53rd District Will Have A New Congresswoman For First Time In Nearly 20 Years

Speaker 1: 00:00 Two Democrats are facing off where the 53rd congressional seat next month, Sarah Jacobs is an antipoverty advocate, who is the granddaughter of Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs. And in the spirit of full disclosure, Irwin Jacobs is a major supporter of KPBS. Jacob's opponent is current city of San Diego council, president Georgette Gomez, KPBS reporter Matt Hoffman introduces us to them. Speaker 2: 00:26 A lot has changed for both candidates since campaigning in the March primary. When the nation was not facing pandemic restrictions, Sarah Jacobs says it's not so easy without a lot of face to face contact. Speaker 3: 00:37 We are phone banking at getting creative, doing zoom events, and just trying to find ways to connect with people. Virtually Speaker 2: 00:44 Gomez says her campaign has also been leveraging technology to reach voters, Speaker 3: 00:48 Texting, communicating with voters through social media and utilizing the power of social media. Really Speaker 2: 00:56 Two Democrats are vying to replace another Democrat representative, Susan Davis, who is retiring from her 53rd seat. After 20 years, Speaker 3: 01:04 I consider myself a practical progressive, and I know that the only way we're ever able to get anything done, but especially in Washington is by building coalitions. Speaker 2: 01:14 Jacob's worked in the state department during the Obama administration. Speaker 3: 01:17 A lot of voters really value the fact that I have experience working in the federal government, working on federal policy issues that I have experienced on both the domestic and international issues that will be coming in front of Congress. Speaker 2: 01:32 It says voters need someone who understands them at a personal level and says, because she grew up poor, she can relate to people going through tough times, right? Speaker 3: 01:40 Lyft, personally, Lyft, housing insecurity, and one time in my life growing up, pretty humbling with very little resources, having parents that had multiple jobs, but they still, at the end of the day, we were living paycheck by paycheck. Speaker 2: 01:55 Gomez considers herself a progressive, but says her time on city council proves that she can work with Republicans like San Diego mayor, Kevin Faulkner. Speaker 3: 02:03 We introduced the eviction moratorium protecting renters in our businesses. Along with the mayor, we created a business relief program. Speaker 2: 02:12 Both candidates say COVID-19 relief for businesses and individuals will likely be a major priority for the next Congress. They say the cares act, which brought stimulus checks and money for struggling businesses. What's a good, Speaker 3: 02:24 It's clear. We need a lot more. And I have been really disappointed that Congress hasn't passed another assistance package. I'm truly am hoping that they move forward, that they can put their, the, the, the, the division to the side, because this is not the time to be playing politics. This is the time where we need to lead Speaker 2: 02:46 Secret. There's a lack of affordable housing in San Diego in our County has one of the highest homeless populations in the nation to address the housing crisis. Jacob wants to provide emergency assistance in the form of housing vouchers and rental aid increase our federal dollars and add a rental tax credit Speaker 3: 03:01 So that any family who paid more than 30% of their income on rent gets assistance through the tax code. Then we need to build more affordable housing, Speaker 2: 03:09 How and where to build that affordable housing are largely in the hands of local governments. Some of which have been resistant to new units, Speaker 3: 03:16 But what we can do at the federal level is leverage public dollars to incentivize and push for more private investment. Speaker 2: 03:24 There it's building low-income units or housing for people who are homeless Gomez says it starts with hearing from the community. Speaker 3: 03:29 Make sure that you're out there talking to your constituents and saying, this is why it's important that we make our backyard available in order. I mean, people want us to resolve the, uh, the issue related to people living in the streets, but the only way we're going to resolve it is not through rocket science. It's we need to build units. We need to ensure that we have the necessary resources and that's where Congress needs to come in. Speaker 2: 03:55 Climate change is also something on both candidates. Agendas, Gomez says she supports governor Gavin, new sentence, recent executive order for all new cars in California, to be zero emissions by 2035. Speaker 3: 04:06 That's something that we should be as a congressional members. We should be thinking about adopting as well. It should be a national model. Speaker 2: 04:14 Jacob says Newsome's mandate has to be doable, and she wants to see an entirely energy clean economy by 2030. Speaker 3: 04:20 We need huge investments in new green technology, a poll from last month, Speaker 2: 04:25 Those Jacobs with a double digit lead over Gomez. But in that same poll, nearly 40% of voters who responded were still undecided. Matt Hoffman, KPBS news. Yeah. Speaker 1: 04:34 He made his KPBS reporter, Matt Hoffman and Matt. Welcome. Hey, Maureen, on the issues, it seems Jacobson Gomez agree on most points, but their personal styles and life experiences are very different. Is that what this race is about? Speaker 2: 04:50 I think it's, it really depends on who you ask. You know, I think the Gomez campaign would like to frame it as sort of a big David and Goliath sort of a battle here. But, um, I, I really, you know, I think it's going to come down to voters and it's, it's really unclear. There's a lot of name recognition here. Right? We have the city council, current San Diego city council, president Georgette Gomez, uh, going up against the, one of the Jacob's family names. And it's really unclear where voters are going to go this November. Speaker 1: 05:15 Now, can you tell us a little more about the backgrounds of these two candidates? What did Sarah Jacobs do at the state department and what has she been doing? Speaker 2: 05:23 Yeah, so she joined the Obama state department as a contractor and the Bureau of conflict and stabilization operations. And I asked her about this and she said her work revolved around conflict zones and East and West