In the race for District 3 county supervisor, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is continuing to outpace Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer in campaign fundraising.
Campaign disclosures released Thursday show that the Republican’s campaign had out-raised the Democratic incumbent by $47,000 over the last three months. Between July 1 and Sept. 26, he raised about $146,000 and Lawson-Remer about $99,000.
Faulconer has also benefited from at least half a million more in financial support from independent expenditure committees just since July.
While campaigns cannot coordinate with them or control how they spend money, such committees’ spending can pay for mailers, ads, posters, yard signs, phone banks and other efforts to support a candidate or target their opponent.
Three committees that support Faulconer have raised a total of $840,500 since the start of July, while two supporting Lawson-Remer have raised about $337,000.
Both candidates have spent a majority of their campaigns attacking one another, as their hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on campaign mailers and ads show.
Faulconer spent $140,250 in just streaming ads alone this period from his traditional campaign contributions.
A committee called the Homelessness Crisis Response Committee Supporting Kevin Faulconer for Supervisor 2024 raised $509,500 this period, spending nearly $481,000 on direct mail in the race.
Another committee backing him raised $330,000 in the last three months but spent nearly $352,000 on mailers. The Neighborhood Action Council committee changed its name this week to explicitly say it is “in opposition of Terra Lawson-Remer,” rather than “supporting Kevin Faulconer.”
That committee is controlled by the Lincoln Club Business League, which also controls another committee that could be used to help the man challenging San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria for re-election.
Lawson-Remer spent nearly $216,000 of her traditional campaign contributions in the last three months on mailers — about $139,000 on postage and delivery and the remainder on the actual campaign literature and mailings.
Two major local labor unions have also spent heavily in support of Lawson-Remer and in opposition to Faulconer.
The San Diego Working Families Supporting Lawson-Remer for Supervisor 2024 committee has raised $325,000 this period and spent nearly $183,000 in its campaign to oppose Faulconer.
The committee, sponsored by Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 89, previously supported Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe’s campaign for District 4.
The San Diegans for Honest Leadership Opposing Faulconer for Supervisor 2024 — which is sponsored by the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council and which doesn’t explicitly support Lawson-Remer — raised $105,000 this period.
Other committees on both sides of the race have raised smaller sums.
One backed by two groups that support LGBTQ+ candidates has raised just over $12,200 since it was started in July. Communities United for Terra Lawson-Remer for Supervisor 2024 is sponsored by Equality California and LGBTQ+ Victory Fund.
And Faulconer has the support of the San Diego County Farm Bureau Agriculture Advocacy PAC, which amended its committee this month to support both his campaign and that of Republican incumbent Joel Anderson in District 2. The committee has raised $25,750 this year to date.
The county’s two other races for supervisor are considered far less competitive and have drawn far less campaign cash.
In the District 1 race, Democratic Board Chair Nora Vargas has raised $1,800 in the last three months, while her Republican challenger Alejandro Galicia has raised nothing.
In District 2, Anderson far outpaced his Democratic challenger Gina Jacobs this period in traditional campaign contributions with just over $60,000, while Jacobs raised only $2,000.
Other than the independent committee supporting both him and Faulconer, Anderson has two other committee supporters that cumulatively raised about $122,000 in the last three months.