SAN DIEGANS CELEBRATE BIDEN

Supporters gather with signs, flags in impromptu parties

Jubilant crowds celebrated news of a Joe Biden presidency Saturday morning with impromptu block parties around San Diego County.

Undeterred by rain, hundreds of revelers had gathered on all four corners of University and Fifth Avenue by midday, dancing and cheering as a spontaneous parade of cars passed with horns blaring. One resident dressed in a pink sweatsuit cheerfully joined in the din by banging a wooden spoon against a frying pan.

Later, revelers brought speakers and played songs including “Mr. Vain” by Culture Beat and “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion, and someone set up a simple drum kit on the corner to play along.

Passengers hung out of sunroofs, fists raised in the air and fingers spread in peace signs. There were American flags, Pride flags, Black Lives Matter flags and Biden 2020 flags.

Another group gathered a few blocks away underneath Hillcrest’s massive Pride flag, and more at the Georgia Street bridge.

At the Cardiff Kook statue in North County, about 70 Biden supporters rallied, the energy made more dynamic amid blustery winds and threatening gray skies.

Similar scenes were playing out in cities across the United States, after the nation had waited days for votes to be tallied in key battleground states.

Biden supporters said they knew changing the country and bringing a divided nation together would not be easy and might not happen at all, but they wanted to savor victory — and hope — on Saturday.

Matt Quirk, 39, said he felt relieved when he heard the news that Biden had won, but he knew despite

Biden’s “decisive” victory, there would be a lot of hard work ahead to solve the country’s problems.

“I think it will be difficult, but I think we’ll have a lot of people in place to roll back a lot of those policies (Trump) put in place,” the San Diego resident said. “I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll avoid some of those really worrying scenarios about a constitutional crisis.”

Jen Leone, a 46-year-old San Diego resident, joined the festivities under the Hillcrest sign after feeling a sense of “needing to be around other like-minded people and just sharing joy after repeated trauma day after day.”

Frida Espinoza, 27, of San Clemente, said she didn’t want to miss being a part of this moment in time.

“This is a historic moment in my lifetime, and I’m here to celebrate. It feels magnificent.”

A few vehicles passed by the celebrations waving pro-trump flags, but there were no reports of confrontations.

Later in the day, about 35 Trump supporters rallied at the San Diego County Administration Building in downtown San Diego, flying American flags and Trump flags. Participants, who questioned

Biden’s victory and the election results in several states, said the crowd had been 100 strong earlier in the day. Several police vehicles were parked nearby, but the gathering appeared peaceful.

Some passing drivers honked in support while others yelled out expletives about Trump.

El Cajon resident Shannon Squires was distraught earlier that morning when she discovered that news organizations called the race for Biden. She has supported Trump since he first ran for office.

She believes there could be issues related to voter fraud, she said, and is hopeful that Trump will still win.

“You can’t ever give up hope,” Squires said.

Tony Krvaric, chairman of the Republican Party of San Diego County, disputed the AP’S call of Biden’s win.

“The election for president will be over when results are duly certified, not when media conglomerates decide,” Krvaric said. “We stand with President Trump in using every legal avenue to ensure all legitimate votes are counted so that the American people can have confidence in their elections.”

At the U.s.-mexico border, which served as both a symbol and flashpoint of the Trump presidency, what was supposed to be a rally for peaceful counting of votes turned into a very small salute to Biden. Enrique Morones, who founded Border Angels before leaving abruptly last year and now heads the group Gente Unida, said he was looking forward to a change in border policy.

He said both the family separation policy, which separated children from their parents upon entering the U.S., and a program that made asylum seekers stay in Mexico while their asylum cases are being determined, must be eliminated.

“We are asking Joe Biden to have humane immigration reform,” Morones said.

Reactions to Biden’s win poured in from local leaders Saturday.

“I can’t stop crying,” Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, D-san Diego, tweeted.

San Diego Mayor-elect Todd Gloria retweeted a photo of a rainbow over the Scripps Pier: “The storm has passed and hope is once again on the horizon.”

NELVIN C. CEPEDA U-T PHOTOS Revelers came out to the corner of Fifth Avenue and University in Hillcrest on Saturday after Joe Biden’s victory was declared, waving flags as drivers honked horns.

People hang out the windows of a car driving through Hillcrest as San Diego supporters for Biden react to his victory.