Nathan Fletcher Faces Reelection With the Wind at His Back
The Primary Contest for County Board of Supervisors District 4
Let me cut to the chase here: incumbent County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher will come in first in the upcoming primary; it won’t even be close.
My reasoning is based on experience and common sense; Fletcher has made a lot of high profile moves, and I can already see a difference. He’s not perfect, but my perception is that he’s really trying.
His opponent, Amy Reichert, is not qualified for the job. She’s a one issue candidate, and her fellow travelers have been the source of huge amounts of misinformation. Her only resource for policy and staff would be the local Republican party, and I have no desire to see crackpots in action.
Without further ado…
Incumbent Democrat Nathan Fletcher will be facing off against Republican ReOpen San Diego founder Amy Reichert, and Sidiqa Hooker, political affiliation not known. The Primary election will be June 7, with the two top candidates appearing on the November General election ballot.
County 101: Although the office of County Supervisor is technically non-partisan, what that means in real life is that candidates don’t get to list a political party on the ballot. The Board of Supervisors serves as the legislative arm of county government, with some executive functions thrown in. Elections for Supervisorial districts 1, 2 & 3 alternate on even years with districts 4 & 5.
California’s constitution delegates authority to county government for property recording and assessment, law enforcement, judicial administration, and tax collection, along with public welfare, public health, water conservation, and flood protection. Cities and towns incorporated within counties do administer some of these functions.
The power inherent in this governing structure comes via the power of the budget. And it’s huge. For fiscal year 2021-22 we’re looking at $7.23 billion, a jump of 10.4% from the last time around. Follow this link to an infographic delineating where the money gets spent. San Diego County employs more than 18,700 people.
Since people aren’t generally aware of this fact, you should remember that individual school districts are not part of the county. Any candidate running for county or city office making promises about curricula or teachers is either sadly misinformed or full of crap. In either case, they don’t deserve your vote.
Supervisors 101: The County’s governing body had a notoriously crusty bent for many years. Most supervisors were old, white, Republicans who prided themselves on fiscal restraint, showing up to patriotic events, and keeping the budgets connected with social services to an absolute minimum.
In 2010, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents many county workers, broke precedent for efforts supported by labor, and campaigned in favor of establishment of term limits.
As incumbent supervisors phased out, it became possible to have a governing body more representative of the county’s population.
District 4, which includes much of the City of San Diego, came up for grabs in 2018 when Ron Roberts, long considered one of the more reasonable Republicans, termed out. The behind-the-scenes jockeying for the job was intense, especially since voter registration data gave Democrats a clear advantage.
Former District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis gave the GOP a candidate they thought capable of attracting bi-partisan support. Early polling showed her political persona wasn’t going to win over a Democrat with strong party backing, so a scheme was hatched to get negative on Nathan Fletcher, who looked to be a strong contender.
Former Assembly member Lori Saldaña was looking to mount a challenge from the left, a plausible idea given that Fletcher had switched parties and many progressives were unsure of his actual agenda.
The party switching appealed to conservatives as an avenue for attack, given that they’d never forgiven Fletcher. But there was another player looking for an in, namely Mickey Kasparian, who’d been pushed out of his positions (thanks to some ugly misconduct allegations) as head of the United Foodservice and Commercial Workers and leader of the local labor coalition.
Fletcher was part of the establishment responsible for giving Kasparian the boot. Denying him the seat was a good way to wave the middle finger. And Saldaña’s progressive-sounding platform was just the thing for an old school organizer who couldn’t grasp that he’d crossed a lot of lines.
Kasparian knew about polling from the downtown business righties showing that splitting the left was a way to trip up Fletcher’s candidacy. And things got ugly as he operated seemingly in unison with downtown reactionaries to mount an all out campaign to discredit Fletcher.
The Republican-leaning Lincoln Club and San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce used PACs to spend $446,000 opposing Fletcher. Kasparian et.al., spent $207,000 in support of Saldaña. Saldana finished in third place, Dumanis came in second, and Fletcher topped the list.
The Democratic party saw this race as critical, and spent $958,000 to support their candidate.
Come November, he was elected with 68% of the vote.
***
I didn’t expect much from Nathan Fletcher, as he was just one Democrat. But I was wrong.
