‘simmering issues’ were generated by conservative Trump supporters.  And an angry president.

In San Diego, the U.S. DOJ’s office apparently is out of the anti-hate business. The office has bailed from the San Diego Anti-Hate Crime Coalition which they have co-chaired for years with a DOJ civil rights attorney. They had no representative at a recent meeting and the agenda for an upcoming meeting says the co-chair is now the city attorney office. Neither the district attorney nor the local DOJ office would comment about the no show.

UPDATE CLARIFICATION: the election voting is taking place NOW through Monday, April 27, at 11:59 pm
It has been confirmed that the election for the board of the OB Community Foundation runs now through Monday, April 27, at 11:59 p.m.

Fourteen candidates are running for 8 seats. Here’s the link to the OBCF website, where people can become members if they are not already (featured on the home page banner), and vote for their favorite candidates.

Here are candidate profiles and photos, in the order sent to the Rag.

Register to Become Member and Vote — Ocean Beach Community Foundation’s 2026 Board of Directors Election is OPEN through April 27th!

Election is open to all members of the Ocean Beach Community Foundation. Not a member? Not a problem. Register for membership below and receive a ballot.

OBCF Membership is open to anyone who:

• lives,
• works,
• owns property, or
• operates a business in the 92107 area code and surrounding peninsula community!

Register below to receive your secure digital ballot today!

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.