Sara Ochoa Wants to Bring More Transparency to San Diego Dem Party

This post has been updated with a correction.

The San Diego County Democratic Party will choose its next chair Aug. 19 in one of the most contentious leadership races in recent memory, pitting former South County Vice Chair Sara Ochoa against former chair Will Rodriguez-Kennedy. The winner will guide the party through high-stakes battles ahead — from possible congressional redistricting to the 2026 election cycle.

Ochoa, who served from 2019 to 2024 as South Area Vice Chair, is running on a platform of strengthening grassroots engagement, increasing transparency in party operations, and building sustained partnerships with community organizations beyond election season. 

Ochoa, a former lobbyist and consultant, has faced criticism over her handling of funds as South Area Vice Chair and allegations involving her husband Ricardo Ochoa’s previous marriage — which she addresses in this interview.

In this Q&A, Ochoa discusses her vision for an activist-centered Democratic Party, and how she plans to unify members while expanding the party’s reach in a politically divided landscape.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Can you talk a little bit about your background, leading up to your decision to run for this seat?

I didn’t get involved politically until my late 20s. I was a single parent from the age of 23, raising two little ones, relying on programs like WIC and SNAP, living paycheck to paycheck in a moldy apartment in Ocean Beach/Point Loma. My eldest developed asthma from those conditions, so I know what it’s like to face those late-night ER visits. I worked a series of jobs before landing at a law firm with a local environmental attorney, and the activism tied to that work made it clear to me that if you care about anything — including environmental policy — you care about who’s elected.

When my kids were with their dad, I’d volunteer on campaigns, go walk for candidates, and occasionally speak at city council meetings — just that basic level of engagement. In 2018, after my youngest graduated high school, I left the law firm, ran a mayoral campaign, and moved from North County to Chula Vista to be with my partner, who is now my spouse. About a year later, I was unanimously elected South Area Vice Chair and went on to be re-elected twice.

The South Area is the longest-standing Democratic stronghold in the county, which means there are deep-rooted factions and plenty of competition for seats. I came in without that baggage but with a reputation for my capacity and work ethic. I tried to be a steady hand through a lot of turbulence — including when Will Rodriguez-Kennedy took a leave of absence — working closely with Becca Taylor to keep the primary and general elections on track, support our candidates, and keep the focus on the work, not the drama. My goal was always to keep things above board, transparent, and respectful to all candidates, even those who didn’t get a party endorsement.

What is your vision for the San Diego County Democratic Party heading into the 2026 election cycle, and how would your leadership differ from your opponent’s?

I felt this even in my capacity as an area leader of the party for nearly five years — we haven’t done the best job of collaborative leadership and partnering with the community.

At the beginning of Covid, when our electeds were being targeted, there were harassment campaigns going after our elected Democrats who were trying to be protective of public health and the party. I threw myself into some of those spaces to try to support the local community and give them tools, but the party hasn’t built the sustaining support for our electeds.

That is really part of my passion: not only do we need to elect good people who align with our values, but we also need to keep showing up. Right now, in this national climate, people are realizing they can’t sit at home and expect democracy to just continue to work — and the Democratic Party has been notably absent. I think that’s why our approval ratings are really low.

We’ve been taking people’s support for granted, then not delivering on some of our promises, and not showing up and fighting for people where they want to see us doing that. We’ve got some great members of Congress who are fighting back at the national level and leading in those spaces, but we need to provide — within the umbrella of the party — those opportunities to engage in meaningful ways to protect our democracy. That means cultivating a culture of ongoing activism.

Where we already have an existing presence or Democratic majorities, we need to build on that. We have very passionate Democrats, and we have like-minded, non–party-preference independent voters who are not OK with all of the things stripping their communities of rights under the Trump agenda. They’re ready to fight back, and we need to partner with them.

We’ve got a lot of talented people — a lot of really smart folks who want to help — and the party can help provide those avenues. That’s also how we identify good candidates who are known by their communities and help them understand the party infrastructure to be our future leaders as well.

How do you respond to concerns about the improperly reported $220,000 spent on mailers during your time as South Area Vice Chair in 2022? How do you respond to concerns about your resignation from that position?

