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<\/a>Now that the race for the District 2 seat \u2014 vacated by Dianne Jacob after recently-adopted term limits capped her at 28 years on the board \u2014 is down to two candidates, Anderson is hoping his record of working on bipartisan bills in the state legislature will catapult him to the board in November.<\/p>\nThe District 2 race is predicted to be one of the closest. Anderson, a Republican, will face fellow conservative Poway Mayor Steve Vaus, who garnered 31% of the vote in the primary. Another conservative candidate, Brian Sesko, took 6.8% of the vote and Democratic candidate Kenya Taylor came in third with a surprising finish of 26.7% in the historically deep-red district.<\/p>\n
Since the primary resulted in a close race between the professed conservative, winning over votes from Democrats could be a key strategy to winning in November.<\/p>\n
History of service<\/strong><\/p>\n Anderson was born in Detroit but his family moved when he was in junior high school to San Diego, settling in the Casa de Oro area. After graduating from St. Augustine High School, he attended Grossmont College before transferring to and graduating from Cal Poly Pomona.<\/p>\n After college, Anderson went to work for his brother who had started a direct mail marketing firm whose clients included businesses and politicians.<\/p>\n \u201cThrough the course of working for different political campaigns, I was encouraged to run for office,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n His first run for office was in 1998 \u2014 a race for State Assembly District 75, which he lost. In 2002, Anderson ran successfully for a seat on the water board, where he served four years, followed by successful campaigns for two terms in the State Assembly then two terms in State Senate.<\/p>\n In 2016, Anderson explored a run against Dianne Jacob for her District 2 seat, but eventually suspended the campaign citing difficulty raising the kind of money he felt he needed to beat the incumbent.<\/p>\n Anderson\u2019s time in the legislature wasn\u2019t without some controversy. In 2018, the Senate reprimanded him after an altercation with a lobbyist who said she was threatened by the senator in a bar.<\/p>\n Despite the pitfalls of public life, Anderson said serving in public office has been an overall rewarding experience.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have an opportunity to fix people\u2019s problems \u2014 especially in the legislature,\u201d he said. \u201cOur focus was constituent services. We did between 20 and 90 cases a week where people would have trouble\u2019s with the DMV or Consumer Affairs or the Franchise Tax Board and we were able to intervene on their behalf and brings things to resolution.\u201d<\/p>\n Anderson said his office was able to do things like cut through red tape for small businesses, like a barber waiting for a license; or help inform constituents of money owed to them by the state (one elderly couple had over $200,000 owed to them); or the time a soldier sent to Iraq worried about the registration of his car he left parked in the street and Sen. Anderson\u2019s office was able to get it registered so it wouldn\u2019t be towed.<\/p>\n \u201cNo other job allows you to solve problems like that and that\u2019s why it was so rewarding,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Anderson credits his success in serving his constituents to two things \u2014 an internship program that at times had 50 people working in his office and an open communication policy where he published his personal cell phone number.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of our whole philosophy was that we\u2019re responsible to the constituents, so if you have a question, we need to answer it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Anderson\u2019s philosophy also includes bipartisan solutions and he points to the 453 bills he has authored with Democrats during his tenure serving in the state legislature.<\/p>\n \u201cMost people don\u2019t know that,\u201d he said. \u201cI did more bills co-authored with Dems than all the other Republicans put together.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2018, Anderson was recognized for his bipartisanship approach with a Chuck Nichols & Pierre Frazier Bridge Builder Award from the USS Midway Museum\u2019s Diversity & Inclusion Committee during its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Luncheon.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m proud to have received a \u2026 Bridge Builder Award. Not many legislators that get type of award, it meant a lot to me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Even with his bipartisan record, Anderson still describes himself as an \u201cuber-conservative.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt about it \u2014 I am,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I also understood that I represent a diversity of people and what I think is right doesn\u2019t always turn out to be right and sometimes you\u2019ve got to be open to better ideas. We are doomed if everyone polarizes up and nobody addresses the issues. On both sides, people are laser-focused on serving their base \u2014 that doesn\u2019t serve our community. We have to work across party lines.\u201d<\/p>\n County issues<\/strong><\/p>\n Working across party lines may become more important for the District 2 seat after the November election. For many years, Republicans dominated the Board of Supervisors \u2014 holding every seat until Democrat Nathan Fletcher\u2019s 2018 victory in District 4. This year, the District 1 seat has already been lost to Republicans and another seat is in jeopardy \u2014 Kristin Gaspar\u2019s District 3 seat where two Democratic candidates split 57.2 percent of the primary vote. If District 3 goes blue, the Democrats will have a controlling vote on the board.<\/p>\n Anderson is already looking ahead to what issues he can work on with his potential Democratic colleagues, such as expanding pilot programs that help the mentally ill get treatment.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the right, a lot of Republi\u00adcans hate Nathan Fletcher. But look, Nathan Fletcher is right on mental health. He\u2019s been doing all the right things. I disagree with him on some of his bike lanes, but on this, we\u2019ll partner,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n On transportation, Anderson holds a more traditional conservative approach \u2014 that the county should fund roads over green transportation options like bike lanes.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m 60. I\u2019m not going to get on my bike and ride five miles to a doctor\u2019s appointment. I\u2019m not going to take a trolley to a hospital. And to ask seniors to do that is unreasonable,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we have to protect the roads to ensure they get the medical care that they need and require.\u201d<\/p>\n In tackling the coronavirus outbreak, Anderson holds a conservative view that favors fewer restrictions on people and businesses.<\/p>\n \u201cFlattening the curve was to make sure hospitals had respirators. Now closures are to make sure no one catches it. If a bunch of 20 year olds want to go out and catch it, as long as they\u2019re not giving it to grandma, where her life\u2019s in peril, very few 20 year olds are dying from this. It may be a miserable experience for them, but they\u2019re not dying,\u201d he said, adding that the county health department should focus less on the number of infections and more on the number of deaths. \u201cIf our new norm is that nobody can get sick, we\u2019re doomed as a society because no business will ever open again and at some point you\u2019re not going to have any toilet paper or food or anything else because all those workers can\u2019t afford to be sick and aren\u2019t going to show up.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we have to fight this with science, but unfortunately too many people are fighting it with political science,\u201d he continued. \u201cI think that we need to have a plan, execute the plan and stick to the plan. You look at the news and it\u2019s all arbitrary. It\u2019s OK to have thousands of people rally for a cause \u2014 whether it\u2019s for Trump or it\u2019s for Black lives \u2014 and that\u2019s OK, but if it\u2019s singing at church, \u2018Oh no, we can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n On the issue of expanding housing in the county, Anderson also takes a conservative approach by favoring cutting red tape and \u201cantiquated\u201d regulations on projects to lower building costs for developers. When it comes to large-scale developments in the unincorporated areas of the county, he said he would look at projects individually and would heavily weight what neighboring communities think of them.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I think you need to be thoughtful,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t say, \u2018I want my children to be able to afford to live in San Diego so I don\u2019t have to visit my grandkids in Phoenix.\u2019 You can\u2019t say that and then say we\u2019re never going to build a house.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, Anderson said he prefers to make decisions based on constituent input rather than rules or procedures that in some instances need to be changed by lawmakers.<\/p>\n \u201cMy door is always open, it always has been open and constituent services has always been my focus,\u201d he said. \u201cI do think we deserve better from the county. This rubber-stamping of staff is not representation. When you defend staff against the people, you\u2019ve lost your way. I\u2019ve always fought for my constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n