By Miriam Raftery

October 13, 2024 (San Diego) – Congresswoman Sara Jacobs, a Democrat, and El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells, a Republican, gave sharply divergent responses on a host of issues during a 51^st Congressional District candidate forum. The event, held at Temple Emanuel last week, was moderated by CBS 8 journalist Heather Myers with questions posed by the audience, plus in a twist, one question posed by each candidate to their opponent.

Wells sought to blame Democrats’ “radical left” policies  for problems ranging from inflation to rising homelessness and crime,  repeatedly criticizing immigrants while downplaying concerns over abortion. Jacobs sought to portray Wells as out of touch with women’s concerns over losing their reproductive freedoms if Republicans ban abortion at the national level and she denounced immigrant bashing as “dangerous” to Jews as well as immigrants.

Both voiced strong support for the Israeli people, but differed sharply in their views on how to defuse tensions and violence across the Mideast.  Wells chided Jacobs for focusing more on reproductive freedoms than economic issues, while Jacobs slammed Wells’ refusal to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. She fired back that such “lies” led to the Capitol attack in which insurrections wearing “team Auschwitz” t-shirts burst into the House Chamber moments before Jacobs, a Jew, was evacuated.“

East County News Service

June 9, 2022 (San Diego) – Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-San Diego) received over 60% of the vote in the primary election. She will run off on November 8 against Stan Caplan, a small business owner who received just under 38% of the vote. 

“This is exactly the kind of behavior that infuriates voters and must be stopped.” – Denise Ducheny, former state Senator and current 51^st Congressional district candidate

May 31, 2012 (San Diego)– State Senator Juan Vargas is under fire again, this time in an article from The Press Enterprise, published yesterday. The article catalogued the actions of Vargas and his Senate office, who stand accused of using taxpayer dollars to fund mail pieces aimed at helping his candidacy.  Vargas is now running for the 51st Congressional District seat, which spans San Diego and Imperial Counties, seeking to replace Bob Filner who is retiring to run for Mayor.