The race this year for San Diego County Board of Supervisors, District 3, pits first-term incumbent Terra Lawson-Remer against challenger Kevin Faulconer. Lawson-Remer has name recognition from her first term, but Faulconer, a two-term mayor of the city of San Diego, is also well known.
Faulconer’s successful reelection as mayor suggests that voters approved of him. Terra has yet to prove that point.
It helps to be personally liked by the voters. In public, Lawson-Remer projects a confident swagger; one-on-one, she can be prickly and argumentative. Interestingly, pols are people, too, and they indulge in chatter about their contemporaries. Some of her fellow officeholders say that Terra is unpleasant and abrupt, seeming to miss normal social cues.
As the incumbent, Lawson-Remer’s record is fair game. It wouldn’t be right to assign all the problems of the county to her, but she’s been in office for the past four years at a time when circumstances for many have gotten worse. How do voters answer the question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago”?
Housing affordability has become notoriously worse. Lawson-Remer’s contribution to the problem relates to her majority’s decision to maintain constraints on new construction in outlying areas of the county. Easing those could favorably affect the supply/demand balance for housing in the county, cooling prices a bit.
But Lawson-Remer and her allies seem to believe their esoteric concerns about “sprawl” are more important than the immediate housing needs of the community.
Homelessness is another major concern. Faulconer had success with some practical measures when he was mayor, a point which he emphasizes when contrasting his record with Terra’s. Lawson-Remer’s campaign website acknowledges the homelessness problem but merely presents a litany of things she wants to see done in the future.
That begs the question, what has she done for us lately when she was in the majority?
According to Faulconer, not much. At a recent candidate forum in Carlsbad (hosted by The Coast News and others), he confronted Lawson-Remer, pointing to her record with the Regional Task Force on Homelessness.
According to the RTFHSD website, “The Regional Task Force on Homelessness is the San Diego Continuum of Care (CoC), designated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)”.
Faulconer’s accusation is deadly. “Terra Lawson-Remer is the Vice-Chair of the board designated to promote community wide commitment to the goal of ending homelessness. And as the county’s representative she’s attended zero meetings — she’s not serious about tackling the most pressing issue our county faces.”
Lawson-Remer was caught flat-footed, a sputtering mess, but has pushed back, claiming that Faulconer lied about her record. But, as recently reported by the Voice of San Diego news website, “Tony Manolatos, a spokesperson for the continuum and nonprofit collectively best known as the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, confirmed Lawson-Remer hasn’t ‘personally attended a meeting.’”
Faulconer is dismissive of her denials: “Terra Lawson-Remer is lying and gaslighting the public about her role on the regional task force on homelessness.”
The record also shows that Lawson-Remer’s no-show problem isn’t confined to the CoC. According to information gathered by others from published minutes, Terra has missed 14 meetings of the Board of Supervisors and repeatedly arrived late. In 2024, she was on time just 4 times, and in 2023, out of 53 meetings, she was late for 17.
It’s all on tape and in the record. And it gets worse. Lawson-Remer was absent from 39% of all committee and sub-committee meetings and missed 74% of all committee and subcommittee votes. Nice work if you can get it.
Due to her supervisor role, Lawson-Remer’s chronic absenteeism is apparent at the other boards in which she participates. Lawson-Remer was the primary Board representative on the SANDAG Regional Planning Committee during 2021-23. She did not attend a single meeting in 2022 or 2023.
On the San Diego Air Pollution Control District Board, Terra missed 60% of the meetings in 2022, 100% in 2023, and 100% thus far in 2024. She also had zero attendance at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station Fuel Removal Committee, North San Diego County Transit Development Board, and San Diego County Water Authority. At San Diego Community Power, she missed six out of ten meetings as a regular member and 13 of 20 after being named Vice-Chair.
According to govsalaries.com, Terra Lawson-Remer earned $287,116 as a county Supervisor in 2023. Given those big bucks, people can expect her to show up for work. With so much absenteeism, it’s reasonable for voters to conclude that they’re not getting their money’s worth.
