Democratic businessman Ammar Campa-Najjar is running against Republican city council member John McCann for a four-year term as Chula Vista Mayor. Here are his responses to an interview with Chula Vista Today Staff addressing homelessness, affordable housing, climate change, public safety, and the local economy.
Q: Why do you want to be the mayor of Chula Vista?
A: There are a couple of reasons for my roots, my innovative, new, forward-leaning vision for the future. Elections are about the future, and I represent that. My coalition-building ability and my experience working in the federal government and national nonprofits bring us federal resources— our own tax dollars— back to our city, so we don't have to raise taxes on locals. I think that experience is what uniquely positions me.
I was born in East County in 1989 in San Diego. I moved to Chula Vista in 1993. I was four years old. I grew up off of J Street on Woodlawn and Kearney, with my abuelito (grandfather) Celso Campa, who emigrated from Jalisco, Guadalajara, México to this country and to Chula Vista. In 2003, we moved to Eastlake, where I attended East Lake High School. I went to Southwestern College, San Diego State University, and I worked my first job as a janitor to help my mom make ends meet. We were living the Eastlake life but had the West Chula Vista income. We were still struggling to make ends meet, so I had to help my mom. I got to work for President Barack Obama's campaign, and I started working at a field office in Chula Vista. Those opportunities were made possible because of my neighbors, teachers, mentors, and my family that allowed me to live beyond my ability. To see beyond what the horizon had for me. I got to work at the White House, the Department of Labor, the U.S, and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Those opportunities were given to me because of my roots in Chula Vista. I want to come back and give back to my city. I've been involved in the community for a long time. I've done a lot of charity work in the communities through my church and other entities. I love this city. I ran for Congress against a corrupt politician in our area. You know, it's faster to Jamul from East Lake, where I live, than to West Chula Vista. It is still a community of interest, and I decided to run against Duncan Hunter because he was a corrupt politician who had investigations against him. Now, I'm running for mayor against somebody who has five pending investigations against him. I'm running against corruption, but I also want to bring a new vision of the future. Chula Vista will have a great future if we can harness the potential of its people. I think I represent the future that this city invested in. My mother was a single working-class mom and my grandfather was a police officer. I want to make sure more people have the same housing opportunities which gave me the ladders of opportunity. I'm running for mayor to promote public safety. My grandfather, Celso Campa who was a police officer, instilled in me the value of keeping your family safe and by extension, your community safe. I want to promote public safety and deal with homelessness in a compassionate, but accountable way. Those are my priorities.
I have a coalition of support from Governor Gavin Newsom, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, and the entire city council's endorsed me against their colleague, my opponent, John McCann. Supervisor Nora Vargas and Congressman Juan Vargas have endorsed me. On day one, I will have a coalition ready to focus on Chula Vista as needed. That's important. I have relationships in Congress and Governor and the governor's office to help put a spotlight on Chula Vista, so we are not neglected when it comes to state, local, and federal funding. It's the experience that I bring of working in the highest echelons of government, whether it's the White House, the administration, the Department of Labor, or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where I have helped small Hispanic businesses get access to credit, capital, and contracts. I think all that experience, those roots, and the coalition I built, positions me to be a mayor that is able to lead us toward the future on day one. I'm really excited about that. It's not just about me, again, it's about us. My opponent is really focused on himself and claims credit for everything. We’ve got to build a team to lead our city to a better future.
Q: What is your top priority if elected as mayor?
A: My top priority is making sure we have safe, thriving neighborhoods. If we have safe neighborhoods, people will want to come and spend their money here. They'll invest in our city. People will want to live, work and play in our community, and it's a good thing. Also, reducing the cost of living and improving the quality of life. There is 80,000 people a day [who] commute from Chula Vista to San Diego for work. That's bigger than the city of National City and La Mesa. That's how many people leave Chula Vista a day for work. I think it's important we make sure companies understand we're a safe community. We're a community that you do want to bring a business to or start a business in. Reducing the cost of housing by building more housing and reducing the cost of building a house. The development of a home is expensive, but 40% of the cost of a home is just government cost. If we could reduce that, then we could lower the cost to the consumer, the buyer, or the renter. Then dealing with homelessness.
