If Democrats can flip the District 5 seat on the County Board of Supervisors, they would have a supermajority on the once firmly conservative board. Kyle Krahel is the Democrat running against two recognizable North County Republicans. He made his case for the job on Politically Speaking this week.
A transcript of the conversation is below.
Safchik: The primary election is 62 days away, and early voting starts in five weeks. So we’re continuing our coverage of the County Supervisor District 5 race. It’s the seat long held by Jim Desman, a Republican stalwart. But voter registration has swung blue in that district. If Democrats can flip the seat, they would have a supermajority on the board, allowing them to steamroll budget items impacting the whole county.
We’ve spoken to the two notable Republicans on the ticket: Vista Mayor John Franklin and San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones. Today we hear from Democrat Kyle Krahel, former chair of the San Diego Democratic Party and Congressman Mike Levin’s deputy chief of staff.
Thank you for being here.
Krahel: Thank you Joey. Excited to be here.
Safchik: Do you think Democrats have a real shot at flipping the seat?
Krahel: I think we really do. North County has changed a lot. But also just what folks are feeling and hitting, getting hit with in this country right now, especially because of the Republican policies in Washington, D.C. Things are just so expensive. I really don’t need to say the price of gas is exploding. And folks are looking for an alternative that isn’t the same divisive MAGA politics. They want results. They want folks who are going to focus on their community getting things done, bringing down the cost of living by bringing down the cost of housing and our energy bills and our water bills. And that’s why I’m running. Because I was born and raised in North County, San Diego, and I’ve seen prices rise. I’ve seen that it’s too hard for even our regular firefighters and nurses, our teachers, to afford to live in the communities that they serve. That’s just not right. And so I want to try to make sure that we have a county board that listens to the community, and it deals with those problems and gets real results.
Safchik: Why are you the person for the job?
Krahel: You know, as somebody who has both public sector and private sector experience, I have worked for Congressman Mike Levin, but I was also chair of the Oceanside Planning Commission, but also in the private sector. My family had a restaurant business for 50 years in North County, Quail’s Inn Lake San Marcos, for those who have been around a while. You know, that really taught me the values of hard work and giving back to your community. And those are the values I want to bring to this role.
Safchik: What would it mean for Democrats to have a supermajority on this board?
Krahel: I think that there’s a lot of challenges that we have in our county. We have a homelessness crisis. We know that we have a housing crisis, but we also are now seeing a health care crisis, a manufactured health care crisis. Unfortunately, again, from the policies that Republicans and D.C. have put upon us. You know, they cut taxes for the rich campaign donors.
And in order to do that, they paid for it by cutting health care for so many millions of Americans who deserve and need that health care. Unfortunately, that means that the county is going to have to backfill a lot of that health care. And that’s going to cost some, some funds. And we’re going to have to figure out how we can adjust our budget, try to streamline things, find efficiencies, and cut spending that’s wasteful. But then double down on the services that the county needs to provide.
Safchik: What is your top priority?
Krahel: Reducing the cost of living. We need to build more housing. We need, the county needs, to make more affordable housing. But also just streamlining permanent approvals. You know, doing some kinds of landlord incentives, thinking creatively about how we can just bring down the cost of housing for folks. And that means building more, especially in North County. We, you know, definitely understand that’s what’s going to be part of the solution. We also need infrastructure investment in North County. And that’s something that does separate me from my Republican opponents. I can work with others on the planning Commission. I was one of the only Democrats, but I was chosen by my fellow commissioners to be chair because I worked collaboratively. We can disagree without being disagreeable. And that’s what I want to bring to the county board is working collaboratively to find the solutions to these problems.
Safchik: Does increased Democratic voter registration in North County in this district? Tell the whole story, or do you still have a real fight ahead of you, especially when it comes to name recognition?
Krahel: Yeah, well, this is a nonpartisan seat. So while obviously we have a very partisan polarized politics right now, I want to be a county supervisor for everyone. So that’s not just Democrats. And it’s not just Republicans. We have a lot of independent voters, no-party preference voters. But talking to those folks, you know, I’m out in the community knocking on doors and having house parties and, you know, really getting out there to the community, this very large district. From Borrego Springs to Valley Center to the Oceanside. And what I hear from folks that are not really with either party is that they want something different than what we’ve been given, especially from the Republicans in Washington, D.C., and the politics as usual, a division and fear and hate. They want something that’s going to get things done, real results for our community. That’s what I want to do.