Yeah, and the two are not really related. The funds that I had oversight of, and the spending of those funds, were only the funds that I personally raised as a vice chair. The funds I oversaw I would use to help with some subsequent slate mail, or if I thought maybe a school board race might need additional support, I would design Meta ads and text banks — often, if it was appropriate, dual-language, which the party doesn’t do everywhere.

As a vice chair, my oversight was not of member communications as a whole — that’s not the role of a vice chair, so I didn’t have that oversight. I was on the board for some of the time we were talking about an audit, which has been promised to our members for a couple of years and needs to come out. I think my opponent and I are in agreement that the financial audit needs to be revealed.

I was part of the board when we resolved the issue, which was that there were discrepancies between a couple of different vendors — some vendors were not even in agreement with each other. Part of the back-and-forth that was reported out was documenting that, in fact, there were discrepancies, and then there was work done that the party paid for — but they had to figure out exactly what was accurate, because some things were not matching up. That’s what I gleaned from my time, but it was not my oversight.

On my early resignation: the March 2024 primary was brutal. 

By the time 2024 came around, I was still rebuilding some of the capacity that consulting firm had previously built up. On my own, with our endorsed candidates in Chula Vista and San Diego D4 — those were all on the ballot in March 2024 — I was working double, triple time to fundraise for our candidates. I was putting in the hours of a party chair, but a vice chair doesn’t have direct oversight of staff. I was trying to do it all, super-volunteer style, and that — plus my little one, who was three at the time — it was too much.

I was running my own central committee campaign at the time. Some of the messaging I was getting back from texts and things targeting Democrats — a lot of folks with Latino surnames were replying back, “MAGA, Trump 2024, I’m never voting Democrat again.” And I thought, “Oh, we’re in big trouble.” Not long after that, things were very publicly unfolding with Supervisor Nora Vargas — Chair Nora Vargas — and we didn’t have a top of the ticket.

So I thought, “Alright, I’ve already fundraised, I don’t know, $6,000 into the area toward the general. I’ll still be here to help out, but I need to take a step back. It doesn’t have to be me. We’re not going to have a top ticket funding our whole down-ballot campaign. I’ll do everything I can, but somebody else can bring this in.” I wasn’t intending to be in this vice chair position forever.

But I’ve got my fight back, and I want to bring that capacity to join with people all around this county — people of good conscience, with that fighting spirit — to join us as Democrats and fight back.

How do you respond to the recent domestic abuse allegations against your husband, San Diego labor attorney Ricardo Ochoa, stemming from his previous marriage?

I have not had the opportunity to meet or ever speak to her [the accuser], so I can’t speak to any of it, really, other than I appreciate that marriage produced my amazing stepson, who I love. My husband has done a lot of work, which I appreciate, and taken a lot of accountability. But our focus — and my focus — continues to be on investing in our community, and it’s not relevant to the vision I have for this party and how I want to bring this party forward.

Many members describe the party as cliquey and hostile to grassroots voices. How would you change that culture and ensure broader inclusion in decision-making?

Every four years, we elect six delegates from each Assembly District to the central committee, and each can appoint an alternate. At full committee meetings, only one vote counts, but at the caucus level it effectively doubles their representation. We also have ex officios — like our state and federal electeds — who get a vote, but local mayors and city councilmembers don’t unless they run in those races.

This past cycle, we saw something new: Laborers Local 89 spent over $500,000 on central committee races. In places like San Francisco and Los Angeles, high-dollar campaigns for these seats are common, and San Diego is heading that way. That means more candidates who already hold office or are running elsewhere end up controlling our endorsements, which I don’t think reflects the grassroots.

I’d like to see rules changed so if some of those six seats are held by elected officials or their high-level staff, we could add more community members with full voting rights. We need people who are committed to building the party, not just holding a title.

Our chartered clubs — like Chula Vista Democratic Club, Democrats for Equality, Latina Democrats, and others — are another grassroots connection, but most have fewer than 200 members here, compared to over 1,000 in some Orange County clubs. We can do more to grow and support them. People want meaningful ways to plug in, and our job is to make sure they can.

