Other items in today’s column include:
*Preliminary results told in World Zionist Congress election
*Jewish community coronavirus news
*San Diego County Judaica
*Political bytes
*In memoriam
Editor’s Note: As part of our continuing series on members of the Jewish community who are running for public office, we look today at the campaign positions of Sarah Davis. An earlier story related Davis’s background growing up working in her family’s [Al Davis Furniture] store and her subsequent career as a midwife. Other candidates who have been profiled in the series are Sara Jacobs (53rd Congressional District), San Diego City Councilwoman Barbara Bry [San Diego mayor’s race], and attorney Joe Leventhal [5th District San Diego City Council].
SAN DIEGO — Sarah Davis faces San Diego City Councilman Chris Ward, who is another LGBTQ Democrat, so such issues as gay rights, marriage equality, and others that in former years were hot topics will not be matters for much debate in the 78th Assembly District contest prior to the Nov. 3 runoff election. However, Davis, a member of the Jewish community, says she and Ward have plenty of differences about such issues as placing greater emphasis on women’s health and fighting climate change.
Davis placed a distant second behind the San Diego City Councilman in the March 3 primary election — with results still being counted as of Saturday, March 21, showing Ward in first place with 67,954 votes or 56.09 percent and Davis garnering 33,106 votes or 27.33 percent. Another 20,081 votes or 16.58 percent were cast for Micah Perlin, an environmentalist who also is a member of the Jewish community.
The votes for the three candidates, as of Saturday, totaled 120,781, which was approximately 41 percent of the 293,668 registered voters in that district stretching along the coast from Imperial Beach to Solana Beach, and including the beach communities of San Diego and Del Mar, as well as such inland neighborhoods as Hillcrest, Mission Hills, Talmadge, Kensington, and University City.
Since the March primary, Perlin has endorsed Davis, but even if their two primary vote totals were combined, Ward still would have a commanding majority of the vote. The only way Davis can overtake Ward is if she can somehow expand the number of people voting. As of March 18, the district counted 133,809 Democrats, 84,181 independents, 60,392 Republicans, 9,631 American Independent, 3,493 Libertarians, 1,350 Green, and 802 Peace and Freedom.
I asked Davis where Republicans go in a race that features two Democrats. She responded that she believed Republican women, in particular, may have an affinity for her issues. When campaigning during the primary, she said, she told them that with all the candidates being Democrats, “you have two options — you can leave the ballot blank or make your voice heard. I am the one who will push for women’s health care, to prioritize breast cancer prevention, paid family leave, and maternal mental health.”
Additionally, she said, “Republican women voters are enthusiastic about climate issues. They care a lot about their grandchildren. We won’t agree on every issue certainly, but I’m for open space over real estate developers; and I’m not affiliated with the downtown Democratic establishment; I’m a regular person who works in business and health care.”
In coastal communities, she said, rising sea levels caused by global warming are a concern for everyone, regardless of their political party. To combat global warming, she said, San Diegans need to reduce the amount of emissions that go into the air and also support mitigation projects to protect the beaches and the cliffs above them. She called for expansion of bus and trolley lines “so people can go where and when they need to go” without their cars. She also advocated building more residential units in areas already zoned for them (rather than in open spaces). “There are hundreds of properties that are zoned for higher density but just aren’t being used,” she said. “We have vacant properties up and down El Cajon Boulevard; we have them in Mira Mesa and Kearny Mesa.” Californians should be reluctant to rezone agricultural land, she said, because the plants and trees in open spaces “suck carbon dioxide out of the air” on the one hand, while, on the other hand, development on formerly open space land adds to traffic congestion.
Another step in combating sea level rise “is to fortify the coast and the most ecological way to do that is to restore wetlands and watersheds so they can absorb tides as they come in without causing flooding further inland,” Davis said. “There are wetland restoration projects up and down the coast of California and I believe that it is an incredibly important place for us to invest more. There can be excellent jobs in wetland restoration. … It is expensive to do a habitat restoration but relative to the cost of not doing it, I would say it’s cheap.”
