Controversy. Political ambition. A tragic death.
All three have left the San Diego County Democratic Party without stable leadership, and its members are set to decide later this month on its fourth chair in three years.
Efforts to name a new party chair come with big contests on the horizon in local politics, from next year’s midterm elections to an open contest for San Diego mayor in 2028.
But even though Democrats enjoy their newfound dominance locally, a larger national question is still unanswered: How will the Democratic Party define itself under the second Trump administration?
Nine months out from the 2024 election, nearly two-thirds of voters have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, one recent Wall Street Journal poll found — the worst the party has fared since 1990. Locally, a recent special election for county supervisor may have similarly reflected the party’s shortcomings; the Democrat, Paloma Aguirre, won with just 54% of the vote in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-1 ratio.
Amid those identity problems, two people are eyeing the job of county party chair: Will Rodriguez-Kennedy, who formerly held the post from 2019 to 2022, and Sara Ochoa, a consultant who previously served as vice chair for South County on the party’s executive board from 2019 to 2024.
Rodriguez-Kennedy, now a staffer for Rep. Scott Peters, is attempting a comeback after leaving the chair job in the face of accusations of rape — allegations he maintains were false and orchestrated by political enemies. He was never criminally charged. His accuser later dropped his civil lawsuit, calling it a “misunderstanding.”
Both Rodriguez-Kennedy and Ochoa see a path forward for the party in engaging more with the community.
Rodriguez-Kennedy in particular wants to invest in outreach to Latino and Asian communities, on top of an overall revamp of communications and outreach.
“There’s general anger towards the Democratic Party,” he said. “I have a comprehensive understanding of both the problem and an analysis of the problem, as well as a comprehensive approach to solving that problem, in a way that I just don’t think my opponent does.”
In an interview, Ochoa said she wants party leaders to engage with nonprofits and community groups in order to recruit new candidates for local office.
“There are natural-born leaders who the community knows who sometimes are skeptical of the party, because the party hasn’t always shown up and our candidates haven’t kept promises,” Ochoa said.
Party activists also need to reengage with local governments, she said. Meetings of the Board of Supervisors have become rife with incendiary public comment, and Ochoa wants to train party members to navigate those situations and learn how to advocate for their causes with elected officials.
“We need to show up in those spaces,” she said. “There’s a lot of good energy for folks to adopt an activist mindset and not just expect government to work for them, but to show up and to do that as Democrats.”
A vote on party chair is expected Aug. 19, and the decision rests with the party’s central committee, a powerful body with dozens of members who are elected by Democratic voters every four years.
That committee is a mix of party grandees, operatives and increasingly local elected officials, who in recent years have begun to run not only for public office but also for a seat on the party’s central committee.
Among other perks, membership gives them greater sway in key party decisions, namely how millions of dollars get spent and whose candidacy for elected office wins the party’s endorsement.
“It’s the goose that laid the golden egg,” said Martha Sullivan, a former Democratic party leader from the 2000s and 2010s. “To me, the central committee — I don’t think mercenary is the right word for it. But it’s not volunteers representing people. More and more it’s the professional political class.”
Factions set
With the pivotal vote for chair on the horizon, different factions of the party have thrown their support behind either candidate.
Ochoa has won the backing of Rep. Mike Levin, key labor leaders and unions and many mayors, city council and school board members up and down San Diego County. Labor in particular is a major force in county politics, bankrolling Democratic campaigns and lending its membership to door-knocking and other politicking efforts.
On his side, Rodriguez-Kennedy has his own coterie of elected officials backing him, including Rep. Juan Vargas and his own boss, Peters, who has other current and former staff in key roles on the party’s executive board.
For Ochoa, she says her time as chair for South County forced her to navigate regular Democrat-on-Democrat elections that sometimes got ugly.
“The mission that I took when I took on the role of the leader of that area was to just do everything above and beyond, to be transparent and communicative — and then also to be sort of a listening ear when members have conflict with one another, to try to resolve those conflicts,” Ochoa said.
Rodriguez-Kennedy has his own plans to stave off infighting, and notes the last time he was chair the party created a complaint process.