From Voice of San Diego:
No matter your politics, there aren’t many arguments against the idea that the county is a significantly different agency than it was one year ago. You could point out that it was not just because of Fletcher – County Supervisor Dianne Jacob has been in a disruptive mood as well. The year, in fact, started with her State of the County speech where she laid out an ambitious agenda.
Fletcher, however, is almost weekly staking out positions that have generated intense conversations. It has had the effect of the larger body around him correcting accordingly. The county has begun forming a new energy company, parallel to the city’s, to purchase the electricity residents will use. The county restructured a shuttered courthouse into a refuge for asylum-seekers. Supervisors dipped into their hefty reserves to pay for affordable housing projects and are launching a network of behavioral health hubs and crisis units countywide. The board added more than $50 million to the Behavioral Health Division for 123 new employees and 70 psychiatric emergency response teams.
The supervisors are in the news more than any time in recent memory. Again, this is hardly Fletcher’s doing alone. The coalition he has built with two Republicans – Jacob and Greg Cox – has fueled this transformation.
And the transformation may not be ideal to conservative residents who preferred a county that was out of sight, out of mind and saving its money.
Over the last year, that has changed. Fletcher is a big part of why.
And so it goes. In 2020 Democrats added Nora Vargas and Terra Lawson Remer to the board.
This year Fletcher’s fellow supervisors ended the long-standing tradition of rotating the Chair position annually, unanimously making him the first person to serve two consecutive terms in over four decades.
If you think of the County Supes as akin to steering an ocean liner, then what has already been accomplished is remarkable. It also means that there’s plenty more to come as Chair Fletcher outlined in his State of the County speech this year. The no-longer-used-in-Florida word “equity” now stands at the forefront of policy making.
Nathan Fletcher isn’t superman. Two areas I have concerns about are jail deaths and homeless humans. I know the incumbent says good things are in the works; I’ll believe it when I see it. There are serious institutional hurdles standing in the way of solutions to these problems, namely the “us against them” psychology of Sheriffs Deputies, and the local Homeless Industrial Complex.
Pandemic Paranoia: Being top dog comes with consequences, and the COVID-19 public health restrictions crystalized what had been –up to that point– the expected GOP whining about any issue they thought would strike fear in the heart of voters.
I always suspected the righties were too busy freaking out over Assm Lorena Gonzalez’s forceful progressive advocacy in Sacramento (they are married) to bother with Fletcher’s efforts to drag the County into the 21st century.
San Diego’s mostly marginalized righties came together after the riots in La Mesa following George Floyd’s death, but mostly didn’t have much to do after reports of Antifa and BLM buses coming to town failed to materialize. The bad-boy crowd got their kicks by chasing after mini-protests in the East County, but self-destructed as they were undisciplined about violent rhetoric on social media…. Yeah, I know, “censorship.”
Then-President Trump’s vacillation over responses to the pandemic left the door wide open for a host of conspiracy theories and misinformation. Rebellious attitudes toward shut downs and mask wearing became a badge of honor for the MAGA crowd.
Unlike waiting for Antifa buses, COVID public health measures gave these activists something tangible to organize around. It didn’t take long before a video-game ‘us or them’ mentality emerged, complete with appropriation of war-playing rhetoric about “freedom” and “tyranny.”
It was almost comical to watch people who I suspect (mostly) never bothered to vote say stuff about their rights being violated. It was amusing until it wasn’t. In San Diego, as in cities around the nation, public health workers started getting anonymous death threats, along with elected officials who supported mandates and closures.
The more cleaned up part of these local freedom fighters started hosting rallies outside the County Board of Supervisors meetings. They came into the meeting audiences, signed up to make speeches, and generally ignored (or were rude to) people appearing before the Supes on business not related to the pandemic.
Out of this hubris came soap sales consultant Amy Reichert, crowned by KUSI to be official spokesperson for the group. She wasn’t one of the people who called grocery workers pigs for enforcing mask policies; she was more cut from the mold of Sarah Palin, the mama bear.
Although the exact words used in the quote below were exceptional, the basic attitude of the anti-vaxx speakers was all-too-often the same, as evidenced by the “laughing in the back” aside quoted here:
“Vargas,” Robo said to board supervisor Nora Vargas, who is Latina, “I can’t wait for your arteries to clog. They’re not doing it fast enough.”