Africa, uh, working on some presidential initiatives, uh, some security sector assistance, uh, some violent extremism. Um, and then she served as a foreign policy advisor to Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign. Um, and later on, ended up running for the, uh, for Congress in the 49th congressional district, Mike Levin beat her out there. Speaker 1: 05:49 And George had Gomez says that she comes from an impoverished background. How did she get into politics? Gomez describes herself as a sort Speaker 2: 05:58 Of grassroots community organizer, you know, who grew up in Barrio Logan. Um, as you heard, they're heard in the story you referenced, you know, came from a low income household. And she thinks that those experiences, you know, growing up in that community help her relate to voters. And some of those struggles that they're going with, um, she ended up going on to work for the environmental health coalition, uh, where she, you know, championed climate justice, she says, um, and she was also on some, you know, redevelopment planning committees and district nine, uh, which is the current city council seat that she serves. And she just thinks that, you know, the next step to help people is going to Congress. Speaker 1: 06:29 What about the comparative war chests of these two candidates? It's been reported that the already wealthy Sarah Jacobs has gotten a lot of Jacob's family donations and has been helped by wealthy family, friends as well. What do we know about that? Speaker 2: 06:43 Yeah, so we know that a fundraising deadline just passed and we should have by the, by the middle of the month, the most updated numbers. But if you go to the FEC data, if you go to their website, you can look at both candidates and see how much they've raised. Uh, Sarah Jacobs, uh, has raised a total of three and a half million dollars. Now that's through reporting period through the end of June. And if you look at Sarah Jacobs, um, out of that three and a half million dollars, um, 3 million, 2.9 million to be exact, um, is coming directly from her. So she's, uh, self-funding a lot of her campaign, um, has raised more than half a million dollars in individual contributions. Um, and yeah, you sort of hit on at Georgia Gomez with a lot less contributions. I mean, we're talking 1.1 million, so I'm at least through the end of June, almost a $2 million fund fundraising advantage for the Jacob's campaign. Um, obviously there are a lot of that money coming from Jacobs herself. Speaker 1: 07:31 Tell us about endorsements who's supporting for instance, Georgette Gomez. Speaker 2: 07:36 Yeah. So Georgia Gomez has a wide variety of support. I mean, we're talking from the state democratic party, California nurses association, and number of unions, um, including FCIU California, one of the big ones, um, but also some really big names. So we're talking about, you know, senators, Elizabeth Warren, Senator Bernie Sanders, um, also a broad coalition of a local elected support, um, Congressman Juan Vargas, assemblymen, Todd, Gloria, somebody woman Loraina Gonzalez, as well as the number of local city council members and mayors throughout the County. Um, and Jacobs similar, you know, she's the, uh, has support. There has been some sort of controversy with Jacob's using the phrase endorsed by California Democrats, but she says, look, I'm endorsed by the current California Lieutenant governor. Um, she's endorsed by Democrats from California. So she argues that there's really no beef there. Um, also for Jacobs, uh, Congresswoman Katie Porter, who's made a lot of headlines endorses her, um, some other representatives throughout the country. Um, and in groups like mom demands action, uh, the East County chamber of commerce, democratic woman's club, um, and Jacobs also has a handful of city council members from across the County, endorsing her Speaker 1: 08:37 Has retiring Congressman Susan Davis endorsed either candidate. Speaker 2: 08:42 She has not endorsed either candidate Maureen. And we saw that in the primary as well, too, when they were more than a dozen people running for this seat, you know, people were wondering is an endorsement going to come and know. And she basically through a spokesperson says that she doesn't think that the person leaving, you know, that the incumbent should decide her successor. Speaker 1: 08:59 Now that 40% undecided that you mentioned in this district, it's, it's significant our Gomez and Jacob said to meet in any forums or virtual forums that might help voters decide. Speaker 2: 09:12 Yeah, Maureen, they have been doing a number of forums just in the last few weeks and it's been increasing as we get closer, you know, a month away now from the November election. And, uh, we do know that they have another one coming up on October 19th. That's hosted by the league of women voters. That's at 7:00 PM. Um, and that's going to be a virtual zoom one. And it's, it's sort of an interesting to see these, these zoom debates, seeing, you know, what the candidate has put behind them, um, where they're doing it in their home, if they're doing in their office doing it outside. Uh, so that's at 7:00 PM and that's on October 19th hosted by the league of women voters. Speaker 1: 09:43 Matt, would you call this a contentious race? Speaker 2: 09:46 I would say that it's getting contentious. I mean, if you talk to political scientists, I mean, there's two Democrats running in a highly democratic district. So they say that these two Democrats are going to try to, you know, distinguish themselves as much as they can from each other, especially when they have some overlapping positions. Now we saw just recently the Georgette Gomez campaign put out a sort of attack ad also linking Jacobs to Trump's tax cuts for corporations. So we might see more of that as it goes along. And I talked to some of those political scientists and they say, you might not see some of that come out of the Jacobs campaign if they really do have such a big lead in this race. Although we know that was just one poll of 500 people last month, um, we don't know what their in poli what their internal polling shows. So it'd be really interesting to see as we get down here in the stretch, um, what the sort of polling shows, and if we see some, uh, attack ads or some mudslinging, so to speak between these two candidates, Speaker 1: 10:34 I've been speaking with KPBS reporter, Matt Hoffman and Matt. Thank you. Thanks Maureen.