“I want do that in strategic ways, by using stakeholder groups to build camaraderie and then talk through the potential conflicts on the front end, and then we can identify potential resolution before the conflicts even happen,” he said.
In their rhetoric, both Rodriguez-Kennedy and Ochoa have said they want to spare the party more infighting. But in practice, the race for chair has not stopped some party players’ tactics from veering into the cloak and dagger.
In recent weeks, anonymous letters have been mailed to party members with vague and conspiratorial language about the chair race — and while some appear neutral, others have attacked either Rodriguez-Kennedy or Ochoa.
“There’s nothing accidental about the emergence of a new candidate,” one letter read, seemingly in reference to Ochoa. “Behind the curtain, well-positioned players are pulling the levers, and it is the same ones who tried to erase the past few years as if nothing good happened.”
Another letter likens Rodriguez-Kennedy to a “Trumpian narcissist.”
“If you support Will Rodriguez-Kennedy, ask yourself this: Would you trust him with your story? Your child’s story? Your party’s story?” the letter reads.
Lori Saldaña, a former state Assembly member who serves on the party’s central committee, called the chair race “the most confounding and aggravating thing any of us have seen in a very long time.”
“They’re acting like it’s a secret clandestine organization, rather than an organization that deals with public interest issues and, in my opinion, should be more public about what we do and how we arrive to our decision-making,” said Saldaña, who supports neither candidate.
How we got here
Rodriguez-Kennedy left as chair in 2022, amid rape allegations made by his ex-boyfriend in a lawsuit that has since been withdrawn. That set off a series of events that have left party members again to decide if Rodriguez-Kennedy, who contends he’s been fully exonerated, should lead them again.
After Rodriguez-Kennedy stepped away from the job, party members named Rebecca Taylor, a longtime campaign organizer and progressive leader in the party, to take over the role of chair.
Taylor led the party for about a year and half, before she died suddenly last summer in a motorcycle crash in Utah — a tragedy that shook the party and prompted an outpouring of grief for the young party activist.
Her death prompted Kyle Krahel-Frolander, a district director and deputy chief of staff for Levin, to ascend to the role of chair. But Krahel-Frolander’s tenure proved short-lived — last month, he stepped down to launch his campaign for an open seat on the Board of Supervisors to represent much of North County.
Even though Rodriguez-Kennedy wants the allegations and his handling of them behind him, they are hanging over his bid to get his old job back.
National City Vice Mayor Marcus Bush, who supports Ochoa, takes particular issue with Rodriguez-Kennedy’s choice to publicly broadcast surreptitiously recorded audio in an effort to refute the allegations.
At a 2022 news conference, Rodriguez-Kennedy played an audio tape — recorded without the consent of his accuser, Oscar Rendon, as California state law requires — that he argued depicted a consensual sexual encounter, not a rape.
“That alone is disqualifying, and to do something that sadistic? It lends credence to the original accusation,” Bush said. “Anyone supporting Will needs to ask themselves if they think playing an audio sex tape without permission is acceptable.”
But revisiting the assault allegations in any way has its critics.
In a letter mailed to party members and reviewed by The San Diego Union-Tribune, Ryan Trabuco, a co-chair of the state party’s LGBTQ Caucus, said any questioning whether the allegations against Rodriguez-Kennedy were false itself amounted to homophobia.
Trabuco also likened Rodriguez-Kennedy to victims of lynchings and to the Central Park 5, the group of Black and Latino teenagers in New York City who were wrongly charged, convicted and imprisoned on rape charges and ultimately exonerated.
“Will has been exonerated,” Trabuco said in a letter co-authored by caucus vice-chair Ryan Darsey. “To say otherwise amounts to actively and intentionally punishing someone for something they didn’t do, and that behavior is just sick.”
In an interview, Rodriguez-Kennedy described himself as a “dynamic leader,” which he says has made him the subject of lingering criticism.
“There are people who tend to throw nasty sort of accusations at people, particularly people who are dynamic, who tend to be leaders who are doing different things that may shake up things,” Rodriguez-Kennedy said. “When you do that, you can create a number of enemies.
“I’m one of the most investigated and proven and cleared persons, period,” he added.
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