Through laughter from the public in the back, he told board supervisor Nathan Fletcher to kill himself and supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer to hang from a tree like a monkey.
Then, Robo moved on to the county’s public health officer Dr. Wilma Wooten, who is Black.
“Wooten,” he said, “you’re a f---ing Aunt Jemima. Syrup on sweet will cause your diabetic—”
Vargas interrupted the hate-filled rant and told Robo to apologize to Wooten, which he declined. The two yelled back and forth until security made Robo leave the podium.
After things got out of hand at the county building, the Supervisors started with virtual meetings.
This was just a bridge too far. Reichert and her troupe got weekly slots on KUSI to play the victim. Then they hooked up with some lawyers and started suing everybody, which meant more air-time on KUSI. Wash, rinse, repeat.
One universal trait with the ReOpen San Diego types has been their complete disdain for those not woke enough to be traveling on their bandwagon. This makes them a natural ally for today’s Republican party, where truth is just a state of mind and empathy is a symptom of weakness.
Reform California’s Chairman Carl DeMaio, whose hostility toward Nathan Fletcher goes back to their failed 2012 campaigns for mayor, was all about getting new recall movements going.
He was even willing to make it a joint recall campaign for Fletcher and Assm Lorena Gonzalez. And ReOpen San Diego made for a perfect ally. It’s no coincidence that recall movements in California reached an all-time high last year; the state GOP was desperately searching for any vehicle to make themselves relevant. The state’s anti-vaxx movement provided a pathway for reaching out to previously unreachable citizens.
From the New York Times:
In the Covid-19 era in California, vaccine opponents have found themselves increasingly in alignment with pro-Trump, working-class people sometimes eager to embrace extreme tactics to express their beliefs.
Anti-vaccine activists in the state have long been aggressive at times. But in the past two years, and in the months of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been an uptick in confrontational and threatening tactics.
ReOpen San Diego’s recall efforts died from lack of interest; getting the already committed to rallies was a lot different than sitting outside supermarkets exhorting passers-by for signatures. I have a fond memory of watching a petition gatherer getting their due in front of the Ralphs in Hillcrest. It must have been incredibly discouraging for someone who believed they were part of a majoritarian movement.
When the D4 Supervisor pointed out the extremists associated with the failed recall Newson campaign, these folks went nuts. Cue more airtime on KUSI.
A well-researched Los Angeles Times story about militias and QAnon supporters involved in the campaign apparently was fake news.
There is no proof of any connection here, but my instincts tell me there is a strong possibility that whoever tried to burn down Nathan Fletcher/Lorena Gonzalez house a couple of months ago was motivated by the rhetoric surrounding the pandemic health measures. There is a side to SOME of these people that just reeks of foul intentions.
***
ReOPen San Diego’s Amy Reichert discovered she lived within the boundaries of District 4 and decided to oppose Fletcher in this election. As an organizer of the Board of Supes rallies, she thought Fletcher was vulnerable thanks to the county’s pandemic prevention measures.
As a candidate for office, Reichert has tried to sell herself as someone who’s overcome serious hurdles; she told Times of San Diego that once upon a time she had an abortion, along with other serious challenges she’s faced..
Reichert has also been given the opportunity to prove she’s more than a single issue candidate and mostly failed to make her case. She doesn’t approve of QAnon’s assertions, yet repeats an equally factually deficient claim about protesters at the violent La Mesa protest as being paid $300 and bused into town.
According to her, COVID-based restrictions were the gasoline fueling that protest; the match was social media, cable TV news, celebrities, racial division, national fear, rage, anger and the tragic national event, played over and over and over, of George Floyd dying in the street as he took his last breath.
On policy questions requiring some demonstration of knowledge about issues, Reichart plays the ‘both sides’ game admirably well.
From a Times of San Diego interview by Ken Stone:
Reichert worries that climate and mass-transit plans “are going so far and so fast that they don’t realize that they’re actually hurting people in the process. …. We live in a world where there are other countries that are not doing … their part. … I wish electric cars were affordable. They’re not. And that’s a problem. We have to have a holistic approach.”
