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More than a year out, campaign cash and political clout are already coalescing around a pivotal 2026 race in North County for an up-for-grabs seat on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. The field of candidates could already be set in the contest to choose a successor to Republican Supervisor Jim Desmond, who faces term limits. Only one Democrat is running: Kyle Krahel-Frolander, a staffer for Rep. Mike Levin and former chair of the local Democratic Party. On the Republican side, two neighboring North County cities’ mayors — Vista’s John Franklin and San Marcos’ Rebecca Jones — have declared their candidacies. District 5 stretches east from Oceanside through San Marcos and Vista out to desert communities like Borrego Springs. Republicans hold considerable influence in the district’s inland cities and unincorporated areas, and Desmond, an outspoken conservative, cruised to re-election in 2022 with 60% of the vote. But districtwide, Democrats have steadily built a registration advantage over Republicans over the last decade. In 2018, there were nearly 17,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats in the district. Just two years later, Democrats had a 2,000-voter advantage. Today, there are about 143,000 registered Democrats, versus 129,000 Republicans — but another 90,000 voters did not declare a party preference. The election gives Democrats an opportunity to break the “old boy network” of Republicans that has reigned in North County for decades, said Carl Luna, a political science professor at Mesa College. Democrats have never had a fourth vote on the Board of Supervisors. With a chance to score their first-ever supermajority, much of the party has lined behind Krahel-Frolander, including Democratic supervisors and every Democrat in San Diego’s congressional delegation. That’s not surprising, Luna said. “If Democrats can turn District 5, that solidifies their hold on the Board of Supervisors for the foreseeable future,” Luna said. “Historically you’d have an election, and then you’d wait a couple years before you’d worry about it. This is stuff that normally wouldn’t happen until January.” A four-vote Democratic majority at the county would have major implications for how Democrats could steer the county’s vast bureaucracy and $8.6 billion budget. Because four votes are needed to amend the county’s budget, Democrats currently must win over one of the panel’s two Republicans to make changes to county spending. And a recent overhaul of the county’s reserves policy requires four votes to spend any of the hundreds of millions of dollars freed up by the policy. Unexpected vacancies have also denied Democrats the ability to sustain their majority. Twice in recent years, the board spent months facing regular partisan deadlocks — first after Nathan Fletcher resigned in 2023 and again after Nora Vargas left office early this year. Republican rivals On the Republican side, Vista Mayor John Franklin already has much of San Diego County’s Republican establishment behind him. He’s notched endorsements from key current and former Republican elected officials, among them former Supervisor Bill Horn, Desmond’s predecessor, who spent 24 years on the board before leaving once the county instituted term limits. Franklin has had a long presence in North County politics, first elected to Vista’s City Council in 2014 before becoming mayor in 2022. But he owes his original foray into politics to U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa. The Kansas native began working in Issa’s office in 2003 while studying at American University in Washington, then climbed his way through the congressman’s staff from a legislative aide to eventually a senior adviser. “I know the leadership John brings to public service, and I believe there’s no one better positioned to deliver for District 5 or more prepared to lead on the Board of Supervisors,” Issa said in a statement. Those deep ties to Issa and others in Republican politics has helped Franklin raise considerable sums of money for an election that’s still over a year away — at least $616,000 as of June. San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones, the other Republican in the race, is backed by state Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, the firebrand conservative who traded bitter attacks with Issa when both were running for a congressional seat in 2020. Jones did not agree to repeated requests for an interview. As of June, her fundraising totaled $225,000, according to disclosures. Jones has served on the San Marcos City Council since 2007 and is now in her second term as mayor; on her campaign website, she touts her city’s homeless encampment ban and the low insurance premiums residents pay despite wildfire risks. She’s also a member of the board of the San Diego Association of Governments, or SANDAG, and has been a chief opponent of the regional planning agency’s failed efforts a few years ago to charge drivers a per-mile fee. In an interview, DeMaio said Jones fits the “same mold” as Desmond. He called Franklin “the epitome of what’s broken about our political system — a bunch of rich insiders.” Desmond has not yet endorsed a candidate and did not respond to a request for comment. Franklin is focusing much of his campaign on homelessness. North County has long struggled with a lack of shelter space. But in recent years, Vista has expanded its shelter bed availability and homelessness services. Those efforts include a 12-bed facility opened in August for young people at risk of homelessness, the first of its kind in North County. And last year, Vista and Encinitas collaborated to open a 48-bed shelter. Franklin chides county government for not having more and better data on the long-term impacts of the homelessness programs on which it spends millions. He also wants more people prosecuted for violating encampment bans, in the hopes it will get them to accept shelter, treatment and other services. Last year, Vista began enforcing a decades-old ban at his urging. “We have to address the crime that’s being committed, and the damage to people’s lives that’s associated with and caused by this illegal behavior,” he said in a recent interview. “When I’ve offered you shelter 20 times and you’re not going, that’s really a problem, and we’ve got to deal with it somehow.” ‘A changing district’ Like Franklin, the Democrat in the race is also a veteran congressional staffer. Krahel-Frolander, an Oceanside native, has worked for Rep. Mike Levin since his first campaign for Congress in 2018. He’s now the congressman’s district director. Raised in a family of restaurateurs who once owned the now-closed Quail’s Inn on Lake San Marcos, Krahel-Frolander graduated from Harvard and bounced between campaigns before landing in Levin’s office. Last year, after the San Diego County Democratic Party’s then-chair Becca Taylor was killed in a motorcycle accident, he served in that job before resigning this summer to run for supervisor. In an interview, Krahel-Frolander said he didn’t expect to run in such a pivotal countywide race so soon. He anticipated Oceanside Mayor Esther Sanchez — he once worked for her as an aide — would seek the seat. But when she decided not to run, Krahel-Frolander said Levin urged him to. Sanchez is backing him, and Levin called him someone who “leads with his values of service, compassion and hard work.” “We needed somebody, so I stepped in,” Krahel-Frolander said. He says he sees not being a career politician as an advantage. He described Desmond — his boss’s re-election challenger — as a “rotating-chair politician who needs to stay in office.” He likened Franklin and Jones to the incumbent in that respect. Krahel-Frolander’s top priority is building more homes in the district’s unincorporated areas through the county’s oversight of land use — but that development has to be balanced with wildfire safety, he added. Supervisors have shown they’re still willing to build housing in areas prone to fires. This month, after years of court battles and resident opposition, supervisors unanimously backed the controversial Harmony Grove South development near Escondido. Krahel-Frolander still faces a tough race in a district that has long elected Republicans. He says he’s learned how to engage a purple electorate while working for Levin, who in 2018 won a seat previously held by Issa and represents the county’s most competitive district. “It takes figuring what are the issues that matter — and talk about those issues, and talk about solutions to those problems,” he said. “I think another thing, though, is that this is a changing district.”
