San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
MAIENSCHEIN FACES FIGHT FOR SEAT
Running in newly formed 76th District, incumbent has tough GOP challenger
Never, not even after switching parties in 2019, has incumbent Brian Maienschein faced such stiff competition to retain his state Assembly seat.
The five-term Assembly member from San Diego faced a pair of Republicans in the June primary whose vote totals, added together, exceeded his own. Though the margin was only a scant 121 votes, according to official records, it was nonetheless the first time he has emerged from a preliminary 76th
District contest without a significant lead since his first Assembly tilt in 2012.
Challenger Kristie Bruce-lane of Rancho Bernardo, a director at the Olivenhain Municipal Water District and founder of a nonprofit that helps homeless kids hurt by domestic violence, must consolidate the primary votes that went to third-place finisher June Cutter.
Though she did not respond to multiple requests for interviews, Bruce-lane has continually hammered Maienschein on Twitter for his party’s failure to suspend the state’s gas tax as prices have risen at pumps across California. Sexually violent predators also come up regularly with the candidate accusing her opponent of writing a bill that allows “sexually violent predators to live a short walk from elementary schools.”
Maienschein has said in previous interviews that his bill, AB1641, simply requires better real-time tracking of those convicted of sexual abuse using global positioning system capabilities. The issue tracks back to 2021 when the state attempted to place Douglas Badger, previously convicted of sexual assault, in a home in a Rancho Bernardo neighborhood.
Maienschein’s social media stance generally ignores the shots from across the aisle and focuses on his support of specific actions taken
during previous terms from educational funding to his vote against the gas tax in 2017 when he was still a member of the Republican Party.
He made the switch in 2019, declaring that the Trump presidency led his former party “to the extreme on issues that divide our country.”
An emblematic symbol of that change: Maienschein’s campaign this fall heavily advocates for women’s rights in the wake of this year’s Roe v. Wade reversal by the U.S. Supreme Court.
At the Sept. 29 campaign finance filing deadline, the incumbent had raised about 70 percent more than the challenger, with Maienschein topping $840,000 to Bruce-lane’s $483,678 since the start of the year.
That cash, though, will be spent trying to convince a different group of voters than cast ballots every other time Maienschein won an Assembly seat.
Assembly District 77, Maienschein’s home turf throughout his legislative career, is no more as boundaries were redrawn to account for the results of the 2020 Census. The incumbent now lives inside the boundaries of the 76th which drift north compared to his old electoral neighborhood, dropping Miramar, Mira Mesa and communities along state Route 52 while retaining the SR 56 corridor, including most of Carmel Mountain and Carmel Valley, Rancho Penasquitos and Rancho Bernardo.
The new boundaries drop Poway and pull in from the coast a little farther than before, skirting areas just east of Solana Beach and Del Mar, but retaining Fairbanks Ranch, Rancho Santa Fe and the San Pasqual Valley. Those locations, previously on the district’s northern border, are now midway points with the 76th adding Escondido and San Marcos.
Politically, the 76th is about the same as the 77th, with 37 percent registered Democrat and 30 percent Republican, according to the latest voter registration data. As is usually the case, competitors will compete most fiercely to sway the 25 percent of voters who registered but declined to state a party.
paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com