She’d later liken government focus on the pandemic to officials stressing climate action
Asked whether Joe Biden was legitimately elected president in 2020, she said she was “very, very, very concerned about mail-in ballots” after hearing reports. “But people on both sides, Democrat and Republican, over the past five years have expressed concerns about election integrity. So I also express concerns about election integrity.”
The Union Tribune is once again doing the hard work of tracking down candidates for office throughout the area and asking mostly good questions. It just so happens as I’m writing this post, they’ve published interviews with Nathan Fletcher and Amy Reichert. The third candidate, Sidiqa Hooker, did not respond to their invitation for an interview.
There were no surprises. Fletcher talked about the actions of the board on a wide range of issues. Reichert lacked specifics and often spoke through the lens of her opposition to pandemic measures. I’ve included what I think is the money quote for each candidate in my listings below.
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Nathan Fletcher - Democrat
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Q: How did you personally shape the county’s COVID-19 pandemic response? Is there anything you wish you or the board would have done differently?
A: Together with the county’s top medical experts, I worked every day, seven days a week, from the moment COVID-19 hit to slow the spread and save lives. I gave it everything I had because I knew we had to take the threat seriously.
We mounted one of the most effective COVID-19 responses in the nation. More than 93 percent of San Diego County residents are now vaccinated. San Diego County has half the COVID-19 death rate of Florida. We delivered over $85 million for small business recovery. We fought hard to protect the most vulnerable communities at greatest risk. As a result, we saved thousands of lives.
One of the biggest challenges was the deep division and dangerous disinformation constantly undermining our attempts to stay united and follow basic science. Despite that, most San Diegans showed incredible resilience and united in inspiring ways during the toughest of times. I hope we never forget that and summon that same spirit of purpose and community as we tackle the serious challenges we’re facing right now.
Amy Reichert - Republican
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Q: Evaluate the county’s response to the pandemic. How would you have led differently?
A: My campaign has a chief medical adviser, Dr. Mariah Baughn, M.D. Dr. Baughn is a pathologist at a major hospital group here in San Diego County. I have consulted with Dr. Baughn to create a targeted response to COVID-19 that takes public health, mental health and personal freedom all into account in creating future county policies on this issue.
With it, I would:
1. Keep schools open. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci said schools should be the last to close and the first to open. Closing schools for over a year has already led to a significant amount of damage to children and society as a whole, with particular harm done to underserved students who do not have the option to attend private schools, which largely remained open. Zoom school is deeply inferior and should not be considered as an alternative.
2. Protect elderly and vulnerable populations. Ensure that these populations have access to early treatment and are given accurate, unbiased medical advice.
3. Keep beaches, trails, parks and playgrounds open. Although it may seem elementary, it still remains true that fresh air, sunshine and exercise are some of the best ways to maintain a healthy immune system and ensure your body is in an optimal condition to fight off a virus.
4. Recognize natural immunity. We should never mandate that somebody inject a vaccine into their body for a virus they have already contracted and already have immunity for. Attaining zero COVID-19 is not possible. Our county has a high vaccination rate as well as a significant level of natural immunity. People debate how many shots natural immunity is equivalent to, and they look to antibody levels to decide — that’s the wrong way to look at this as it does not consider T-cell memory. The pandemic is now transitioning to endemic, and at this point, vaccines should not be mandated, given our combined natural and vaccine-induced immunity.
.***
I can’t let this pass without pointing out a few things, not that I think these observations would change her mind. I’m just never going to let misinformation go unchallenged.
1.The decision to close most schools in San Diego was made by school boards that the Board of Supervisors has no control over.
2.It only takes one superspreader event to challenge the natural immunity hypothesis.
(That’s right, natural immunity to COVID –like many other things we don’t know– Is just a theory, as yet unproven by facts)
Sweden, the country that used natural immunity as a strategy, sacrificed the elderly and people with weak immunity systems. It’s also true that people with lower socioeconomic status were also subject to higher rates of infection. And the country’s lower population density certainly worked its favor.
This study in Nature thoroughly examined the natural immunity response in Sweden, and I certainly wouldn’t endorse such a strategy. But, then again, I’m immunocompromised, so maybe I don’t count.
Sidiqa Hooker
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The third candidate, Sidiqa Hooker, is listed by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters as a diversity inclusion coordinator. She has, as far as I can tell, not responded to inquiries by phone, email or social media.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com