Photos: Ron Nehring (L) and Gavin Newsom (R)
By Miriam Raftery
May 13, 2014 (San Diego’s East County)--Seven challengers are running against Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom. The most prominent challenger is Ron Nehring, a familiar name to many San Diegans. Both leading contenders have long political careers on polar opposite sides of the political spectrum—and both have been lightning rods for controversy.
Those controversies range from philandering to piracy.
Nehring has served as Chair of the San Diego County Republican Party and the California Republican Party, as well as member of the Grossmont Union High School District board of trustees. He has also served on the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection. He is running on a conservative platform of lower taxes and maintaining Prop 13 protections. He says he wants to build more prisons but does not indicate where he would obtain those funds while also lowering taxes. He wants to see more competition in healthcare and supports repeal of the Affordable HealthCare Act, or Obamacare, at the federal level.
Gavin Newsom served as San Francisco’s youngest mayor and as San Francisco County Supervisor before his election as Lieutenant Governor in 2010. He previously started several successful businesses. As Mayor, Newsom pushed through universal health care to cover 80% of the city’s uninsured people and enacted California’s highest minimum wage for city residents, also making headlines for granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples. As Lieutenant Governor, he has advocated for environmental protections, clean energy, protection of public lands, and a ban on offshore oil drilling. He also chairs the California Commission for Economic Development, which has been instrumental in creating jobs in clean tech and green tech industries, among others.
Newsom’s controversies involve his personal life. In 2007, news reports revealed that Newsom had a romantic affair in 2005 with the wife of his former deputy chief of staff and campaign manager. Newsom and his wife subsequently divorced. He later sought treatment for alcohol abuse. Newsom has since remarried and is the father of three children.
Nehring , a protégé of Grover Norquist (GOP strategist famed for proposing to “shrink government to a size where we can drown it in a bathtub”) worked with Norquist at the Americans for Tax Reform. A Center for Policy Initiatives report titled Target San Diego: The Right Wing Assault on Urban Democracy and Smart Government identified Nehring as “an important piece on Norquist’s chessboard” with a goal of radically cutting government funding, weakening organized labor and moving aggressively to privatize public services.
As a school board trustee in the Grossmont District, Nehring, who had no children, sought to convert all schools in the GUHSD to charters. That plan was nixed by fellow conservatives on the board after it was revealed that the major funding backers were big alcohol and other groups deemed not child-friendly
Nehring has also drawn criticism for his appointments. He named Tony Krvaric to replace himself as chair of the San Diego Republican Party, perhaps without a background that that should have revealed Krvaric had co-founded Fairlight, an organization of software crackers in Sweden that grew into an international video and software piracy group described by Interpol, a global law enforcement organization, as the largest international software and video piracy ring on the planet. Kvraric later established operations for the group in the U.S., where some members were arrested by the F.B.I.
In addition, Nehring appointed Michael Kamburowski, an Australian, as the state party’s chief operating officer; Kamburowski resigned after revelations that he was ordered deported and had been mailed for visa violations. The UT reported in the past that fundraising for the state GOP lagged under leadership of Nehring.
If you want more choices in this race, the Democrats have one other candidate, scientist/businessman Eric Korevaar. Republicans have two additional candidates, include David Fennell, a Republican entrepreneur, and George Yang, a Republican father/software developer, according to the Registrar of Voters website.
There are also several minor party candidates: Jena Goodman, a student and Green party candidate, Amos Johnson, security guard and Peace & Freedom party member, and Alan Reynolds, a commissioner/engineer/businessman with Americans Elect, an independent party. Reynolds states, "I am endorsed by 2 other centrist/moderate parties, the Reform Party and the Modern Whig Party."