Q: How will you address homelessness in Chula Vista? What do you think could be done differently?
A: My opponents had 16 years on the city council to do something about it, and this situation collapsed under his watch. My approach, with Harborside Park, for example, had a temporary closure. I support the closure but wished we never had to get to the point of having to close in the first place. I think that's unfortunate, and we should have been more proactive about it. My goal is to work with all the resources we have. It's about collaboration. The county has mental health resources. We have to empower law enforcement to crack down on crime, illegal drug use, prostitution, or any kind of violence or crime that's happening at Harborside Park from some who are homeless. We need to enforce the law, but with compassion. We need to relocate those who are homeless to an emergency shelter. We don't have one in Chula Vista or even all the South Bay. We need to make sure that we bring shelter that is not by residential, that's not by a school system, or by impacted communities. It needs to be somewhere that could be concentrated where they can get the shelter they need, resources, and vocational training they need to live self-sufficient lives. I've been working with Nathan Fletcher and Supervisor Nora Vargas. I just was talking to them recently about the housing component of homelessness, building more housing, and affordable home ownership. We can do it in the MTS parking lots and repurpose that for housing. There's a lot of surplus lands that the county has nearby and even within Chula Vista, when you think about the land that is MTS or SANDAG land, public land that we can build housing on. The government can sell land for $1, so you can reduce the barrier of entry for housing. Dealing with homelessness is going to take a government and community approach.
Q: What will you do to improve public safety in Chula Vista?
A: Chula Vista has a population of 280,000. We're supposed to have one police officer, per 1000 residents. We don't have that right now. We’re about 180. We should be at 280. We need to bring in more police officers. I want to build more workforce housing, so police officers can afford to live in Chula Vista. I think that will enhance community relationships with the police. If you are neighbors with the people that you serve, it strengthens a bond. I think the problem we have within our police is morale is at an all-time low. It's very hard to be a police officer these days. There are not a lot of there are a lot of people who scrutinize the police. There are some bad actors, but we can't penalize every police officer for a few bad actors. We have to be supportive of our police officers who are doing good work and holding bad actors accountable. I want to increase our police numbers so that we have one per 1000 residents so we can increase and decrease wait times. We have a lot of great technologies that we're harnessing to help police officers, so I want to make sure that we're balancing our privacy rights with our safety needs. Make sure that we pay our firefighters fairly because our firefighters are currently not getting paid enough. They are an important component of public safety. Firefighters and paramedics are also the first responders. They're doing brave, heroic, and sometimes thankless work, so we have to make sure that we respect and empower everybody in law enforcement and public safety. If you look at cities similar to our size, Buffalo, New York has 260,000 people we have 280,000 people and Buffalo New York has 700 police officers. Maybe some people might think that crime is higher in Buffalo, well look at Salt Lake City. It's a city of 200,000 people, and they have 500 police. I don't want to raise taxes to pay for police or firefighters. I want to raise more revenue. I want more people to spend their money in Chula Vista, so we can invest in our city without having to raise taxes on residents and increase the cost of living.
Q: How will you address affordable housing in Chula Vista?
A: The first thing is building more housing. The Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) is the assessment estimates how many houses we are short in a city to meet the housing needs. We are currently 11,000 homes short of what we need to build to meet our housing needs. The number one thing is building more inventory, and creating more supply to meet the demand for housing. Scarcity drives value. If you have more housing, it will help lower the cost because there's competition. I'm working with developers on doing that. If we can lower the cost of building, we can pass on those cost savings to people who are purchasing or renting. There are different techniques that we're using. Chula Vista is kind of in a tough financial situation where we can't really afford to lower the property tax. I would like to get us to that point where we're raising so much revenue from trade, tourism, and people spending their money here for entertainment or for business to shift the cost burden from residents to tourists, who will want to come to our city. About 40% of the cost of a home is government costs, so cutting that will reduce the cost of a home. If you want to raise everyone's prospects, create mixed-income, mixed-use housing, or developments, to benefit the community and allow money to circulate in the economy locally, and increase the quality of life and reduce the cost of living.
Q: What will you do to improve the local economy in Chula Vista?