As a midwife, women’s health care will be “my very personal issue,” Davis said. “I want to be sure that we maintain the right to an abortion. Fortunately, that isn’t under immediate threat in California, but we need to be vigilant. I also want to bring attention and policy ideas to child birth and maternal health. The U.S. has an extraordinarily high maternal mortality rate compared to other developed countries. We rank almost the worst of developed countries, even though we spend the most money.”
Davis said among the reasons for the U.S. performing so poorly is that “we do too much medical intervention, too many Caesareans, and our health system is set up for that to happen.”
“Another reason is that the racial disparity of maternal mortality rates is staggering,” she said. “Black women throughout the United States, and in California too, are about four times as likely to die in child birth or in the days after or in pregnancy than white women. That disparity drives up our entire mortality rate across the board. Quite a bit of research has been done on why, and what we are finding in scientific research in a variety of different disciplines is institutional racism and the lifetime experience of racism for black women contributes to that by far the most. It is not just a socioeconomic issue because you will have black women who are in the highest socioeconomic class with an incredibly high risk.”
Davis said that among black women, “preterm labor is very common as is cardiovascular disease and both of these have been linked to lifetime experiences of racism, especially in childhood. The physical stress on the body of racism in the United States causes the situation where the adrenaline is rushing, rushing, for years on end, and never turns down. The cortisol is streaming through the body and never turns down, and that predisposes someone to cardiovascular disease and preterm delivery. That’s a side of it. On another side are health providers, who have been shown to not believe that black patients have as high a level of pain as white patients. So you will have a patient who has experienced a lifetime of racism, and therefore has high blood pressure, having a baby , and when they are post-partum, they have shortness of breath and chest pain. They report that to their nurse and their doctor, who just say, ‘Oh that’s normal, you just had a baby; it feels weird, go to sleep.’ And that person has a heart attack or a pulmonary embolism and dies. That piece — dismissing reports of pain — is a factor that must be dealt with in these cases. In California, Sen. Holly Mitchell [D-Culver City] just authored and passed a bill on this issue, requiring all health care providers for pregnant people to have implicit bias training to start chipping away at it. But there is a lot more to do there. It is very important to me.”
A third issue on which Davis campaigns is housing. “I support public investment in housing,” she said. “For very low income people, I think the state and local government should get involved in building that housing instead of relying on the idea that private developers are going to do it. We have seen pretty clearly that developers are not building enough housing for the low-income people. They should be integrated into communities; I don’t want to see sections of only low income housing.”
Furthermore, she said, “I also believe we should be building public housing for middle income people — for our teachers, firefighters, police. We know that they don’t have adequate housing; they can’t afford often to live anywhere near where they are working. They may have to live in Murrieta in Riverside County or somewhere in Imperial County and drive here because it is so expensive to live in San Diego County. We need to make sure that we have housing for our middle income workers.”
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Preliminary results told in World Zionist Congress election
The American Zionist Movement announced that at least 123,629 votes had been cast in the election for 152 delegates to represent American Jews at next October’s World Zionist Congress in Israel. More mail ballots may add to the total and a final result still remains to be certified. The votes were divided among 15 separate slates.
Delegates will be assigned to the different slates based on their pro rata share of the total. If these preliminary results hold up, 813 votes would be required to win one delegate. If that formula holds up, 145 delegates can be immediately assigned with seven other delegates to be apportioned according to the AZM rules. Of the 145 assignable delegates, the slates and their delegate numbers would be as follows: (1) Vote Reform 38; (2) Orthodox Israel Coalition 26; (3) Eretz Hakodesh 24; (4) Mercaz USA 18; (5) ZOA Coalition 12; (6) Americans for Israel 10; (7) Hatikvah 9; (8) Shas Olami 2; (9) Kol Israel 2; (10) Dorshei Torah v Tziyon 1; (11) Herut Zionists 1; (12) Vision 1; (13) Americans4Israel 1. Two slates fell below the 813 vote threshhold: (14) Israel Shelanu and (15) Ohavei Zion.
