Filner Leading Valencia in 50th; 51st and 48th Incumbents Score

San Diego City Councilman Bob Filner, running as the Democratic candidate in the newly created 50th Congressional District, enjoyed a comfortable lead Tuesday night over his Republican opponent.

In other congressional races throughout the county, GOP incumbents Randy (Duke) Cunningham and Ron Packard appeared coasting to easy victories over their Democratic challengers.

Cunningham, running in the 51st District, was well ahead of Bea Herbert, while Packard, seeking reelection in the 48th District, outdistanced Michael Farber. Cunningham and Packard enjoyed Republican voter registration advantages of 21% and 27% respectively in their districts.

Filner’s victory was expected, but his GOP opponent, Tony Valencia, hedged his bet on the hope that he would attract enough Latino votes in the heavily Latino district to pull off an upset.

But in addition to being the state’s southernmost congressional district, the 50th District has a 50%-34% Democratic registration advantage. Filner, who has represented much of the district on the City Council for the past five years, also enjoyed high name recognition and was able to draw a significant number of Latino votes.

He was reelected to the council last year with 70% of the vote, defeating a Latino opponent.

The newly-elected congressman said he will make health care a priority while in Washington.

“My priority will be health care for my district. I intend to work for health clinics and providing affordable health care for the residents,” he said. “You’re going to see a new president and 100 days of action in the area of jobs program and health care reform. I expect to be in the middle of all this.”

He also repeated his earlier objections to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“NAFTA is a disaster for this area. It should be renegotiated in the interests of working people rather than for the interest of special interests,” Filner said.

The race in the 50th District, once expected to be little more than an electoral formality because of its lopsided partisan makeup, instead became one of San Diego’s most acrimonious campaigns.

With Democratic San Diego City Councilman Filner enjoying significant name recognition, financial and demographic advantages in the heavily Democratic district, Republican Valencia hewed to a sharply negative tack in an attempt to make Filner’s character the issue in their campaign.

“People are not asking about jobs and public safety,” said Valencia, the 58-year-old founder of the U.S.-Mexico Foundation. “They’re asking, ‘What are you going to do to ensure Bob Filner doesn’t represent us in Congress?’ ”

But Valencia’s rhetorical salvos occasionally produced a backlash, as when he injected ethnicity and race into one forum by calling Filner a “white liberal” and pointing out that Filner, like imprisoned junk-bond king Michael Milken, is Jewish.