Four San Diego City Council Seats Head to November After a Crowded June Primary

SAN DIEGO —

Four of San Diego’s nine City Council seats are on the ballot this year, and the results of the June primary have already reshaped who will be making budget, land-use, and infrastructure decisions for the city’s next four years.

Districts 2, 4, 6, and 8 all held primaries on June 2, with the top two vote-getters in each race advancing to the November 3 general election. Two of the four seats are open due to term limits — Jennifer Campbell in District 2 and Vivian Moreno in District 8 — while incumbents Henry Foster III in District 4 and Kent Lee in District 6 are seeking reelection.

District 2, which covers Clairemont, Midway, Mission Beach, Mission Bay Park, Old Town, Ocean Beach, and Point Loma, drew the most crowded field of the cycle: seven candidates competing for an open seat in a district that has become a flashpoint over the city’s bonus accessory dwelling unit program, after multi-unit ADU projects appeared in historically low-density neighborhoods like Clairemont. Richard Bailey, a former two-term mayor of Coronado, held a commanding early lead in preliminary results and advances to the general election.

District 4, covering southeastern San Diego communities including Encanto, Emerald Hills, Paradise Hills, Skyline Hills, and Valencia Park, was a quieter race by comparison, but incumbent Henry Foster III trailed challenger Abraham in early returns — a result that, if it holds through certification, would put a sitting councilmember on the defensive heading into a fall runoff against his own district’s voters.

District 6 had the smallest field of the four races, with only two candidates on the primary ballot. Incumbent Kent Lee led that contest, positioning him as the strongest of the four incumbents and challengers heading into November, though a two-candidate primary still requires a formal runoff under the city’s charter.

District 8, the open seat left by Moreno’s term limit, saw candidate Martinez leading the field in early returns. The district’s boundary runs along the US-Mexico border and carries two persistent structural issues that will likely define its general election campaign: cross-border pollution flowing through the Tijuana River watershed, a problem that requires coordination between city, county, and federal authorities that residents say has been inconsistent at best, and the legacy of underinvestment in flood infrastructure that contributed to the catastrophic Southcrest flooding of January 2024. Many residents in the district say the city remains unprepared for another extreme weather event of that scale.

Taken together, the four races reflect a City Council election shaped less by partisan alignment — San Diego’s municipal elections are officially nonpartisan — and more by neighborhood-level infrastructure grievances: housing density and ADU enforcement in District 2, incumbent accountability in District 4, continuity in District 6, and climate resilience and cross-border coordination in District 8.

For a city carrying a multibillion-dollar annual budget and chronic capital-infrastructure backlogs, the composition of this Council matters well beyond the individual districts involved. Four new or returning members will help decide how San Diego prioritizes stormwater capital projects, affordable housing mandates, and the next round of budget negotiations at a moment when the city continues to face structural deficit pressure.

Money will follow these races into the fall, as it typically does in San Diego’s council contests. The open seats in Districts 2 and 8 in particular tend to draw significant independent expenditure spending from real estate, labor, and business-aligned committees, each with a direct financial stake in how the next Council handles zoning reform, prevailing-wage requirements on city contracts, and the pace of infrastructure bonding. Voters in all four districts should expect a wave of mailers and digital ads between now and November as those interests position themselves ahead of budget negotiations that will begin almost immediately after the new Council is sworn in.

The Navarro Report will follow all four races through the November 3 general election, along with the fiscal priorities each winning candidate brings to the dais.

— Jose E. Navarro, The Navarro Report

Human-Directed AI Journalism: Research, analysis, and editorial direction by the author. Drafted in partnership with Claude AI (Anthropic).