YES, ELECTION SEASON IS UPON US ONCE AGAIN

Countywide voting in the Nov. 8 election — in races ranging from San Diego school board to the U.S. Senate and ballot measures related to everything from gambling to trash pickup — begins in less than two months. That means that the focus of The San Diego Union-tribune Editorial Board — and our Opinion section itself — has already shifted as it always does before an election. To help you become better informed about the candidates and ballot measures you will be weighing, we are beginning our election coverage today by publishing Q&AS from two Californians who want to spend the next six years in the U.S. Senate. Monday, we will begin publishing Q&AS from the candidates for two-year seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. And then we’ll really be, ahem, off to the races.

Between now and early October, when voting gets underway, we are planning to publish dozens of candidate Q&AS and nearly two dozen commentaries connected to a handful of San Diego city ballot measures and seven state propositions. We will resume publishing regular commentaries in October, and we won’t stop publishing Steve Breen’s editorial cartoons, letters to the editor, syndicated columns and our own editorials on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Before long, those editorials will include our election endorsements.

There is still a lot of work to get to the point where we’re close to writing those, however. This cycle, our research will include the aforementioned surveys and commentaries, a steady stream of Zoom meetings with many candidates and, as we did in the primary, a series of in-person forums in some of the more high-profile local races. As soon as we lock down the dates with the venues and the campaigns, we will let you know when and where those will be, but look for them if you are interested in the San Diego City Council races in Districts 2, 4, 6 and 8; the Chula Vista mayor’s race; the San Diego County sheriff ’s race, and, maybe, local ballot measures. Please visit sandiegouniontribune.com/2022electionguide for the dates and details of these forums, and check back as we add interviews, commentaries and more to this voter guide. Also please email Editorial and Opinion Director Matthew T. Hall at matthew.hall@sduniontribune.com to suggest any questions we might ask. Then join us at a forum.

With this ambitious schedule, we hope to provide our readers with plenty of information they can use when their ballots arrive in the mail. In the weeks ahead, we’ll also share a calendar of when those endorsements will run so those who are interested can include our thoughts in their own research. As usual, some readers (and some candidates) may criticize our endorsements or fault us for making them in the first place. “Why are you so biased?” we will be asked. “What are you doing? What were you even thinking?” Well, thinking is exactly what we we are doing. The editorial board (whose names all appear in the upper right of this page — and in that same space in every edition of The San Diego Uniontribune) takes this role seriously. We are not partisans. We’re journalists. And we’re not biased. We’re open-minded. But we do have opinions. And we are paid to share them. It’s why our part of the Uniontribune is called the opinion section. It’s where we share yours, ours, as many people’s as possible, when they are relevant, civil and accurate. Like you, we live in this region, send our kids to local schools and want San Diego to be a welcoming place, where facts matter, our rich diversity is celebrated, those in power are held accountable and people can disagree without being disagreeable. We wake up every day wanting to know more about where we live and who lives here. Wanting to listen. So we’ll evaluate candidates and campaigns and share what they say and what we think. We’ll assess things like accomplishments, background, character, demeanor, experience, records of community service and policy stances. As in the past, we’ll endorse people from both parties, and we’ll leave you with recommendations, realizing the choice is yours. Our goal is to give you information and analysis. We’re not here for the campaigns. We’re here for our readers — for you — because — like you — we want to help make this place we live in and love and can learn from better.