This is the second in a two-part series of interviews with candidates for the San Diego City Council’s District 2 seat, currently occupied by Jennifer Campbell. District 2 includes Clairemont, Midway, Mission Beach, Mission Bay, Old Town, Ocean Beach, and Point Loma.
Part Two of this series includes candidate interview summaries and full-length videos from Mandy Havlik, Josh Coyne, Jacob Mitchell, and Paul Suppa.
Explore Clairemont interviewed all the candidates. All the questions asked of the candidates were submitted by Explore Clairemont’s audience, ensuring the candidates answered only the questions their future constituents wanted to hear.
Last week’s interviews included Richard Bailey, Nicole Crosby, and Mike Rickey.
The election will be held on June 2, 2026.
Mandy Havlik
Background
Mandy Havlik has a background as a community advocate and touts herself as a coastal defender. She is the daughter of an immigrant, the wife of a Navy veteran, and has indigenous roots. Her campaign focuses on housing affordability, infrastructure, and homelessness.
Read Mandy Havlik’s Statement of Qualifications
Party Affiliation: Democrat
Key Takeaways from the Interview
City Budget & Spending
Havlik emphasized the need for better coordination between the city and the state, particularly regarding housing policy and funding. She proposed:
- Ensuring proper funding for housing programs
- Strengthening oversight and enforcement capacity
Her Words: “I think the city needs to veer away from taxing its constituents. We’re not the piggybank they get to break whenever they mismanage or don’t follow the budget we approve every year.”
Taxes & Fees
Havlik said the city should avoid relying on residents as a fallback revenue source and that she supports Proposition 13 protections for homeowners, especially older residents and families who would struggle with a higher tax basis. She also suggested reviewing city contracts and increasing the hotel tax paid by visitors, rather than raising taxes on San Diegans.
Her Words: “I will support [Proposition 13]. I believe…a lot of the people that live in my neighborhood are older, or they’ve inherited the home from their parents. It’s the only way that they can live here.”
City Services
She highlighted the importance of properly funding city departments, including the housing commission, to ensure programs are implemented effectively. While she doesn’t support repealing the trash fees, she does support exploring cost-effective third-party services to reduce them.
Her Words: “We have to be able to fund the housing commission appropriately to ensure that [affordable] units remain deed restricted.”
Housing & Development
Havlik expressed support for increasing housing supply, opposed lifting the 30-foot height limit in most places, and emphasized a mix of housing types to improve affordability.
Her Words: “I think building more housing and more units of different variable types… will allow for the market to… hopefully reduce costs. These ADUs are not affordable.”
Homelessness & Public Safety
Havlik thinks the city’s approach to homelessness needs a complete overhaul, citing a one-size-fits-all approach that isn’t working.
Her Words: “We have a humanitarian crisis happening. We need safe shelters. No one wants these big box shelters, whether it’s the communities [they are in] or the people that are staying in them.”
Climate & Infrastructure
When it comes to green spending, Havlik believes we need to continue investing in climate-forward proposals.
Her Words: “If you look at it not just from an environmental standpoint, but from an economic standpoint, the transition to renewable energies always shows you never lose on that investment.”
Josh Coyne
Background
Josh Coyne has experience working in and around city government, including time at City Hall. He has also worked in education administration. His campaign focuses on transparency, rebuilding trust in government, and improving how city programs are implemented.
Read Josh Coyne’s Statement of Qualifications
Party Affiliation: Democrat
Key Takeaways from the Interview
City Budget & Spending
Coyne emphasized the need to keep government services in-house and better communicate how and why fees are implemented. He does not support moving government employees to a 401(k) plan instead of the current pension plan. He proposed:
- Creating more predictable, stable cost structures
- Improving rollout and execution of programs
- Working with the pension board to determine if the portfolio is at risk
His Words: “We can’t go back on our word to employees who have served the city. What we have to do is find greater certainty on revenue-generating projects.”
Taxes & Fees
He acknowledged the need to protect Proposition 13 while also addressing structural funding challenges in the city’s revenue structure.
His Words: “We have to do everything we can to protect home ownership.”
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City Services
Coyne supports maintaining city-run services, including trash collection, and improving how those programs are executed rather than outsourcing them. He believes the city’s rollout of the trash fees eroded public trust.
His Words: “I believe the city has an opportunity to do equally, if not better work, as the private sector does.”
Housing & Development
He supports increasing housing supply but raised concerns about implementation, particularly when infrastructure and enforcement lag behind development.
His Words: “Developers are not bad people. I think we have to incentivize greater collaboration with developers who have good intent to help us solve some of the challenges, including transportation, infrastructure, and housing.
Homelessness & Public Safety
Coyne described homelessness as a complex issue requiring interagency coordination and emphasized the need to connect people to appropriate services. He also emphasized the responsibilities of the county and the state.
