Chula Vista Mayoral Challenger Leads with Immigration, Affordability

Chula Vista mayoral candidate Francisco Tamayo entered the race to lead San Diego County’s second-largest city just two hours before the March 6 filing deadline. 

It was a last-minute decision to mount a Democratic challenge to incumbent Republican Mayor John McCann, who until then had been cruising toward re-election unopposed. 

Tamayo, who is a school board trustee at the Chula Vista Elementary School District, said a single, overriding emotion pushed him into the race. 

Fear. 

Tamayo is a naturalized citizen from Mexico who said he gained his U.S. citizenship nearly two decades ago. Still, “I carry my passport with me just in case,” he said. “ICE agents don’t care. They pick you up and investigate later.” 

Tamayo said the fear he feels is widespread in his city’s Latino community. And McCann isn’t doing anything about it. 

“There’s been Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside of our schools, where parents have called us and said, ‘We are not bringing our kids because we’re fearful,’” Tamayo said. “And when we turn to City Hall, there’s no answer.” 

“The fact that John McCann was not standing up for our community, and no other Democrat was standing up to McCann, made me jump in. I couldn’t stand on the sidelines,” he said. 

In the month since he joined the race, Tamayo already has generated strong reactions. 

To supporters, his candidacy represents a principled stand for his community’s most vulnerable – a constituency Tamayo said the current mayor has ignored. 

Detractors, some of whom have known Tamayo since he first won election to the Chula Vista Elementary school board in 2014, have a very different view.  

Parents, teachers and former school board members in the district said they reacted with a mix of astonishment and dismay to the news Tamayo was running for mayor. 

“I was sickened and a little shocked,” said Laurie Humphrey, a Democrat who served on the school board with Tamayo from 2016 to 2020. 

“With all the scandals in that man’s past, he thinks he can walk through life completely unscathed and the citizens of Chula Vista are stupid enough not to pay attention to it,” Humphrey said. “From my years of working with him, I don’t trust the man and I don’t think he’s in it for the right reasons. I don’t think he cares about the city. He cares about himself.” 

A series of recent controversies has shadowed Tamayo’s years in public service. 

Last year, the district’s former chief operating officer accused Tamayo of pressuring him to award contracts to a favored vendor. The former COO, who said he faced a retaliatory investigation after speaking up, said Tamayo also pressured district staff to organize events supporting one of his election campaigns. (Tamayo denied both accusations.) 

The San Diego County Democratic Party came close to censuring Tamayo last year after he ousted a fellow Democratic school board member by running against her while simultaneously holding a different seat on the board. (The party ultimately dropped the censure bid and, on Monday, Tamayo narrowly won the endorsement of a caucus of South County Democrats.) 

During a contentious 2024 divorce from his now ex-wife, Tamayo argued in divorce filings that his child and spousal support payments should be reduced because his ex-wife had the potential to earn more money by getting a full-time job. 

A few months later, his ex-wife, a former dentist in Mexico who became a stay-at-home parent while raising children with Tamayo, got a job in Chula Vista Elementary’s payroll department. 

Tamayo denied playing a role in the hiring process. “Why would I need to ask for a favor for a [job requiring only a] high school diploma?” he said. “If I’m asking for a favor, I’m doing a poor job.” 

As for the rest of his critics, Tamayo shrugged them off and said he plans to run on his record as a school leader. 

“If you compare [Chula Vista Elementary] to any district around us, we are still number one,” he said. “My years of experience on the school board, working with families, working within our neighborhoods, balancing budgets, prepares me to lead the city with a vision that works for the majority of our working families.” 

The stakes of Chula Vista’s mayoral race are high this year. 

After years of striving and planning, the city is poised to become a major economic player in San Diego County. 

Numerous large-scale developments are under way on the city’s west side that aim to make the city a regional tourism and jobs magnet. 

A long-sought university campus to the east also shows signs of life, with an initial building nearing completion and a local state lawmaker seeking to make the whole thing a reality by sheer force of will. 

The next mayor, who will serve as the head of a five-member City Council, will set the tone for the city’s agenda. 

Tamayo said under McCann’s leadership, Chula Vista’s development efforts have mostly benefited the wealthy. 

“In Chula Vista, the median house price is $750,000,” he said. “There’s no way that our neighbors can afford that. And we see that where the new developments are happening, most of them are rentals. Why? Because people can no longer afford to come in and buy a brand new home for the first time.” 

Tamayo said he is a renter himself. Following his divorce, he moved out of the five-bedroom condominium he owned with his ex-wife and rented a townhouse in Otay Ranch. 

If elected, he said he would seek to raise the income limit on the city’s first-time homebuyer program and make it easier for public sector workers to own a home. He vowed to streamline homebuilding by adopting a series of pre-approved building plans that developers could use to shorten permitting timelines. 

“If [people] are serving our city, they should be able to live in the city,” Tamayo said. “Firefighters, nurses, teachers, I want to make sure that we have [programs assisting] those types of professionals that serve our kids [and] our community.” 

As for burgeoning hotel and office development on Chula Vista’s west side, Tamayo said most of those projects also aim at a high-end clientele. 

The recently-opened Gaylord Pacific Resort and Convention Center, where rooms run close to $400 per night, is not an option for most Chula Vista residents, Tamayo said. Nor are other planned bayfront developments, including luxury high-rise condominiums and more new hotels. 

“That is [McCann’s] focus,” Tamayo said. “It’s not the focus for the average citizen. My focus is the average citizen.” 

McCann disputed Tamayo’s claims. He said Tamayo was misrepresenting both the housing situation in Chula Vista and McCann’s views about immigration and public safety. 