Safchik: There are some 90,000 independent voters in this district. How do you win them over?
Krahel: You speak to what they actually need, and that’s why I go out and actually listen. So I listen and then I get feedback on that. And that’s what I’ve been doing with these house parties, by knocking on doors. We’re talking to regular folks on the street figuring out what their issues are, which, as we all know, the cost of living, the price of energy, the price of water. And it’s just so darned expensive to live here. And that’s what I really want to fight to address.
Safchik: Okay. Tell me about your concrete plans to do that. How do you make living here more affordable for people?
Krahel: Absolutely. So water is one of the key things, I think, especially in North County. We have a traditional agricultural industry that is very vibrant and powerful and, you know, helpful for our community and our diverse economy. But it’s being strangled by the cost of water and then just regular folks on the businesses. And I think, you know, we’ve done a lot to invest in our resilience and supply of water. And that’s smart. But we now have more than we necessarily need. And I’m excited to see that the county water authority is starting to actually try to sell some of that excess water. I think that’s a really smart thing to do. I want to double down on that. I also want to try to address the rising cost of energy. We need to be actually investing in the diverse portfolio of energy sources, not just the old school fossil fuels. And unfortunately, again, the Republicans in DC have choked off any permitting, not just incentives, but any permitting for wind and solar. We know solar works here. We all see it around and we all use it. And so it’s silly to be cutting off something that we know works and is cheaper than fossil fuels. And then of course, housing. We need to be, like I said, streamlining permit approvals. We shouldn’t have duplicative, environmental reviews if, you know, the state laws are already, doing the environmental review up to a good standard. We don’t need to do a second one just to make it harder. But we need to make sure that our general plan is updated so that it does allow for the housing that fits with the communities and the infrastructure that we have. And also is, of course, careful about wildfire resilience.
Safchik: You are up against two recognizable North County mayors. Their recent experience is in hyper local government. Yours is on a national congressional scale. How has that prepared you for this gig?
Krahel: Absolutely. I’m not a career politician. I haven’t been at this for a decade or more. But I have been, like you said, closely working with our federal partners, our congressman Mike Levin, as well as our state and local governments. I’ve worked with both mayors in that time. And, you know, what it takes is being able to work at all levels of government. And that’s what I get to bring to this, is working hand-in-glove with Congressman Levin, with our state assembly and state senators to be able to bring the solutions, because a lot of these problems are so big, it’s not going to be solved at the county. It’s going to take the state and the federal government coming together. Just like with our beaches where we helped get sand on the beach in Encinitas and Oceanside when I was working for Congressman Levin, we get the trains running on the low sand rail, even though it’s, you know, threatened that took the federal government, the state and the local government working together. I won’t have the county being a leading voice in that.
Safchik: Especially in this political climate, how much do federal policies trickle down and reach the county?
Krahel: And that’s where we both see the unfortunate, immigration raids going on to non-criminal, folks who are undocumented, scaring our communities and breaking trust in local law enforcement that’s taking so many decades to build. And that’s one example. The other is, of course, these massive cuts that are coming from the Republicans giving massive tax breaks to their rich campaign donors. And so that’s going to mean us locally having to fill that gap, whether it’s nonprofits, religious groups, the county providing health care, preventative services, mental health, behavioral health, those things are all at jeopardy right now because of what’s happening in DC. We’re gonna have to fight back here.
Safchik: Where do you stand on potential county tax increases that are being floated around, like a sales tax increase or a property transfer tax?
Krahel: I’m really not, you know, for the property tax transfer tax. I don’t really like the idea of making it harder for us to be able to increase the volume and velocity of housing sales. I’m open to revenue measures, but I first want to cut spending. I think that we have efficiencies and modernization at the county government. It’s a sclerotic bureaucracy that’s really been very similarly run for 30, 40 years now. We have a chance, especially with a supermajority of Democrats, to reform that county government, to reform the ideology of how business is done at the county so that it is modernized and it is more efficient, we can find spending there. That’s wasteful. Cut that spending. That’s what we should do first. Otherwise, you know, county sales tax. I will leave that to the voters to decide.
Safchik: If you’re elected. And the three other Democrats on the board support that property transfer tax, would you be comfortable opposing it not being in lockstep?