A: My plan is to attract companies like Qualcomm and big companies in San Diego to bring satellite offices to Chula Vista, so people don't have to commute to work every day. Our biggest employers in Chula Vista are Sweetwater, Chula Vista Elementary, Sharp Health Care, Collins Aerospace, Sesame Street, and Walmart, so we need to diversify our industries in Chula Vista. I believe that a university in Chula Vista will help attract more business to our city, or industry. That will create jobs locally. We have been making these promises for 25 years, and my opponents had 20 years, 16 years on the city council, and four years as a school board president, to do something about this. It's all been words and no action. I think we need a new mayor with a new vision, relationships, and skill sets, to help us get these projects over the finish line. I'm already talking to folks in the business community and higher education about bringing these assets to our city so we could create jobs here locally.
Q: What will you do to ensure all neighborhoods are treated equally in Chula Vista
A: That's a big reason why I'm running. I'm the only person running for office who lived in the West and East neighborhoods of Chula Vista. I want to make sure that the money we are raising from the Bayfront development is going right back into all of the neighborhoods. I want to make sure that we can fund our schools properly, and make sure that we have people outcomes and education for our children. I want to make sure that we have a lot of great retail, restaurants, and small business in west Chula Vista. I think we're gonna get a lot of great opportunities going in with the bayfront and it's going to be great because we're also going to stimulate the corridors leading to the bayfront. In East Chula Vista, I want to get a police station. We only have one in west Chula Vista, and I think it's important that we have that presence there. I'm also going to work with Sweetwater and Chula Vista, elementary to get more state funding from Sacramento to make sure that we're funding our west and east Chula Vista schools.
Q: Chula Vista declared a climate emergency this year. What will you do to ensure the city’s climate goals are met? Would you like to make any changes to the climate action plan?
A: We were one of the biggest polluters in the county because of our commuting. We need to make sure that we can fix that. We have some very ambitious and important goals. So I want to make sure that everything that we have as an asset is either renewable or electric. I think we can meet those goals. I think it's important for our students to lead by example. I think it's important that we incentivize companies that want to be eco-friendly. The bayfront is a great example of that. We're going to have 70 acres of park, wetland, and green space to preserve our environment, and it's gonna be a great thing. I've talked to a couple of groups about doing an offshore desalinization plant. I want to incentivize being eco-friendly, and I think you can make it a win-win for business and the environment. I think our climate action plan is good as is, but once I'm in the office, I'm going to take a deeper look at it with our city manager and make sure we're doing things in an optimal way.
Q: How important is developing the bayfront in your vision of Chula Vista?
A: It's critically important because the Bayfront is going to serve as a proof of concept that Chula Vista is open for business and capable of big projects. I think it's going to be great. It's going to be the biggest Bayfront in the Western seaboard. It's taken a long time to get it done. There's a lot of people who've been working on it. I think that progress has happened. We got to make sure that we get it across the finish line by 2025. I’m very excited about the prospects from the Bayfront, and it's gonna generate up to $45 million a year, according to some estimates. That's revenue for our city to create thousands of construction jobs, high paying jobs and, and thousands of permanent jobs in entertainment, hospitality, and retail industry. I think it's an important first step for our city to show that we have the capacity to grow and, and be attraction for the rest of the county and the country.
Q: Why should voters choose you over your opponent?
A: I know that the campaign has taken the negative term from my opponent. My focus is on the issues. I'm very proud to be a Chula Vistan, and like many families, we moved around looking for a home that we could afford. I want to make sure the next generation of Chula Vistans can live here and not be forced to leave here. I love this community and I've had a vested interest in this community. I have a track record of running against corrupt politicians, I run against Hunter, and now we're against somebody who has five pending investigations. My goal is to pave a path toward a future. I think we need a new approach, a fresh vision, for the future to ensure public safety, ensure that we could reduce the costs of housing, we could tackle homelessness, and grow our city's economy for working families.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to say?
A: I hope people give me a chance to be their mayor. I'm committed to being here for all eight years if voters re-elect me. I'm committed to Chula Vista—this is the place I want to raise my family. I'm never leaving. This is not a stepping stone. It's where I want my legacy to be that I helped make Chula Vista a better place. This is not a stepping stone, It's what I want on my tombstone— that made Chula Vista the place where people could have opportunities.
