Will Rodriguez-Kennedy is back at the reins of the San Diego Democratic Party

Will Rodriguez-Kennedy will return to the job of chair of the San Diego County Democratic Party, three years after leaving as he faced sexual assault allegations he says were false.

Rodriguez-Kennedy scored the backing of the party’s central committee, with its dozens of elected officials, political operatives and activists, over political consultant Sara Ochoa in a vote on Tuesday night.

In his pitch, Rodriguez-Kennedy offered a plan he says will fix the local party’s ills, following a presidential election where 120,000 fewer county residents cast a vote for the Democrat compared with four years earlier.

“It cannot be the case that the voters only see the Democratic Party and their organizers when it’s time to vote,” Rodriguez-Kennedy said prior to the chair vote on Tuesday night. “That is a transactional relationship. It’s time to be more collaborative. It’s time to listen more, as opposed to just preach at people.”

Rodriguez-Kennedy scored 37 votes from the central committee compared to Ochoa’s 27. Former Assemblymember Lori Saldaña, who announced her own last-minute bid for the job during the meeting, garnered three.

A fight for the party chair job had percolated for months ahead of former chair Kyle Krahel-Frolander’s campaign for a seat on the Board of Supervisors representing North County. Krahel-Frolander officially left as chair last month.

In their pitch to the party faithful, Rodriguez-Kennedy and Ochoa sketched their plans to guide the local party out of Democrats’ ongoing soul-searching since Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump in November.

But behind the scenes, the chair race descended into a campaign of anonymous, conspiratorial letters sent to party members. Personal attacks in the race circled around Rodriguez-Kennedy’s leadership style and response to rape allegations against him and around Ochoa’s husband, organized labor attorney Ricardo Ochoa.

“A lot of people want to focus on the drama,” Rodriguez-Kennedy said on Tuesday. “I just want to focus on the work.”

The fast-changing landscape of national politics and what role the county party must play was a big topic of discussion for the central committee ahead of the chair vote.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to enter the congressional redistricting arms race and hold a November special election to redraw the state’s maps means that San Diego Democrats will have to mobilize far earlier than expected to turn voters out for the ballot measure.

Rodriguez-Kennedy has pitched to the central committee a plan to carve the county into what he calls “strategic corridors” where he wants to focus the party’s resources.

Those areas consist of the inland area of North County, where it’s expected that longtime Republican U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa’s seat could be made more competitive by redistricting.

The other two corridors include the Grossmont Union High School District, where Democrats want to recall four school board trustees, and South County, important because of its large Latino population, Rodriguez-Kennedy said.

“The goal here is to invest in and create economies of scale, create teams of candidates that are working together so we can put together resources and then make it less expensive to campaign,” Rodriguez-Kennedy said.

Rodriguez-Kennedy, a district staffer for U.S. Rep. Scott Peters, held the position of chair between 2019 and 2022, presiding over a party that was notching key victories in a county Republicans had previously long dominated.

His tenure as chair came to an end when his former boyfriend accused him of rape. Rodriguez-Kennedy stepped away in 2022 as party officials and prosecutors reviewed the allegations, which he says were entirely false.

The District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges, but his accuser filed a civil lawsuit alleging rape. The lawsuit was dropped last year, and both parties called it a “misunderstanding” encouraged by unnamed political enemies.