“Our local police officers follow state law… which clearly prohibits them from coordinating with or assisting with federal immigration officers in immigration enforcement. It’s that simple,” McCann said. “Under my leadership, Chula Vista has become one of the safest cities for all residents in California and the nation.” 

McCann said he occasionally abstained from City Council votes on immigration matters because his service as a commander in the U.S. Naval Reserves prohibits him from taking votes or other actions that could run contrary to federal law. 

“Regardless of what my opponent thinks, I am governed by the rules of the U.S. military,” he said. 

McCann said he was proud of his record as a yearslong proponent of entry-level homebuying opportunities in Chula Vista, where he pointed out the median home price is lower than the countywide average. 

“Last year, the city produced almost 4,000 housing units, which included almost 900 single family houses for families,” McCann said. “Housing prices have skyrocketed all throughout California and the country. And comparatively, we have been increasing the supply and helping stabilize the prices. And we’re much more affordable than other cities in the county and the state.” 

Tamayo said his own background as an immigrant who climbed the ladder to middle-class success enables him to relate to ordinary Chula Vista residents in ways McCann, a city native whose family derives much of its income from a real estate business in Coronado, can’t. 

Tamayo was born in Mexico in 1980 and immigrated with his family to Chula Vista when he was 12. Like many South County residents, he lived a bi-national life, attending school some years in America, some in Mexico. 

He graduated from a Mexican high school but returned to Chula Vista to earn an associate’s degree at Southwestern College. He went on to earn online bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Colorado State University and Pittsburgh State University. 

He credited a counselor at Southwestern with talking him into pursuing a career in information technology. An internship at Sweetwater Union High School District led to a full-time job and eventual promotion to a senior role in cybersecurity. 

In 2016, Tamayo moved to the San Diego County Office of Education and last year left that job to become director of information technology and security at an online community college. 

For part of the time he worked at Sweetwater Union, Tamayo served as president of the district’s union representing non-teaching employees. 

That organized labor connection proved helpful when Tamayo decided to run for Chula Vista Elementary’s school board in 2014. He said he entered the race because the oldest of his two children was aging into elementary school and he wanted to give others the same educational opportunities he had. 

Though Chula Vista’s teachers union did not initially endorse him, Tamayo ultimately won the group’s support. Union donations provided almost all the financing for his most recent school board campaign. 

Tamayo is a friend and ally of teachers union president Rosi Martinez. She says his support for the union has helped transform Chula Vista Elementary into a district that empowers teachers, supports lower-income families and prioritizes students’ mental health and well-being. 

“Teachers have received better training and learned more strategies around behavior and a more supportive environment for students,” Martinez said. “Having a mayor in Chula Vista that is in touch with the needs of its community I think would be incredibly important.” 

For others, including some members of the union itself, Tamayo’s advocacy has been a double-edged sword. Teachers said they appreciated a series of raises Tamayo helped negotiate in recent years. But many said they felt the school board’s current Democratic majority has mishandled district finances and deferred too much to district administrators. 

The district currently faces a $30 million deficit and recently sent layoff notices to dozens of district employees. Among those cut were behavioral health workers whose jobs had been funded with one-time federal Covid payments. Teachers said the workers were a vital source of support for a generation of post-Covid students who struggle to control themselves in classrooms. 

School board members, including Tamayo, angered teachers late last year when they approved a $360,000 exit package for a senior administrator who faced multiple internal investigations and a critical external audit of his department. 

The year before, the district suffered a black eye when administrators failed to notify parents – or state regulators – that a special education teacher had resigned following an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct with students. 

Tamayo said despite the district’s recent setbacks, he remained proud of his record on the board. 

“Yes, on paper, we do have a deficit,” he said. “That is not a structural deficit. That is an intentional deficit to spend down our reserves in investing in our students.” 

Tamayo said the district used reserve funds to pay for behavioral health workers two years longer than Covid funds lasted. He said it was only this year that district leaders concluded they no longer could afford the additional employees. 

He pointed to several initiatives he helped spearhead during his time in school leadership: a new, more supportive, student disciplinary system; career preparation programs in partnership with local libraries; and additional resources for schools in lower-income communities. 

“We’re making sure we’re supporting students,” he said. “Not every single student is at the same level. So, [we’re] recognizing what can we do to help them, and then if there’s still support that we need to bring in, being able to do that.” 

Chula Vista City Councilmember Cesar Fernandez said he and the Council’s other three Democrats all endorsed Tamayo because “he works really hard” and because Democrats felt Tamayo could bring consensus to a City Council that has become more fractious in recent years. 

“Francisco doesn’t waste words,” Fernandez said, citing his experience serving with Tamayo on Chula Vista Elementary’s school board from 2022 to 2024. “He’s very skilled at bringing together a messy situation or ideas that don’t mesh and coming up with a solution that works. That would really help on the dais in City Council.” 

With Tamayo’s entrance into the mayoral race, voters now have a choice between a veteran of city politics who has presided over an era of increased development and a would-be newcomer to City Hall who promises to advocate for those he says have been left behind in the city’s rise. 

Views of McCann, who has served in city government for more than two decades, are mostly set. The race likely will hinge on how voters judge Tamayo. 

Tamayo said he plans to win them over the old-fashioned way. 

“It’s just working every day, walking, talking to our neighbors, listening to them,” he said. 

“I think what the neighbors and the voters want is to see what are [McCann’s and my] different ideas. What’s our vision for Chula Vista,” Tamayo said. “I’m going to focus on sharing my vision, sharing my ideas, on what the future and the next chapter for Chula Vista should be.” 

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