Nasty mailers, big campaign donations and a battle to be the outsider candidate are spicing up the runoff between two Democrats trying to represent San Diego’s South Bay neighborhoods on the City Council.
The contest between Antonio Martinez, a San Ysidro schools trustee, and Gerardo Ramirez, chief of staff to outgoing District 8 Councilmember Vivian Moreno, is also dividing workers at City Hall and organized labor at large.
Martinez, who finished first in the June primary for District 8 and has been endorsed by the county Democratic Party, says he’s the outsider because he’s just a school board member while Ramirez works at City Hall.
“I’m not a bureaucrat,” Martinez said. “He has spent his whole career working for the city of San Diego.”
And Martinez stresses that Ramirez’s tenure has spanned the city’s adoption of paid parking at Balboa Park, an ongoing budget crisis, controversy over trash fees and many other things that have been unpopular with constituents.
“He wants a promotion, but his office doesn’t have a positive record of getting things done and responding to constituents,” Martinez said.
Ramirez says Martinez’s 14 years on the school board and three City Council runoff elections over the last nine years make him an insider.
Stressing his own age, Ramirez says he’s essentially an outsider with a fresh perspective — he is 31, Martinez 41.
“We need a new generation of leadership — not the status quo,” Ramirez said. “Does change come from electing a failed politician?”
Martinez contends that a win for Ramirez could result in more than two decades straight of District 8 being led by essentially the same allies: After David Alvarez held the council seat for eight years, he was succeeded for another eight years by his former staffer Vivian Moreno, who could now herself be succeeded by her staffer Ramirez.
“We need fresh ideas — 24 years is a problem,” said Martinez, who lost to Moreno in runoffs in 2018 and 2022.
Ramirez says the 24-years idea is bogus, contending he has a dramatically different background and perspective than his predecessors.
“They didn’t come up the way I did,” said Ramirez, noting his background as a low-income farm worker.
The race has also featured some aggressive mailers. They include one from supporters of Ramirez that’s been criticized as focusing on Martinez’s size, and one from supporters of Martinez that uses artificial intelligence to portray Ramirez as tight with President Donald Trump.
The mailer targeting Martinez features a photo in which he looks especially big, next to three uses of the word “big” in all capital letters. “BIG disaster. BIG debt. BIG dysfunction,” it says of school district finances.
“My opponent is desperate,” Martinez said.
A separate mailer opposing Ramirez shows an AI-generated image of Trump whispering in Ramirez’s ear with the slogan “Republicans have their candidates.” The mailer is based partly on Ramirez’s endorsement by the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and the right-leaning Lincoln Club Business League.
Ramirez says Martinez supporters can’t find any genuine negatives about him so they’re resorting to calling him a “make American great again” Republican. He says voters should be impressed that he has such well-rounded support, including from community leaders, business interests and labor unions.
In the San Diego City Council race in District 8, outside political committees have sent negative mailers attacking both candidates, Antonio Martinez and Gerardo Ramirez. (Courtesy)
Martinez says Ramirez is so tight with developers and business groups that he is a “DINO,” as Martinez put it — a Democrat in name only.
Ramirez notes that he is a lifelong Democrat who grew up poor in San Ysidro, worked on farms and then applied for a job with Alvarez, a liberal Democrat, when he was a student at San Diego State.
Another key issue in the race has become a controversial new landfill proposed for Otay Mesa.
A committee supporting Ramirez has received two large contributions — $75,000 and $200,000 — from another committee supported by the company pursuing the landfill, but he says those contributions don’t mean he would support the project. The first donation was first reported by inewsource.
“I don’t support any landfill — or any project — that will be toxic for our community,” said Ramirez, stressing that the South Bay is already dealing with a sewage crisis and pollution from car emissions at the border. “We are marinating in environmental issues here in District 8, and a landfill will only make it worse.”
Martinez, who strongly opposes the proposed landfill, said Ramirez knows that you can’t accept that kind of financial support without some payback in the future.
“Anyone that donates that amount of money expects you to support their project,” he said. “That’s essentially a commitment.”
The hotly contested race has also divided city employee labor unions, with Martinez getting endorsements and financial support from firefighters and lifeguards while Ramirez is supported by police officers, white-collar workers and blue-collar workers.
That divide also goes beyond City Hall.
Martinez has been endorsed by the San Diego Building and Construction Trades and the region’s largest labor organization, the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council.
But Ramirez has been endorsed by some smaller unions and a key construction union, Local 89 of the Laborers International Union of North America.
District 8 includes Sherman Heights, Logan Heights, San Ysidro, Otay Mesa, Nestor, Palm City and nearby areas.
In the June primary, Martinez took first by a comfortable margin in the four-candidate race. He got 5,375 votes, followed by 4,636 for Ramirez and 4,334 for third-place finisher Venus Molina.
Martinez and Ramirez has each drawn more than $250,000 in support from outside committees as of the last donation disclosures in late September. And those numbers continue to grow daily with additional contributions.
Ramirez lives in Otay Mesa. Martinez lives in San Ysidro.