Mayoral candidate garners attention with criticism of city’s bad real estate deal, surge in fundraising

By MICHAEL SMOLENS, COLUMNIST

Barbara Bry has been on a bit of a roll lately.

The San Diego City Council member and mayoral candidate was an early critic of a questionable city real estate deal that now is on the verge of turning into a full-blown scandal, if it isn’t one already.

Her fundraising has surged, even if bolstered by a sizable sum from her personal funds.

And she’s drawing sharper distinctions between herself and November rival Todd Gloria on some big issues, such as the future of regional transportation and housing.

Momentum can be fickle. Short of non-existent independent polls, claiming it or assessing whether this candidate or that has it are subjective judgments.

For her part, Bry is still framing herself as the underdog in fundraising appeals and has noted Gloria’s support from civic and political organizations, along with independent committees that back him.

One of those third-party groups attacked Bry harshly during the primary campaign.

Bry advanced to the November general election by narrowly edging out fellow council member Scott Sherman for second place in the March 3 primary, though she ran far behind Gloria.

She entered the mayor’s race emphasizing her business background, in which she successfully launched and ran high-tech companies and other endeavors for decades before she was elected to the City Council in 2016.

Bry said that experience would help her straighten out what she increasingly saw as mismanagement at City Hall. Then came the debacle of 101 Ash St., a high-rise office building the city eventually would purchase under a lease-to-own agreement that has gone awry.

What was supposed to be a money-saving deal for the city is costing tens of millions more than planned and the figure continues to grow. An independent review suggested the city failed to perform due diligence, did not have the building properly inspected and entered into a largely one-sided agreement that favored the seller.

Council members have complained they were not given key details about the transaction.

The agreement was negotiated and advocated by Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s administration. Bry criticized the mayor early on, but has also tried to pin at least part of the blame on Gloria, an Assembly member who was on the council at the time and voted to approve the deal in 2016.

She contends Gloria bears responsibility for not scrutinizing the agreement more closely. Gloria says he was in the dark along with other council members about the troubling issues that surfaced later. He further notes that after Bry joined the council in 2016, she voted for a major renovation of the building, work that eventually uncovered asbestos issues and other problems with the building.

Whether any of that gets much traction in the mayor’s race remains to be seen. In any case, it’s Faulconer’s problem to own but a mess that will be left for the next mayor.

With that and serious budget issues created by the economic hit from the coronavirus pandemic, voters may put a premium on who is seen as most able to manage the city out of multiple crises.

That may give Bry’s background more currency. She has called for renegotiating the 101 Ash St. agreement, noting she has renegotiated real estate contracts in the business world.

“She’s got skills and she’s trying to apply them to problems as she sees them,” said Tom Shepard, Bry’s campaign consultant.

Gloria, who has spent most of his adult life working in government, also has a case to make about navigating troubled waters.

“Todd’s done it before,” said Jennifer Tierney, Gloria’s consultant.

In 2013, then-council President Gloria became interim mayor after Bob Filner stepped down amid a sexual harassment scandal.

It wasn’t just the allegations about Filner’s behavior that upended the city. Even before they surfaced, Filner’s micromanagement and determination to review existing city policies and contracts ground much of the city’s business to a halt.

Gloria and a compatible council got the city back in gear, and the interim mayor was widely lauded for how he stepped into the breach and helped stabilize City Hall. It will be a surprise if those testimonials don’t get a second life during this campaign.

His broad spectrum of backing will come into play on this. From his perspective, that will enable him to marshal the forces to push through tough measures. From Bry’s point of view, he won’t be able to do what needs to be done if it means crossing special interests.

Those kinds of alternate realities have been apparent in the housing debate. Gloria has been a strong advocate of building more to boost supply and, in theory, lower prices. He has backed state legislation aimed at increasing housing density in more areas and weakening zoning restrictions to do it.

Bry says that approach benefits developers and corporations, doesn’t reduce housing costs, gentrifies neighborhoods while pricing existing residents out and upends suburban communities.

Bry’s campaign says she’s all for increasing density along major transit corridors but resists the state usurping local control and doing away with single-family-home zoning. Gloria’s camp contends that deprives low- and middle-income families of more affordable housing and continues a historic trend of exclusionary zoning to keep some people out of certain communities.

A split between the candidates on future transportation plans has opened up as well, as pointed out recently by Joshua Emerson Smith of The San Diego Union-Tribune. Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the San Diego Association of Governments, is just starting to roll out his transit-heavy, 30-year plan that would cost about $177 billion.

Gloria said now is the time to start planning for the region’s transportation future.

Bry, already wary of SANDAG’s taxation mismanagement in the pre-Ikhrata days, said plans should be put on hold until after the pandemic subsides to assess how continued remote working may change transportation needs.

Meanwhile, Bry’s haul of $642,000 for the reporting period ending June 30 — including $110, 000 of her own money — was more than double what Gloria took in. However, Gloria was stockpiling general election donations during his relatively easy primary campaign and still had more cash on hand than Bry.

Gloria still may have the upper hand with all his institutional support. Nevertheless, it would seem both candidates have the resources to get their messages out — under normal circumstances.

But with the pandemic severely restricting, if not entirely eliminating, direct voter contact, the fall campaign may be as far away from normal as you can get.