SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Many San Diegans looking to cast their ballots on Super Tuesday are deciding who will be the next mayor of the city of San Diego.
In the 2024 city mayoral race, there are four candidates looking to unseat incumbent Mayor Todd Gloria: Dan Smiechowski, Genevieve Jones-Wright, Jane Glasson, and Larry Turner.
From housing to homelessness, to the recent Jan. 22 floods, there are a lot on voters' minds; ABC 10News asked each candidate the same question: If elected mayor, what would be the first issue to tackle and how?
Here’s what they said they will do:
Smiechowski said, "We have a plan not to sell anymore real estate. We will lease our land."
Smiechowski is independent and not affiliated with a party. He is a realtor and former triathlete. He has new ideas for tackling homelessness, including building a "Fifteen Minute City" and having small landlords shelter the unhoused community.
“For my first 60 days in office, we will stop the sale of all city-owned land, put all city government on Social Security; initiate a hiring freeze on all city positions that have salary excess of $150,000," Smiechowski said.
Democrat public interest attorney and nonprofit executive Jones-Wright also is looking to tackle homelessness, but with the recent Jan. 22 floods that destroyed her home neighborhood in Encanto, she said she's going to change her approach.
"The first thing I'm going to do is tap into the expertise we have. Figure out where we've gone wrong and course correct, by depending and leaning on that expertise," Jones-Wright said. "My very first pathway is to create pathways to housing and home ownership and that has not changed — but I come from a neighborhood that has been completely under invested in underserved and we’ve now seen the displacement of thousands of people. People from my neighborhood who no longer have houses to live in when we dis-invest in communities and we displaced people from their homes. We are adding to the homeless population.”
Republican and special education assistant Glasson said her top priority in office will be homeowners, renters, and mom-and-pop apartment owners.
"I want to restore public safety and numbers made needed to protect neighborhoods. I want there to be enough people for the fire department. I want them to be able to protect neighborhoods the homeowners, renters, and mom-and-pop apartment owners. I want to support businesses. If people can shop nearby and work nearby, it’s great," Glasson said. "I volunteer for my HOA as the treasurer and secretary, so I have experience looking at contracts, and choosing the best contracts to go with.”
Larry Turner is independent and not affiliated with a party. He is a former Marine and current San Diego Police officer. He has worked closely with foreign and domestic government agencies, as well as spent time downtown working face-to-face with the unhoused community.
“The first thing I'm going to fix is with the homeless," Turner said. "So I’m going to initially set up a 5,000 bed structure for the folks to be able to get off the street and live safely and start to get that hand up that they need to move forward.”
Incumbent Mayor Gloria said his last three years has been one of the most difficult jobs in the public sector.
"These have been extraordinary times," Gloria said. "I was sworn in as mayor during the middle of a pandemic that we haven’t seen in a hundred years."
Elected in December 2020, Gloria is the first person-of-color and the first LGBTQ person to be elected as the City of San Diego’s Mayor.
Gloria has worked on city issues from homelessness, building more housing, to investing in infrastructure, but he said he’s not ready for his work to be over, especially since he said he wants to do more for the working-class families.
"We build a lot of luxury housing. We have some shelter and low-income housing and we need to do more for the working and middle-class," Gloria said. "That’s been my focus for the first term. I want to make that the primary focus of my second term."
The polls to vote are open Tuesday from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m.
For City of San Diego residents, to vote for mayor, it can be found on the backside of the ballot in the bottom, left-hand corner labeled under "City."
