The 50th Congressional Districts includes Ramona (shown here), Borrego Springs, Alpine, El Cajon, Escondido, Temecula, Valley Center and Bonsall.
Nearly 10 years since he entered Congress, Rep. Duncan Hunter is campaigning for a sixth term.
While re-election would normally be a pro-forma process for a second-generation House Republican in one of the most conservative districts in California, an ongoing campaign finance scandal and energized Democratic voters might make this his most difficult effort yet.
But the June 5 primary isn’t as much about Hunter, R-Alpine, as much as it’s about the candidates who hope to finish in second place and face off with the incumbent in a November runoff election.
Sensing weakness from the campaign finance scandal, two Republicans, three Democrats and one independent are challenging Hunter.
Hunter was not available for an interview and his campaign consultant did not respond to a request to speak on his behalf.
Aside from the incumbent’s issues, the candidates are focused on health care, immigration and national security, and in a district with employment numbers that lag behind the four others in San Diego County, education and the economy.
Besides Hunter and Wells, there’s one other Republican, Shamus Sayed, a businessman who owns a linguistic translation business.
Josh Butner, a retired Navy SEAL and a member of the Jamul-Dulzura Union School District, as well as Campa-Najjar, a former Department of Labor spokesman who now has his own consulting firm, are running as Democrats. Patrick Malloy, a real estate agent from Escondido, is running again.
Richard Kahle, a former Army captain who grew up in Ramona and San Marcos, is running as an centrist independent.
The district runs from just above Otay County Open Space Reserve, north through El Cajon, into inland North County and into Temecula. It stretches east to the county line and includes Escondido, Ramona, Alpine, Lakeside and Julian. The San Diego County portion of the district includes about 89 percent of the electorate and is more Democratic than the Temecula part.
The Republican Party accounts for 42.3 percent of voters, while 27.2 percent are Democrats — the GOP’s biggest advantage in a California House district. Another 24.5 percent do not belong to a party.
Butner spent 23 years in the Navy before retiring, starting a new career with a diving company and getting elected in 2016 to the school board. Congress would be an extension of his lifetime of service, he said.
His campaign is focused on access to affordable health care, education and jobs. He said he’s not looking for partisan solutions, just ideas that work.
“I don’t think it’s a matter of who’s a Democrat and who’s a Republican, it’s a matter of who’s best for the district,” he said by phone.
Health care is one of the biggest priorities, and voters aren’t concerned if it’s provided by expanding Medicare to everyone, or boosting the Affordable Care Act, Butner said.
“I don’t think that they care how you solve the problem. They just want access to it and they want it affordable,” he said.
Butner, 49, enlisted in the Navy and became a corpsman before he trained as a SEAL. After earning his college degree he became an officer and retired in 2011 as a lieutenant commander. Every generation of his family, dating from the Civil War to his oldest son, have served in the military.
“I am going to leave it up to the voters to decide between all of us candidates. When it comes down to it, you have a career politician who is in there now, and a concerned citizen like myself who has a lifetime of service to the country who wants to continue to serve,” Butner said.
Campaign finance reports show that he has raised $599,025 as of March 31, behind Campa-Najjar and Hunter. He has $307,905 in the bank, about $1,500 less than the incumbent.
The son of a Mexican-American mother and a Middle Eastern father, Campa-Najjar is quick to point out that he has a unique background and name and is different type of candidate than what the 50th District has come to know.
“I offer a stark contrast to Hunter, not with my hues, but with my views,” he said.
A former White House fellow during the Obama Administration, and later a spokesman for the National Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Department of Labor, Campa-Najjar grew up mostly in East County, but with a stint in Gaza. He moved back to Jamul from Washington, D.C., in 2016.
The voters are looking for something new from their representatives, he said.
“I think people are tired of the same-old-same-old and the status quo, four decades of one family and one name in the district. They just want something different that will shake things up,” he said.
The district hasn’t rebounded like other parts of the county from the Great Recession, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a concern about why that’s the case, he said.
“It’s not the fault of one person, but when your family runs the district for 40 years, you can point blame,” said Campa-Najjar, 29.
He’s campaigning for universal health care, equal pay for women, living wages and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who came to the country illegally as young children. The tax system needs to be tuned to help the middle class, while top-earners are taxed in order to fully fund education, he said.
“The way you do that is by making sure that people at the top are paying their fair share. And Hunter’s whole idea is to give tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the middle class,” Campa-Najjar said.
