Politics Report: Maybe the End of County Drama? Nah

Nora Vargas, the chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors called Ellen Nash to apologize, Thursday. Nash is the chair of the San Diego chapter of the Black American Political Association of California and she was the subject of at least one of the text messages that labor and progressive leaders released in an open letter to demand Vargas step down as chair of the Board of Supervisors.

Vargas had referred to Nash as “That fucking Ellen Nash” in a text message to an unknown group in July 2020 and in another undated screen shot of a text, Vargas referred to someone as “negritas vendidas” – a loose translation from Spanish would be something like “bought-off little Black women.”

Several labor and progressive leaders signed the open letter, published on Doug Porter’s substack.

“These texts demonstrate contempt for labor unions, disrespect towards low wage workers, as well as anti-black racism and racialized hostility against Black women in our community,” they wrote.

And yet, as bad as that sounds, they didn’t demand Vargas resign her seat, only that she step down as chair.

Nash doesn’t want anything to do with it. She said that Vargas apologized to her immediately and Nash decided to stand with her.

“I find this all to be a distraction from what’s important, which is the county’s $8 billion budget and changes it needs to be more responsive to flood victims, the homelessness crisis and the need for affordable housing,” Nash told me.

I asked just to be sure whether Vargas should have to relinquish her role.

“She should not step down,” she said.

Vargas responds: The supervisor issued a two-part response.

The first part, a reckoning:  “As a public servant, my words spoken in private have even greater weight and meaning than those spoken in public. For that, I apologize. I have spoken privately to the named parties and regret any undue hurt this has caused.”

The second part, pushing back: “It breaks my heart that an anonymous source has manipulated, and in some cases manufactured, private exchanges to create a narrative that is contrary to my values and lifelong work. This smear campaign is particularly hurtful because it perpetuates division at a time when unity and coalition building must be a priority. I recommit to doing the work to continue to build stronger and healthier communities together.”

What’s really going on: The publication of the screen shots of the foul texts and WhatsApp messages came almost simultaneous to the Board of Supervisors’ Wednesday decision to offer the job of CAO to the top candidate left, likely Ebony Shelton, the chief financial officer of the county.

The job offer won’t turn into an official appointment until a public hearing next week. So there’s still time for this wild and sordid political fight to get even more wild and more mean.

The release of the texts came off like an oppo dump of negative information about a candidate for office. It revealed that someone decided to mount a search and collect whatever they could to destroy Vargas’s career. And someone volunteered screenshots of private messages going back several years.

It was the latest escalation of the political battle that broke out between Vargas and labor leaders, who very much wanted a different person to become the next chief administrative officer of the county. Both sides lobbed accusations of racism at each other.

Labor leaders really wanted Cindy Chavez to get the job. Chavez, a Santa Clara Supervisor who once led the South Bay Labor Council, was seen as the final piece of a long effort by progressives and labor to reform the county government. Chavez almost got the job last year before Supervisor Nathan Fletcher abruptly vanished from office and the remaining supervisors rescinded her offer.

When the hiring process restarted, Vargas and a majority of the Board decided not to advance Chavez’s application to the interview stage and labor leaders erupted in anger. The oppo dump of Vargas’ private messages, some dating back five years or more, is a sign of how far they went to hurt Vargas.

Doug Moore, the executive director of the United Domestic Workers, who signed the letter, tried to put into words for me why this was such a high-priority for them.

“Bringing progress to the County of San Diego means supporting the more than 30,000 In-Home Supportive Services and family child care providers in the County. Providers who are waiting for implementation of policies passed by the Board of Supervisors but have been stalled by unresponsive and obstructive bureaucracy. Policies that range from ID badges enabling providers to respond to emergencies or natural disasters, to the County’s unfulfilled promises to increase recruiting and a more streamlined process for new IHSS providers,” he wrote in a statement.

And to the question of whether someone like Shelton would do that, Moore wrote this:

“The Chairwoman has promised providers that she will ‘1000 percent’ hire a progressive CAO. We will watch closely to see if this is a step in the right direction,” he wrote.

About Shelton: Ebony Shelton would be the first Black woman to lead the county’s operations as CAO and her finance background could prove useful as the county prepares for ramifications from the California state budget deficit.

The context for all of this lies in the history of the county. In the 1990s, it was on the precipice of bankruptcy before a series of executives helped put it on sounder footing. But that was also part of the leadership of a conservative Board of Supervisors, which hoarded reserves, restricted access to social welfare benefits and had a more hostile relationship with unions. The reserves grew so large that the county built new facilities often with cash instead of borrowing at low interest rates and spending instead of public needs.

So while the county developed a reputation for operational and management excellence, even some moderate conservatives felt like it had been unreasonably stingy. The unions put in motion term-limits for supervisors and then helped elect Democrats. Chavez was about to be the final step in implementing the new system. She is a progressive visionary who would sweep away any managers or bureaucracy in the way of enacting progressive policies.

Shelton, on the other hand, is part of both the older legacy of managers and then the team of people who managed the pandemic, which supercharged awareness of the county’s role as a local agency. She’s also been serving now under a Democratic majority on the Board.

What now: Vargas made her choices. She didn’t want to follow the path they went down last year. She wanted someone else. She decided on an intensely confidential recruitment process and then said she couldn’t talk about it because it was so intensely confidential. All of this infuriated people who had been her allies. It’s hard to see how their relationship isn’t frayed beyond repair.

I asked her about that.

“My commitment to our County workers is unwavering!” she wrote in a text message (she is on week four of not using her voice after a surgery).

A Middle Schooler Fires Up Friends and Families to Vote

When Ellen Nash said all that county drama was a distraction, she had a pretty vivid example of the kind of effort it distracted her from Friday.

She was at the County Registrar of Voters, Friday, helping Henry Anderson III, a student at Millennial Tech Middle School get some of his classmates fired up about local politics and democracy.

It was a little slow getting going. A group of them toured the facility while Lillian Nahar, a professional mediator, gave another group a crash course in representative democracy.

Things like what redistricting is and what a congressional representative is.

“Everybody ready for the quiz?” she asked.

“What! I thought this was the quiz?” said one girl who had been trying to stay awake.

But when Anderson returned from the tour, the pizza arrived and the group started buzzing. The Black American Political Association of California, or BAPAC, San Diego chapter, had helped Anderson organize the visit. He wanted to get his peers more informed so they could get their parents more involved.

“I want to improve voter turnout,” he told me. “It’s very low. Voting is the easiest way to get your point across.”

Several BAPAC members had traveled last year for the annual Selma to Montgomery, Alabama march to commemorate the civil rights movement. They were inspired by how many young people were there and wanted to see something similar activate youth in San Diego. Anderson was all aboard.

“Young people are influential,” he said.

The initiative is Voter Outreach Training Education and Registration, or VOTER. The idea is that if kids can grasp what is at stake with local elections, they’ll nag their parents and family to get more involved.

“That’s why I stopped smoking – because my daughter kept yapping at me!” said Sandra Dryden, one of the organizers.

Carolyn Johnson, another organizer inspired by the Selma march said the kids will be voters soon. They need to get more informed now. She said the turnout in the last City Council election in District 4, the historic hub of Black residents, was dismal.

“We want them to go home and encourage family and friends – especially those who didn’t vote last time – to vote in November,” she said. “We want them to know how to make sound decisions not based on who’s the most popular or loudest candidate but to have the skills to look and what’s behind the noise.”

If you have any feedback or ideas for the Politics Report, send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org.