California Senate president (and former Assembly speaker) Toni Atkins has been a mainstay of the state’s politics for a decade— another Sacramento yimby and Democratic Party careerist “moderate.” But… next year she’ll be termed out of her San Diego seat. She’ll in all likelihood run for lieutenant governor in 2026. But what about her Senate seat, which includes most of San Diego? Well… some incredibly bad news just turned right around.
Nathan Fletcher is a conservative Democrat who— for political expediency— switched parties from the GOP in 2011 in the middle of a failed bid for San Diego mayor. A Republican whip in the state Assembly, he started the mayoral race as a Republican but when the GOP endorsed Carl DeMaio, Fletcher switched to independent. He didn’t make the runoff. To run for mayor again, he re-registered as a Democrat in 2013, was endorsed by Kamala Harris— her endorsement has never been worth a hill of beans— and failed to make the runoff again. In 2018 he ran (as a Democrat) for the San Diego County Supervisor with endorsements from the neoliberal end of the Party including Gavin Newsom and Joe Biden and he beat the Republican by a wide margin. He was subsequently elected chair of the board in Jan., 2021 and was reelected to the seat last year. He's been plotting a run for Atkins’ seat and made his official announcement two months ago.
New developments have worked out well for San Diego and for California, but badly for Fletcher. Last Wednesday, he was credibly accused of sexual assault by a city employee— who had been fired when she resisted his advances. He first tried denying it, insisting it was "consensual," then announced he had changed his mind about running for the state Senate, then resigned from the board of supervisors and finally announced he is suffering from PTSD from his time in Iraq and would be seeking medical care for trauma and alcoholism— what a whirlwind!
And then a second woman, one of his former interns, came forward and said he assaulted her as well while she was a student at UC, La Jolla. So… I doubt we’ll have to worry about this pretend-Democrat any time soon. Primary School took a look at the field, now that Fletcher, widely acknowledged as the overwhelming front runner— you know, the establishment loves people like him— is gone. “One area Assemblymember, Dr. Akilah Weber, is interested now that Fletcher’s out. Another, Chris Ward, declined to talk about the race. The Union-Tribune floated the names of two additional candidates, Georgette Gómez and Janessa Goldbeck. Goldbeck, a 2020 congressional candidate and military veteran, had just announced a run for Fletcher’s seat on the Board of Supervisors, but now she has choices to pick from; Gómez, the former president of the San Diego City Council and also a 2020 congressional candidate, is fresh off a loss for state Assembly in 2022.”
In past races Blue America has endorsed Akilah Weber and she has had an outstanding record in the Assembly since then. Chris Ward also has an outstanding record in the Assembly. Blue America also endorsed Georgette Gómez when she ran for Congress but was beaten by big-money candidate (and heiress) Sara Jacobs. Any of these candidates would be infinitely better than Fletcher would have been.