The Navarro Report | San Diego
August 1, 2026
San Diegans will find a fuller ballot than usual when they vote on November 3, with four City Council seats, a County Board of Supervisors seat, and a competitive congressional district all set for runoffs following June’s primary, in an election cycle regional Democratic Party leaders have already begun organizing around during a recent visit to San Diego to launch their midterm push.
The most immediate races for city residents are the four contested San Diego City Council seats: Districts 2, 4, 6, and 8, representing half of the council’s even-numbered districts, as required under the city’s staggered election cycle. In District 2, covering Clairemont, Midway, Mission Beach, Mission Bay Park, Ocean Beach, Old Town, and Point Loma, term-limited incumbent Jennifer Campbell’s departure has produced an open-seat race between Richard Bailey and Nicole Crosby, who finished within roughly one percentage point of each other in the primary, 34.9% to 33.7%, out of seven original candidates.
District 4, covering Chollas View, Rolando Park, Emerald Hills, Encanto, Lincoln Park, and other southeastern neighborhoods, has emerged as the closest race on the ballot. Incumbent Henry Foster III, seeking a second full term after winning a March 2024 special election, is being challenged by Martha Abraham, a nurse who ran a campaign sharply critical of City Hall’s handling of catastrophic January 2024 flooding in the district. The primary result came down to a matter of dozens of votes between the two, underscoring how competitive the November runoff is likely to be.
District 6, covering Kearny Mesa, Mira Mesa, Scripps Ranch, Sorrento Valley, and University City, is the only one of the four races featuring an incumbent with a clear primary lead. Kent Lee, first elected in 2022, took roughly 59% of the primary vote against challenger Mark Powell, a former County Board of Education member, positioning Lee as the favorite heading into November, though Powell will still appear on the runoff ballot.
District 8, covering Barrio Logan, San Ysidro, Otay Mesa, and other South Bay communities, is an open-seat race following term-limited incumbent Vivian Moreno’s departure. San Ysidro School Board member Antonio Martinez led a crowded primary field with roughly 29% of the vote, followed by Gerardo Ramirez, the district’s current council chief of staff, at roughly 26%, setting up a runoff between two candidates with deep roots in the district’s existing political infrastructure.
Beyond the city, San Diego County voters will also decide the County Board of Supervisors’ District 5 seat, covering North County communities from the Oceanside coast through the Palomar Mountain range to Ocotillo Wells. The seat is open because Supervisor Jim Desmond is term-limited and is instead running for Congress. San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones led a five-candidate primary field with 41% of the vote and will face Democratic Party official Kyle Krahel, who edged Vista Mayor John Franklin for the second runoff spot by a narrow margin. “I’m grateful for the support voters have given me in the primary,” Jones said in a statement after the primary, adding that she looks forward to “uniting voters to win the election in November so we can bring common-sense back to county government and reduce the cost of living in San Diego.” The outcome carries particular weight for the board’s composition: Democrats currently hold a 3-2 majority, and a Krahel win would extend that to 4-1, while a Jones win would preserve Republican representation on a board that has grown increasingly Democratic since 2020.
The region’s highest-profile race sits above the local ballot entirely. California’s 48th Congressional District, reshaped by last November’s Proposition 50 redistricting measure, has become a genuine toss-up following Republican Rep. Darrell Issa’s retirement. Desmond, the term-limited county supervisor, led the primary field for the Republican nomination, while San Diego City Councilmember Marni Von Wilpert emerged as the leading Democratic candidate from a field that also included former Obama administration staffer Brandon Riker and 2020 nominee Ammar Campa-Najjar. Proposition 50’s redraw was designed to create additional Democratic-leaning seats statewide in response to a mid-decade Texas redistricting push, and Democratic strategists view the 48th as one of their clearer pickup opportunities this cycle, a calculation reflected in the California Democratic Party’s decision to hold its recent statewide strategy gathering in San Diego rather than a Northern California location.
Rounding out the ballot, San Diego voters will also weigh in on statewide races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, insurance commissioner, and superintendent of public instruction, along with any local ballot measures that qualify before the county’s August 7 filing deadline for general-election contests. Turnout patterns from the June primary, in which competitive local races drew closer margins than in recent cycles, suggest election officials and campaigns alike are bracing for a November count that could stretch on for days in the tightest districts, much as it did in June’s District 4 city council race.
For San Diego voters trying to track which races actually affect them, the practical takeaway is straightforward: everyone in the city votes on the statewide contests, but only residents of Council Districts 2, 4, 6, and 8 will see a city council race on their ballot, and only North County residents within District 5’s boundaries will decide the Board of Supervisors contest. The 48th Congressional District cuts across multiple jurisdictions and will appear on ballots throughout the district regardless of city council district lines.
San Diego’s voter registration numbers help explain why several of these races remain genuinely competitive despite the county’s overall Democratic lean. Countywide registration sits at roughly 40.5% Democratic and 27.5% Republican, but that advantage is unevenly distributed: District 2 leans Democratic by roughly two to one, while North County districts including much of Supervisorial District 5 lean more conservative, which is why a Republican-versus-Republican or Republican-versus-Democrat matchup there remains a genuine toss-up in a county that votes Democratic overall. That unevenness is also why both parties are treating this cycle’s down-ballot races as more than routine off-year contests — Democrats see a path to a supermajority on the Board of Supervisors and a pickup in the 48th Congressional District, while Republicans are focused on holding North County’s remaining seats of influence against that trend.
With the county’s filing deadline for general-election contests set for August 7, a handful of additional local measures and special district races could still be finalized in the coming days, adding to what is already shaping up as one of the more consequential fall ballots San Diego voters have faced in recent cycles.
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