I think we need to be more relational and less exclusionary — in both our timelines and our connections outside the party.

Some members have called for the chair vote to be delayed to allow more time for forums and discussion. Do you support that request? Why or why not?

I support it fully. There are a couple different conflicting interpretations of the rules. Typically, for a position this important, we would announce the vacancy at a central committee meeting, and then the E-Board would either call for an election with seven days’ notice, or it would be held at the subsequent meeting.

The members of the Executive Board signed NDAs and went into closed session in early June to set the Aug. 19 date before most members of the committee even knew there was a vacancy. Even if, technically, the E-Board has the authority to set an election date, the amount of discord and confusion doesn’t lend itself to the trust of the body.

Right now, we need to do everything we can to operate in as much transparency as possible so that our internal body can trust the process — and that transparency also reflects outside of the organization. If internally there’s this much dissent and distrust, we need to remedy that.

In this case, our body is letting us know there’s a lot of distrust in the process. Frankly, a lot of folks want to see at least another candidate. I think competition is good. It’s making us better, letting us hear what the body wants heading into 2026. I welcome that rigorous discussion and debate — it’s helping me. It’s helping me hear from folks in Fallbrook, echoing some of the things from folks in East County, or concerns in some of our North Coastal communities, which are very different.

If we didn’t have the space for those conversations, I — as the potential future leader of this party — wouldn’t be as responsive and as good of a leader. I think the rushed timeline looks and feels suspicious, even if there’s an argument it was technically fine. I don’t think it holds faith with our body.

So yes, I support it. I don’t think it’s okay. I think it was inappropriate for this to be decided in the beginning of June before the vacancy had even occurred.

How do you define neutrality from competing interests in a leadership role like chair, especially given your role as a lobbyist and consultant?

My opponent works for a member of Congress, and a lot of people in our political circles have relationships that aren’t entirely independent of the party. Contributors want access to policymakers — that’s no secret in organized labor. Will is supported by LiUNA Local 89, which has a big presence on our central committee, but the labor movement isn’t a monolith. Private and public sector unions aren’t always on the same page, and that plays out in the party too.

In the South Area, I’d reach out to affected unions before scheduling endorsements — teachers, classified staff, building trades — to see when they planned to endorse. If it lined up with my timeline, I’d wait so our members had that information. If unions weren’t united, that was still relevant. But my loyalty is to the party. I’ve built those relationships so we can repair after an election, and while I won’t back away from working with working families, I can separate interests when we’re not aligned and keep the party first.

I closed my lobbyist account because if I’m elected, my commitment is to the party. I still have my small business, but I haven’t taken client work for months while focusing on my family — and now this race.

I also want to better educate our voting members about how the party operates, our timelines, and make the process more transparent. That means diversifying membership, training people so they understand our sometimes convoluted structure, and moving to hybrid meetings so we can have more face-to-face interaction. Some people absorb information better in person, and right now it’s too easy for new members to get lost in Zoom calls and bylaws amendments.

There will always be factions at odds, but the more we acknowledge that openly, the better. I try to explain the dynamics as fairly as possible because, in my experience, everyone in this party is here to make the world better in some way.

Latino turnout in South County dropped significantly during the last general election, and some precincts flipped conservative. What went wrong — how would you address this?

So I think across the county — and this is not just San Diego County; I’m reading other sources outside of here — there’s a conservative takeover of the airwaves. Specifically, Latino and Spanish-language radio stations are actively engaging in this “Lexit” movement — the Latino exit from the Dem Party.

There’s been active recruitment within the South Bay community. I’ve been ringing the alarm bell. It’s kind of above my pay grade — I’ve asked the CDP for help — and the lack of consistent leadership in the chair position has impacted this.

In my community, like I mentioned before, we had a county supervisor — our first Democrat. I was so proud to help elect her, but then we had this breakdown in the relationship between her office and others in the community, and that really sorely impacted our resources to reach out to those voters.