Financially, Campa-Najjar has raised $725,398 since launching his campaign and has $333,345 in the bank, more than any other candidate by both measures.
A member of the House since 2009, Hunter is a former Marine Corps artillery officer who has taken a strong interest in national security and has built an name for himself in the military community for assisting service members and veterans with everything from issues with their benefits to legal quagmires.
A member of the House Armed Services Committee, his efforts have turned him into a de-facto point-man in Congress for service members who have concerns about how the military is running.
Hunter has also spent two years trudging through a campaign finance scandal after records revealed that political contributions were used for home improvements, vacations, school tuition and other questionable purchases. Hunter said any inappropriate spending was an honest mistake, and he has repaid his campaign about $60,000 with personal funds.
Hunter, 41, remains under FBI investigation.
Campaign finance reports show he has raised $681,364 since the start of this election cycle through March 31. He has $309,494 cash on hand.
Kahle, the only independent in the race, is an engineer and former Army logistics officer who is focused on the national debt and is drilling into the numbers.
He wants to increase revenue to the federal retirement program as well as Medicare by lifting income tax caps on high-earners and by enrolling all state and local government employees (not all of such workers are covered by Social Security). This will increase revenue by about $94 billion, he said.
He also wants to incrementally extend the retirement age to 69 by 2070.
He is also calling for cuts in crop insurance and agricultural subsidies, the food stamp program and Saturday mail (but not package) delivery. In all, his combination of cuts and revenue increases result in about a $405 billion cut in the deficit per year.
“That’s not fuzzy math, that’s the real deal,” he said.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the government is running about an $804 billion deficit in fiscal 2018.
Kahle, 42, was in the Army for six years and left in 2016 as a captain. He spent some time traveling after he left the military and is now campaigning full-time. He grew up in the district and lives in San Marcos.
Malloy, 52, of Escondido, is running for the seat again.
In 2016, he beat three other candidates in the primary before losing to Hunter, with 103,600 votes to Hunter’s 180,000.
He’s calling for a single-payer health care system to cover the entire country.
Campaign finance reports show that he has raised $522 since the start of the cycle, and has $31 in the bank. He said he “absolutely” has a realistic chance to win.
Eleven years ago Sayed left his career as a molecular biologist and bought Interpreters Unlimited, a translation company. Now he’s trying to start third chapter as a member of the House of Representatives.
He said he has the real-world experiences that other candidates, and most other members of Congress, lack.
“Pretty much every candidate is talking about small businesses, job creation, health care, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but I am the only one who has real-world experience. I’ve signed the front of a check as well as the back,” said the 40-year-old from 4S Ranch.
As a fiscal conservative and social moderate, Sayed said he represents the majority of the district. Congress needs to cut regulations in order to help small businesses, a major part of the district’s economy.
“If you reduce the regulations it will empower them to do more for their staffs....If you give them a little bit, give them a little break, they have no choice but to put it back into their businesses,” he said.
He said he didn’t know if Trump’s proposed border wall is in his district’s best interest.
“If my district says so, I’ll support it. But is 30-plus billion dollars the most effective use to solve a problem? That’s an question mark and I don’t have an answer. I’ll just bring the question. We have to remind ourselves that illegal immigration is not necessarily coming from our borders but by planes,” he said.
He has raised $253,179, including $150,000 he has given to his own campaign. He has $156,561 cash-on-hand.
Wells, a psychologist who founded a business that provides mental health care services for several clinics, touted his 15 years in El Cajon politics, a balanced city budget with a rainy-day fund that exceeds minimum levels, well-maintained streets, and an economy growing with new hotels, car dealerships and housing.
“None of that is particularly exciting, but I think it gives a stance of what’s important, at least to me, which is maintaining the quality of life for the people of El Cajon. These are the kind of basic things that a conservative person is for,” said Wells, 55.
He said he doesn’t take as hard-line on some issues, like immigration, as some conservatives. He said he understands why people come to America without authorization — he said he would too if it was the only way he could feed his family. But there needs to be a pathway to citizenship for people who are in the country without authorization but are enthusiastically contributing to their communities, he said.
“I have compassion for people who did that and who are living peacefully with good-will in our country, and I think we should find a way to bring them into the fold. At the same time I think it’s important that we enforce the border and know who is coming in and who is coming out,” he said.
Campaign finance records show that by March 31 he raised $16,026 since launching his campaign and, after expenses, has $4,819 left, less than any other candidate.
“No matter how much money they have, they really haven’t done anything and they don’t have a sense of the public,” Wells said.