Correction: This story has been updated to correct the number of deed-restricted units in San Marcos.
State Sen. Brian Jones terms out of office next year, and three candidates are vying to take his place in San Diego’s 40th Senate District.
San Diego City Councilmember Marni von Wilpert, a Democrat, and San Marcos City Councilmember Ed Musgrove and Kristie Bruce-Lane, both Republicans, have announced campaigns for the seat.
Jones, now senate minority leader, has represented the area since 2018 and said District 40 represents a “unique mix of different regions … including East County, North County, and the City. It truly represents everything San Diego has to offer.”
It includes the cities of Escondido, San Marcos, Poway, Santee and parts of San Diego, along with unincorporated communities including Fallbrook, Bonsall, Valley Center, Ramona, Alpine and Descanso.
Voters in the purple district are split nearly evenly between the parties, with 207,298 registered Democrats, 206,455 registered Republicans and 141,316 voters listing no party preference. California Target Book, which analyzes political races, noted that President Joe Biden won the district by 6.6 percent in 2020 and Kamala Harris led by 3.8 percent in 2024.
Ed Musgrove was elected to the San Marcos City Council in 2020 and represents the city’s fourth district, which includes Twin Oaks Valley. He previously worked for the San Diego Sheriff’s Department for 25 years as a patrol deputy, traffic investigator and detective before becoming Sheriff’s Captain for Santee.
Musgrove said he wants to improve transportation and favors small, flexible “microtransit” services such as public vans or small buses, over large transit projects.
“There’s a critical need for infrastructure” in the 40th District, Musgrove told me. “There needs to be a return on our investment from the gas tax for road maintenance and expansion.”
With 3,000 deed-restricted units, San Marcos offers a model for other California cities, Musgrove said, arguing that California should speed up home construction by cutting red tape.
“If our target really is more affordable housing, then we need to reduce the cost to build,” Musgrove said. “It is always going to be expensive in California; it always has been, because people want to live here. But we’ve driven out that middle class.”
Jones is endorsing Musgrove for the seat, saying “Ed has continued to prioritize safety, local control, balanced budgets, and strong education and economic opportunities.”
Marni von Wilpert represents San Diego’s northernmost Fifth District, which includes Carmel Mountain Ranch, Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Peñasquitos, Scripps Ranch and other neighborhoods.
Before her election to the Council, von Wilpert worked for nearly seven years as a deputy city attorney, litigating “environmental polluters, companies that didn’t pay their workers, and businesses that cheated customers.” She also previously worked as an attorney with the Associate Labor Council and National Labor Relations Board and spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana during the AIDS crisis.
Von Wilpert chairs the city’s public safety committee, where she said she pushed to purchase an additional wildfire helicopter, and then to increase pay for its pilots. She said wildfire prevention would be one of her top priorities if she’s elected to the state Senate.
“I want to make sure we prioritize this as a state and that other communities aren’t left vulnerable like what we saw in L.A.,” she told me.
Von Wilpert said she would also work toward better results from state homeless and mental health programs.
“I’d like to work on implementing these big ideas we hear from Sacramento,” she said. “Care Court was a great idea to help people with untreated schizophrenia or substance use, but we’re not seeing that on the ground. We’re not getting the results that were promised.”
Kristie Bruce-Lane ran for California’s 76th Assembly seat in 2022 and 2024, and lost to Darshana Patel in November. Bruce-Lane didn’t respond to my requests for comment.
Bruce-Lane is a former Olivenhain Municipal Water District board member, who founded the Thumbprint Project Foundation, which helps homeless children who have been impacted by domestic violence, according to her campaign website. She is also a member of the Salvation Army Metropolitan Board and the Impact Committee that focuses on people experiencing homelessness.
Bruce-Lane’s website said that in Sacramento she would fight “Suffocating regulations and ever-increasing tax rates.”
Is there anything you’d like to know about this race? Or do you have a tip? Email me at deborah@voiceofsandiego.org.
Carl DeMaio Loses Assembly Budget Committee Seat
On Monday, Assemblymember Carl DeMaio emailed supporters that he had lost his seat on the Budget Committee in what he called “unacceptable retaliation.”
DeMaio said he was kicked off the committee because “Gavin Newsom didn’t like me exposing wasteful spending and corrupt use of taxpayer funds.” He pointed to social media videos like this one as the reason he was removed. DeMaio didn’t respond to my requests for comment.
Nick Miller, spokesperson for Speaker Robert Rivas, said the speaker routinely switches committee assignments to ensure that “members are in a good position to collaborate.”
Collaboration wasn’t DeMaio’s strong point in Rivas’ view.
“When members use the committee process to grandstand, to go off topic and to create performative videos that they put on social media, where commenters target staff and members use them for personal fundraising and financial gain, that’s the type of chaos we see in Washington,” Miller said. “And there’s zero tolerance for those political games in Sacramento.”
Budget Committee chairwoman, Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, told the Sacramento Bee that she wasn’t part of the decision to bump DeMaio, but didn’t disagree with it.
“He has his fan base – and they love this aggressive, got-you, bullying type of behavior – and they think that acting like a tough guy shows respect and authority, just like the way the President treated Zelensky,” she said. “And I absolutely disagree with it.”
DeMaio was reassigned to the Governmental Organization Committee. He pledged to “DOGE California,” and asked supporters to chip in for that effort.
Issa Pitches a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump
Fresh off the disastrous Oval Office meeting on a Ukraine peace deal, Rep. Darrell Issa of San Diego called for Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
The talk devolved into a shouting match, as Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for refusing to sign a deal for Ukraine’s mineral resources. Trump’s actions, Issa argued in a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, have led to “cooling tensions, establishing dialogue, and encouraging the flourishing of freedom.”
Although European leaders and others were dismayed by Trump’s shift toward Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, Issa argued that Trump’s tough-on-Ukraine position demonstrated his “national resolve of peace through strength.”
The Sacramento Report runs every Friday. Do you have tips, ideas or questions? Send them to me at deborah@voiceofsandiego.org.
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