We don’t do sufficient Spanish-language outreach. My father-in-law is a certified professional translator, so I would sometimes lean on him for help to do outreach to those communities. But that was just me, as a vice chair volunteer, trying to make sure at least some of our party communications were in the appropriate language to reach those voters. It’s a bigger problem.

The party hasn’t been making the cost of living lower. When people’s schools are laying off the educators who are serving their kids, or in some communities we see the lack of sufficient flood response and people displaced for as long as they have been — and they look and don’t see a difference in how their family is helped — that’s an us problem. That trickles down to voter turnout.

We have to deliver on those promises and build up that relationship with the community. Let people in the community see Democrats — like I mentioned before — meeting them where they’re at: back-to-school fairs, job fairs, partnering with those elected officials who they and their teams see around in the community, and doing that as the Democratic Party.

Next Monday night, La Voz Demócrata — which is our Spanish-language Democratic club — is hosting a chair debate with translation. I’m not a Spanish speaker myself, and the primary audience is monolingual Spanish speakers. We’ve got people who are doing the work and have phenomenal ideas on how to do this outreach and additional voter registration.

I will be partnering with the experts on the ground to do things we’ve never done before in these spaces. Part of this has been a nationwide problem, but part of it has been our lack of consistent leadership — and failing to, you know, again, I was ringing the alarm bells, but who was going to take it up in a predominantly volunteer organization?

We also need to uplift folks in our community who have that expertise to be advising our policy and outreach and spending.

There’s been a lot of talk about anonymous letters and negative campaigning from both sides. Have you seen these attacks, and what’s your position on that kind of tactic?

I think part of it is that air of urgency — because this position is so important, I think there’s a fear of retaliation. And full disclosure, I don’t know who’s writing the letters. I have some suspicions, and then I talked to my friend who has a totally different suspicion. So I don’t know — I’m as lost as anyone else. But it points to the very strong investment and care about what happens in this race, and I think it also means we have this opportunity to be accountable, even if it is something anonymous.

There were some concerns raised about who I’m married to, or something along those lines. And I’m like, okay, let’s talk about it in the open. I don’t know who raised it, but my spouse works for some of our local labor unions and trades, and how is that relationship going to be separate? I want to be able to have those conversations — that’s fine. I’m willing to take accountability for any perceived or actual failures or omissions in my leadership or as a member of this community.

We’ve all stepped on each other’s toes at some point, and we need to be able to repair. I don’t always think my opponent is willing to take accountability for things — for his own actions that have potentially impacted his ability to lead and to build consensus at this time. I think it’s a fundamental necessity for any leader, but especially for an organization such as this, to be willing to apologize when they’ve done wrong, hurt someone, or done real damage, and take their part of that.

I think things are so far gone with some members of our community, and I haven’t seen that over my years of working with him and with others. I think that’s part of the response we’re seeing right now.

This has been a tense, sometimes ugly race. If elected, how would you unite the party — especially those who supported your opponent?

So a lot of people — we go back a long way, right? I’ve had nothing but positive interactions with many of the people who are supporting my opponent. From my perspective, I’m willing to come together and work through, or let time heal some wounds, and then focus on the things that unite us — whether it’s a policy or a lot of investment that someone has, or something along those lines.

I’m a mom who values the ability to apologize for harm done, even if it’s not, “Oh, it’s 90% my fault and 10% the other person’s.” Instead of pointing fingers, being the first one to humble myself and repair — because I’m going to misstep sometimes — I expect to model that, and I expect everyone of good faith in this party to do the same. We have to put the personal aside.

I’m not stepping into this position, should I be elected, for this to be a “me” moment. This is an “us” moment — which means there has to be an us. I expect us all to level up on our interpersonal maturity, on our ability to compartmentalize past harms, disagreements, or even misunderstandings, and move forward in good faith together.

There are enough people willing and ready to do this work that some might choose not to at this time — but I will remain open to doing this work with everyone who is willing, because what we’ve got at stake is too high.

Correction: The name of the club La Voz Demócrata was incorrectly transcribed in the original version of this post and we regret the error.

The post Sara Ochoa Wants to Bring More Transparency to San Diego Dem Party appeared first on Voice of San Diego.