San Diego

Starting next year, candidates running for office in San Diego will be able to take in contributions of up to $500, a significant increase across the board. The current limits on individual contributions are set at $270 for city council and $320 for both mayor and city attorney races.

Marty Block (D-San Carlos), candidate for state Assembly in the San Diego County-based 78th district, received the endorsement of the San Diego Police Officers Association this week, a union that represents 2,000 officers.

Voter registration in the 50th Congressional District has been trending Democratic in recent years, providing some encouraging news for San Diego Democrats as Nick Leibham (D-Rancho Santa Fe) looks to unseat U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Carlsbad).

Recent voter registration numbers in the 78th State Assembly District show Democrats increasing their lead over Republicans, a welcome trend for the party as it looks to pick up an open seat and move closer to a two-thirds majority in the chamber.

Registered Democrats now outnumber Republicans in the San Diego County-based district by over 21,000 voters, representing a 3.77 percent increase in the gap since 2006.

In an interview with PolitickerCA.com, San Diego Democratic Party Chair Jess Durfee, detailed the qualities he values most as he begins to look for a candidate to represent the party in San Diego's 2012 mayoral race.

Democratic congressional candidate Nick Leibham hit his Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, on a number of environmental issues in front of a friendly crowd at a Sierra Club event in this wealthy San Diego suburb Tuesday night.

Brian BilbrayA new ad hit the San Diego airwaves last week comparing U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Carlsbad) with celebrity Paris Hilton, marking the hotel heiress' second appearance on the political scene (her first was the famous "Celeb" ad, courtesy of the McCain campaign).

Two articles that I'm confident drew reasonably little statewide attention caught my interest last week. One has a lesson in how difficult it is for all of us to change habits, especially when it comes to the incomprehensible (to me) desire to have green lawns in areas that are virtually deserts. The second raises real questions about how little oversight there is on the potential impact of proposals surrounding the state budget. Both are superficially about water, but really are about the need for changing how we do things.

The heated San Diego mayoral primary rumbled to an end today, with voters in the city heading to the polls to choose between incumbent Jerry Sanders and his Republican challenger Steve Francis.

Polls conducted in the days leading up to the primary show Sanders, a former city police chief, in the low 40 percent range, with Francis, a wealthy businessman, receiving in the mid 30 percent range. Either candidate will need to win 50 percent of the votes to avoid a November runoff between the two.

Tom Shepard, Sanders's campaign manager, expressed confidence that the first term mayor was ahead and that there would not be a runoff.

"The only open question remains if we'll get over the 50 percent threshold," said Shepard. "We think we will."