By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – With 100 percent of the unofficial returns counted, San Diego’s June 3 election proved to be a big day for incumbents. They were returned to office.
Among Jewish candidates, the biggest beneficiary of this trend was District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis who won a fourth term outright with 160,658 votes for 54.99 percent of the total. Her closest challenger in the three-candidate race was Bob Brewer who received 101,216 votes or 34.64 percent of the total. As Dumanis compiled more than a majority in the non-partisan race, she will not need to face a runoff election in November.
Brewer, a defense attorney who had run a series of blistering television commercials questioning Dumanis’s ethics, had hoped that he and the third candidate Terri Wyatt, a former deputy district attorney, would together prevent Dumanis from attaining a majority and thus force her into a runoff.
On Election Day, a news story broke that a Mexican national, Jose Susumo Azano Matsura, who has been the subject of a federal investigation for contributing money to candidates in the 2012 election — which non-U.S. citizens are prohibited to do — may have had a closer relationship to Dumanis than had been previously known. It was disclosed that some months after the 2012 election, Dumanis wrote a letter of recommendation to the University of San Diego for the Azano’s son. Dumanis had been one of the beneficiaries of Azano’s 2012 contributions.
With the court case under seal, officials declined to release the content of the letter, and when reporters questioned Dumanis about it on Election Night, after the voting was over, the district attorney remained mum, pointing out a judge had sealed the case.
Dumanis told the media she was just thankful that voters had enough trust in her to elect her to a fourth four year term, adding that she believed all law violators should be prosecuted.
Meanwhile, Democratic Congresswoman Susan Davis pulled 37,807 votes in the 53rd Congressional District or 56.15 percent of those cast in a field that saw her opposed by five Republicans and two independents. The Republican who came in second was Larry A Wilske, a former Navy SEAL, who received 13,815 votes or 20.52 percent. Because this is a partisan office — unlike Dumanis’s non-partisan race in which a majority vote sufficed — Davis and Wilske will face off in the November election. Clearly, Wilske will have a lot of ground to make up if he is to be considered a real election threat.
Judge Lisa Schall received 150,561 votes or 57.93 percent of the total for Superior Court Office No. 20, thus surviving a challenge from Carla Keehn, an assistant U.S. attorney, who received 109,355 votes or 42.07 percent. Keehn had campaigned against Schall on the grounds that the judge had been admonished three times, twice for her handling of cases and once for Schall’s arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol.
In another countywide judgeship race, Brad Weinreb, a deputy attorney general, received 99,835 votes or 38.64 percent of the total, in a three-candidate contest, thus earning the top spot in a November runoff in which he will be opposed by Ken Gosselin, an attorney, who came in second with 80,849 votes or 31.29 percent.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com