San Diego County residents were listed as possible delegates on five of the slates, but only one San Diegan — Rabbi Jeremy Gimbel of Congregation Beth Israel — was listed high enough on the slate to be assured a delegate position. With at least 38 delegate positions to be assigned to the Vote Reform slate, representing the Reform Movement of Judaism, Gimbel was listed in the 36th position.
The other San Diego County residents who were listed too low on their respective slates to become delegates, based on the preliminary vote totals, were Rabbi Ralph Dalin, the San Diego Community Chaplain, who was a member of the Mercaz USA slate, representing the Conservative Movement of Judaism; Jonathan Bell and Yael Steinberg, both employees of StandWithUs , who were listed on the Kol Isrel slate; Micha (Mitch) Danzig, an attorney who serves as president of StandWithUs, on the Herut Zionists slate; and Aaron Raimi, a student who served on the Vision: Empowering the Next Generation slate.
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Jewish community coronavirus news
*Selwyn Issakow, co-founder of Shabbat San Diego, has sent out a letter to Jewish community members, saying, in part, that following the coronavirus pandemic, “We as all humanity, as a country, as the Jewish people, as families and as individuals will come back in full force. The economy will roar again, employment levels will return, schools will reopen. And in a blink of an eye in terms of our overall lifetime, we as a community will normalize our lifestyles, albeit hopefully with better understanding, more civility, more compassion, more caring, and greater love for life and those around us.”
*The Coastal Roots Farm at Leichtag Commons reports, “Our Food Distribution Program reaches an average of 2,500 people per month, but we have already seen a much higher demand during this pandemic. During last Thursday and Sunday’s Farm Stand hours, double the amount of customers came in search of fresh, organic, nutrient-dense produce and eggs. We are taking all the proper safety precautions for our team and guests, and and our entire team is supporting the production and distribution in order to meet demands. We are so proud to be able to continue to Nourish Community during this critical time, during which vulnerable community members are particularly impacted.”
*Our thanks to Jeanne Gold of La Mesa for forwarding to us the video above parodying popular show tunes to impart coronavirus instructions and societal experiences.
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San Diego County Judaica
We’ve been asking readers and contributors to share with us a picture of themselves with a favorite example of Judaica — whether it be a ceremonial object, a painting or drawing, a piece of sculpture, or perhaps something utilitarian. David Amos, conductor of the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra, sent to us a drawing of a rabbi blessing a child, which he thinks he and his wife Lee purchased in Bloomington, Indiana, back in the days when he was studying for his doctorate in music. Seacrest Village Retirement Community resident Jeanne Shenkman, meanwhile, sent to us a photo of her ketuba (marriage certificate) to the late Henry Shenkman. Also in the photo is “Henry’s lithograph, a wedding vow: I am my beloved, My beloved is mine.” Do you have Judaica you would like to similarly share by photograph with our readers? Please send it, with a bit of explanation, to me at editor@sdjewishworld.com
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Political bytes
San Diego City Councilwoman Barbara Bry has a thousand and one reasons for thinking that she will be in the runoff against Assemblyman Todd Gloria for mayor of San Diego. That’s how many votes she was ahead of Councilman Scott Sherman after another day of counting by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters on Monday. With only 5,000 votes left to be counted in the county, here’s how matters stood when tallying recessed at 5 p.m. Monday: Gloria 146,309 votes; Bry 80,634, and Sherman 79,633.
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In memoriam
Dorothy (Ureles) Tennebaum, 85, died March 20. Services will be conducted at 2 p.m. Tuesday, March 24 by Rabbi Devorah Marcus of Temple Emanu-El at El Camino Memorial Park, 5600 Carroll Canyon Road, San Diego.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com Obituaries in San Diego Jewish World are sponsored by Inland Industries Group LP in memory of long-time San Diego Jewish community leader Marie (Mrs. Gabriel) Berg.