Isaac Wang and Marni Von Wilpert are Scripps Ranch residents running for District 5 seat.
SR residents compete in District 5 race
The San Diego City Council seat overseeing Scripps Ranch is wide open this election cycle, March 3, with Mark Kersey termed out and not eligible to run again for his District 5 seat.
The names of four candidates appear on the March ballot for the open spot. Two of them, Isaac Wang and Marni Von Wilpert, live in Scripps Ranch.
These two candidates are bringing their own respective platforms keeping Scripps Ranch in mind, but also benefitting the entirety of San Diego.
Isaac Wang moved to San Diego in 2010. His campaign approach is unorthodox given his cartoon caricatures explaining his platforms on his campaign website, in addition to a well-edited music video showing landscapes of San Diego.
Wang, a Navy veteran, is campaigning on some new ideas designed to urbanize but also keep neighborhoods safe through limiting space for cars.
“We build with the driver in mind. We do not build with the human in mind,” Wang said.
Wang said he wants to alter streets to be narrower, allowing protected bike lanes to flourish in order to prevent collisions with cars.
He is also an advocate for veteran housing and support in areas such as Scripps Ranch.
“If we can significantly add housing stock close to the military base so that people who work there don’t have to commute as far, that would be phenomenal,” Wang said.
The other candidate from the neighborhood was born and raised in Scripps Ranch. Marni Von Wilpert, a graduate of Scripps Ranch High School, is also vying for the soon-to-be-vacated city council position.
Von Wilpert said she wants to address homeless populations in District 5 and other areas of the city. She is an advocate for a mixture of both housing first initiatives as well as integrating better mental healthcare during the same processes.
Von Wilpert said the current approach has not worked well enough to completely solve the homeless issue.
“It’s a lack of communication between the different levels of city government,” Von Wilpert said. “The county and the city are not working together as they should, and we saw that with the hepatitis A outbreak.”
Alternative transportation for seniors who can no longer drive is also a priority for Von Wilpert as many seniors will call 911 in order to get rides to doctors’ appointments.
“While (first responders) are tied up with that, and a stroke or a heart attack happens, they can’t actually get to the real emergency,” she said.
Both candidates are advocates for higher density housing and increasing public transit connections to more places of work and living communities.
In addition to Democrats Wang and Von Wilpert, another Democrat candidate, Simon Moghadam of Carmel Mountain is running for the District 5 seat.
The lone Republican, Joe Leventhal, is the final candidate. He, along with Von Wilpert, received dual endorsements from the San Diego Union-Tribune earlier this month.