Record campaign cash was spent in San Diego’s City Council primaries. Did it pay off?

Races for San Diego City Council attracted an unprecedented amount of cash this year from groups funded by labor unions, business interests and statewide organizations — but the results were decidedly mixed.

A committee supporting Josh Coyne in District 2 spent $300,000, but Coyne didn’t come close to making the November runoff. Rafael Perez finished last in the District 8 race despite $150,000 in committee support.

But Gerardo Ramirez made the District 8 runoff after benefiting from more than $200,000 in committee support, and Richard Bailey finished first in District 2 thanks partly to more than $200,000 in committee support.

Those sums are dramatically higher than typical San Diego council race contributions from independent committees, which allow supporters to exceed the $800 maximum an individual can contribute directly to a campaign.

Such committees, which are required to raise and spend money independently from the candidate they support, also make it possible for corporations, labor unions and merchant groups to participate at all.

City campaign rules bar those types of organizations from contributing directly to candidates, but they can contribute to committees that either support or oppose individual candidates.

There’s no obvious reason why so much more was contributed this year to these committees, but Perez said one likely factor is that two council seats — Districts 2 and 8 — are open seats with termed-out incumbents.

“Open seats attract a lot of attention,” he said.

The last two council elections in 2022 and 2024 each had only one open seat — District 6 in 2022 and District 4 in 2024 — and almost no committee spending.

Still, San Diego council races are generally low-profile contests with relatively little at stake — especially in a primary.

For example, this year’s District 8 race, while hotly contested, featured four Democrats with similar views on most issues and no clear impact on the city’s toughest challenges — housing, homelessness and the budget crisis.

But District 2 features a Republican-turned-independent in Bailey who could, if elected, break up the all-Democratic City Council for the first time since Republican Chris Cate was termed out in 2022.

Coyne said he thinks the $800 contribution limit has prompted an evolution in how city campaigns get funded, with many larger interests focusing more on independent committees than contributing directly to candidates.

“The $800 cap seems like a small amount to some people,” Coyne said.

It’s also not totally clear why the big spending had such patchy results in the June primary.

Political consultants often say that money is important in political races but that it typically only works for candidates who also have a compelling message, a natural appeal to voters or both.

Strong support from a political party can also help a candidate overcome big opposition spending by an independent committee, Coyne and Perez said in interviews last week.

Nicole Crosby didn’t get nearly the kind of committee support Coyne and Bailey got in District 2 — but she was endorsed by the county Democratic Party in a heavily Democratic district and easily advanced to the runoff.

Perez noted that the party endorsement also comes with money and volunteers to canvas neighborhoods and provide other campaign help.

In the District 8 race, the party declined to make an endorsement and rated all four candidates as qualified.

Another possible reason Crosby easily beat Coyne for the runoff’s second slot opposing Bailey — despite Coyne’s $300,000 in committee money — is her compelling pitch as a candidate.

She’s a city prosecutor who served on the Clairemont Town Council and a school parent-teacher association. Coyne works for a downtown merchants group and didn’t boast such a breadth of community involvement.

The bulk of Coyne’s independent support came from a local construction union, Local 89 of the Laborers International Union. That union has discussed possibly pursuing a 2028 ballot measure aiming to raise the city’s sales tax.

In contrast to Coyne, committee money appears to have been a key factor in helping Gerardo Ramirez secure the second slot in the District 8 runoff to face first-place finisher Antonio Martinez in November.

Ramirez got more than $200,000 from a statewide committee focused on electing Latino candidates that is strongly influenced by Assemblymember David Alvarez.

A win in November by Ramirez would continue the legacy of Alvarez in District 8, who represented the district from 2010 to 2018 before being succeeded by his aide Vivian Moreno.

Ramirez now serves as chief of staff for Moreno, who can’t run for re-election this year because of term limits.

Ramirez narrowly edged Venus Molina by 302 votes for second place, possibly because he received significantly more committee financial support than the roughly $50,000 Molina had.

But Perez, who got $75,000 each from the American Federation of Teachers and the National Association of Realtors, finished a relatively distant fourth.

Bailey appears to have benefited from his committee support, most of which came from business interests, because he finished first. But he only led Crosby by 475 votes and got under 35% of the votes cast.

In November, he will need to win a majority of voters in a district where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans two to one.

It’s likely Bailey’s narrow first-place margin is partly because of an independent committee opposing Bailey that got more than $150,000 from local labor unions and the county Democratic Party.

The consultant who helped lead that committee, Dan Rottenstreich, said last week that the goal was not defeating Bailey in the primary but limiting how many Democrats might support him.

The committee sought to expose what Rottenstreich characterized as Bailey’s extremism in mailers and digital ads to persuade moderate Democrats not to support him.

“We did important work,” said Rottenstreich, suggesting that Democrats willing to vote for Bailey in June would be more likely to vote for him again in November.

“He can’t win without support from Democrats, so we wanted to limit that support,” Rottenstreich said.

Some suggest campaign money matters less these days because voters have gotten sick of their mailboxes being flooded with fliers — but Rottenstreich said candidates still need to promote themselves.

In the June 2 primary, many candidates opted for a blend of mailers and digital advertising on Facebook and other social media platforms.

Rottenstreich said today’s more dispersed media landscape forces candidates to promote themselves in multiple ways.

Exact contributions by campaign committees won’t be known until final disclosures for the June primary get submitted at the end of this month. The figures used are based on the latest reports, which cover contributions and spending through May 29.