His Words: “I think the county has to step in to do more to address these issues with the state. Those paths have been outlined. The county is just not taking advantage and turning those levers as quickly as they need to.”
Climate & City Priorities
He supports continued investment in climate initiatives, particularly as a coastal city, while acknowledging cost considerations.
His Words: “I don’t think now is the time to move backward.”
Jacob Mitchell
Background
Jacob Mitchell is a 28-year-old San Diego native and fourth-generation resident. His campaign focuses on housing affordability and government efficiency, including smart green spending.
Read Jacob Mitchell’s Statement of Qualifications
Party Affiliation: Not Stated
Key Takeaways from the Interview
City Budget & Spending
Mitchell said the city’s financial challenges are both a spending and revenue issue, pointing to infrastructure needs and staffing structure. He emphasized reallocating resources from management layers to frontline services. His proposals include:
- Exploring alternative revenue approaches
- Reducing management layers within city staffing
His Words: “We have a $1 billion backlog of infrastructure. It’s always a revenue problem if we’re not creating a city that can…perpetuate into the future sustainably. I want people filling potholes. I don’t want people managing filling potholes.”
Taxes & Fees
He expressed support for Proposition 13, citing its role in allowing families to remain in their communities, while acknowledging concerns about inequities in property taxation.
His Words: “Prop 13 has been important for my family being able to stay in the community. I think there’s nuances to finding money that doesn’t pull people who have been in a community for generations out.”
City Services
Mitchell said he supports restructuring city staffing and is open to introducing competition in services like trash collection, while avoiding monopolistic contracts.
His Words: “I’m a fan of competition. I don’t want it to create a singular market where we create a contract with a singular trash pickup company, and then we’re locked in.”
Housing & Development
He supports restricting short-term rentals and expressed concern about housing affordability, particularly for younger residents. He also raised concerns about increases in density without infrastructure planning.
His Words: “When you are creating… 18 units on a street that has no increase in parking, it doesn’t make sense.”
Homelessness & Public Safety
Mitchell described homelessness as a complex issue influenced by state-level funding requirements and emphasized the need for greater oversight of how government funds are spent to address homelessness.
His Words: “The city allocates its funds to a bunch of nonprofits that don’t have oversight, so…we need to audit the hell out of our homelessness programs. This is because I want to serve the maximum amount of homeless people. They’re not being served.”
Climate & Infrastructure Spending
Mitchell said environmental investments should be tied to long-term sustainability and practical results, while criticizing infrastructure projects he sees as expensive or poorly planned. He specifically questioned the cost and energy demands of Pure Water and argued for more scrutiny of major utility spending.
His Words: “I’m for green, where green is indicative of long-term thinking and prioritizing sustainability.”
Paul Suppa
Background
Paul Suppa is an attorney and Bay Park resident, with a campaign slogan to the effect of, “San Diego: We can’t afford it.” His campaign focuses on government accountability, fiscal responsibility, and public safety.
Read Paul Suppa’s Statement of Qualifications
Party Affiliation: Independent
Key Takeaways from the Interview
City Budget & Spending
Suppa emphasized the need to audit city finances and eliminate waste, particularly what he described as corporate influence in government spending. He proposed:
- Auditing city finances
- Reducing management-level staffing
- Limiting corporate influence on policy decisions
His Words: “The plan is to inspect the books first off and see where the money is going and then identify and confront the wasteful spending. We need to confront that and curb the corporate spending and influence and really dial it back to the constituency and what their needs are.”
Taxes & Fees
He expressed strong support for Proposition 13 and warned against raising property taxes, particularly for residents on fixed incomes.
His Words: “It would be a huge failure if the government continues to overspend and then needs to raise property taxes.”
City Services
Suppa supports reducing staffing levels—especially management—and reforming service contracts through competitive bidding.
His Words: “We have to identify overstaffing, and we have to look at the reduction of managers. We’ve got bloated service contracts… they need to potentially be put out to bid for competitive and merit-based contracts.”
Homelessness & Public Safety
He emphasized enforcement, prioritizing local residents, and tailoring responses to individual situations.
His Words: “While we need to be compassionate about the homeless, we need not invite the homeless from across the nation and welcome them with open arms into San Diego. We need to absolutely engage in dismantling encampments… and compassionately address…the homeless situation.”
Housing & Development
Suppa said short-term rentals have gotten “way out of hand” and argued they worsen affordability by replacing stable neighbors with investor-owned turnover. He said he would support either a ban or heavy limits on short-term vacation rentals, but does not support a vacancy tax, which he described as difficult to enforce and likely ineffective.
His Words: “It cannot be a free-for-all of vacation rentals. That’s something that we absolutely need to address because that spikes unaffordability issue concerns.”
Climate & Infrastructure Spending
Suppa emphasized the importance of smart spending on climate initiatives that benefit the environment, like bike lanes, and eliminating what isn’t working.
His Words: “We should not give up on green issues. Green spending needs to be highly scrutinized.”
