Kevin Lee Faulconer (born January 24, 1967) is an American politician who served as the 36th mayor of San Diego, California from 2014 to 2020. A member of the Republican Party, Faulconer served as the member of the San Diego City Council for the 2nd district from 2006 to 2014.
Faulconer was born in San Jose, California and grew up in Oxnard. He entered politics in the 1990s to work on the campaigns for then-Governor Pete Wilson; he began to run in San Diego City Council elections to represent the 2nd district in the early 2000s. He was elected in a 2005 special election and was re-elected in landslides in 2006 and in 2010. In late 2013, he announced his candidacy for the mayorship of San Diego which he later won. He was sworn in on March 3, 2014. He was successfully re-elected in 2016, but he was not eligible to run in the 2020 election due to term limits.
Faulconer is considered to be a moderate Republican, holding fiscally conservative and socially liberal views. He announced his candidacy for Governor of California on February 1, 2021 and was one of the main candidates in the 2021 gubernatorial recall election, placing third in a field of 46 replacement candidates.
Early life and education
Faulconer was born in San Jose, California to Jim and Kay Faulconer (née Boger), an assistant city manager of Oxnard and an instructor at Oxnard College and Ventura College, respectively. He grew up in Oxnard and learned Spanish while in grade school. Faulconer graduated from Oxnard High School in 1985. He later enrolled in and graduated from San Diego State University with a degree in political science. While at San Diego State, Faulconer served as student body president as a fifth-year senior and was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity.
Early career
After college, Faulconer won a fellowship with the Coro Foundation and worked for Solem & Associates, a public relations firm based in San Francisco. He later helped work on the campaigns for California Governor Pete Wilson.
San Diego City Council (2006–2014)
Elections
Faulconer ran in the 2002 city council election for district 2 but lost to Michael Zucchet in a hotly contested election. After Zucchet resigned in 2005, a special election was held that November. There were 17 candidates and none got a majority, so a runoff was held on January 10, 2006, between the two top vote-getters, Faulconer and Lorena Gonzalez. Faulconer won the runoff with 51.5% of the vote.
Faulconer was elected to a full term in June 2006 and re-elected in June 2010; in both cases he won an outright majority in the primary and so did not have to run in the November general election. He was ineligible to run for re-election in 2014 per city term limits.
Tenure
Although Faulconer was once a supporter of alcohol being allowed on public beaches in San Diego (his 2006 opponent Gonzalez supported a limited ban), he changed his opinion after winning the city council election. Following an alcohol-fueled riot at Pacific Beach in 2007, he persuaded the city council to pass a trial one-year ban on alcohol at the beaches; the next year the ban was made permanent by a citywide vote. The ban has not been challenged since with the community generally approving of cleaner beaches and fewer emergency calls, and lifeguards and police said it has made their jobs easier. However, the long-term economic impact, claimed by one individual to be a 160,000 person reduction in attendance on holiday weekends and a 50% drop in revenue for beach businesses, has not been studied.
In the fall of 2006, over 30 bars and restaurants in Pacific Beach agreed with one another to limit the offering of discounts on alcoholic drinks. Faulconer supported the price-fixing agreement and spoke at the press conference announcing the agreement.
He campaigned against a proposed sales tax increase in 2010. He promoted the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan, a project seeking to redevelop the San Diego bayfront. He pushed for several years for an ordinance limiting the parking of oversize vehicles on the streets; the ordinance finally passed the city council in July 2013.
Faulconer was chair of the council's Audit Committee, which is charged with clearing out an audit backlog and restoring the city's credit rating. He was vice-chair of the Rules and Economic Development Committee and a member of the Budget and Finance Committee.
Mayor of San Diego (2014–2020)