Krahel: I would need to look at anything I want to say, you know, in the abstract, of course. But generally it’s something that if it’s going to restrict the supply of housing, that’s only going to raise costs on folks. It has a knock on effect. So, but I’m open. I don’t know the solutions to everything. I come in trying to understand what are folks’ problems and then working with everybody, stakeholders, experts to try to craft solutions that actually can solve those problems. So I don’t come in knowing the right answer, but I want to try to find it.
Safchik: How do you feel about the board recently digging into those rainy day funds, purportedly to counteract some of these federal funding cuts?
Krahel: I think we are in a rock and a hard place because of the Republican cuts, for the tax cuts for billionaires. And so we do need to find creative ways to be able to backfill some of these things. I think that we need to make sure that we have our basic needed rainy day funds. Every city, every jurisdiction has their own rainy day funds. That’s a basic premise of good governance. I’m all in favor of that. Also, investing in longer term capital improvements for our infrastructure. But I also think that the county of San Diego has had extra draconian reserve requirements that have been in place since we had an all Republican board for the same people for ten, 15 years for term limits, who kind of didn’t want to spend money on certain things they didn’t like. And that’s why we’re in this problem with homelessness crisis. We underinvested in mental health and behavioral health because we were saving too much or stolen away too much of our taxpayer money, in the reserve. And now we can unlock some of that money to be able to deal with these crises.
Safchik: Is your party’s message on the cost of living strong enough to convince voters to vote for you?
Krahel: I think so. I think that people will see it every day with the price of the pump. They see it every month with their electricity bills and obviously their rent. And so, you know, people are looking for a change right now. They looked for a change last election and they were promised they would have their bills go down on day one. We haven’t seen that. I think the Democrat Party is focused on how we can actually address people’s cost of living, and we’ve talked about some of those things, but an increase in the production of housing, lowering energy costs and trying to control water costs.
Safchik: Democrats are in charge of the county right now. It is very expensive to live here. People don’t feel that trending downwards yet. Why should they trust that a Democratic supermajority would change that?
Krahel: You know, we’ve had a lot of turnover on the board, as you know, over the last 6 or 7 years. So while technically there’s been 2 or 3 Democrats on the board, it hasn’t been the same folks. And so, well, everybody’s doing a good job. That turnover, you know, takes a while. The ship of state moves slowly, as they say. And so it takes a while for us to actually have a functioning majority that can actually try to change some of these things that, like I said, have been in place for decades. Right? They’re not going to overnight flip that switch. And so there’s a lot of exciting things that they’re trying to do at the county that I do support, that are going to bring down the cost of living, but it’s going to take time. And it’s also changing the bureaucracy of the county government, and its focus on what it actually does in terms of trying to actually help people instead of just kind of the same business as usual.
Safchik: You mentioned that long time conservative stronghold on the board. A lot of people still associate that with San Diego, a supermajority for Democrats. This would not be your grandpa San Diego. Why do you see that as a good thing?
Krahel: Yeah, I mean, my grandpa was a Republican, and he raised me, with the values of hard work, entrepreneurship. And I still carry those values with me. I think those are the values now that the Democratic Party and folks actually embody versus the grifting that you see of the Carl DeMaios and the Donald Trumps. I think that’s the real change, is that you’ve seen the Democratic Party take up a lot of those old values that are traditional American values when you see the Republican Party stray from its traditional values.
Safchik: What role would you in this seat be playing as resistance to the Trump administration?
Krahel: I think we need to be protecting our communities from unlawful attacks by rogue agencies like Ice coming in and stealing people off the streets and scaring children. I’ve seen the county step up with legal assistance for folks who have no criminal record other than other paperwork has some problems. I think it’s great the county is fighting that. But we can also advocate, make sure that we’re joining lawsuits, when things are appropriate, when they’re trying to seize voter rolls and try to rig the next election because their policies are so unpopular. That’s something that the county has a registrar of voters. We should be fighting back against those attempts to try to steal those voter rolls and mess up the next election.
Safchik: If people watch this interview and they remember one thing about you, what do you hope it will be?
Krahel: Well, I’m a Democrat who’s going to lower prices for everybody so we can afford to live here in San Diego County.
Safchik: Thank you so much for being here.
Krahel: Thank you so much. Joey.