San Diego City Wire

Scott Sherman never planned to get into politics, and is relieved to be out of it.

After being persuaded to run for the San Diego City Council in 2012, he won a four-year term representing District 7, which covers the neighborhoods of Allied Gardens, Del Cerro, Linda Vista, Mission Valley, San Carlos, Serra Mesa, Tierrasanta and Lake Murray.

Re-elected in 2016, he was unable to seek a third consecutive term under the city’s laws. Instead, Sherman entered the 2020 mayoral primary, where he finished a close third, meaning he did not qualify for the general election. State Assemblyman Todd Gloria was elected to lead the city.

Sherman said he was encouraged by numerous people to run for mayor, but looking back, he realizes as a Republican, it was an uphill battle.

“May have had a chance to do a little better if I had gotten in earlier," Sherman told the San Diego City Wire. "The way the election went, the chances of winning were very difficult.”

Sherman said he is ready to return to his old life, selling insurance and making handshake deals that hold up. That’s not always the case in politics, he learned.

He hoped to pass a piece of legislation on short-term housing rentals and had obtained the support of four council members. Then, the day of the hearing, union members showed up in force and packed a meeting to express their opposition.

One of the co-sponsors withdrew their support and the proposal died, Sherman said.

“Frustrating world,” he said.

Sherman called housing his top issue. He discovered that 47% of the cost of new homes was tied to government “regulation and red tape,” which prevented many people from buying a new home. His two adult children left the state because they were unable to afford a home in San Diego, Sherman said.

“I just wanted to figure out a way to make it easier to build housing,” he said.

Sherman said progress was made during his time on the council. Rules were made administrative rather than discretionary to streamline the building process. For example, more “granny flats” are being built as these accessory homes or “companion homes” produce revenue for homeowners while providing additional housing.

“It actually spawned kind of like a little cottage industry getting granny flats built,” Sherman said.

He tried to reform community planning groups, which he said are controlled by single-family homeowners who are strongly opposed to other forms of development. Sherman said a proposal to change their structure passed unanimously out of a city committee but was squashed by the city attorney when it was “almost across the finish line.”

The spiraling cost of housing is driven, in large part, by government agencies seeking to raise enough money to cover their costs.

“A lot of it was the bureaucracy itself,” Sherman said. “They just keep adding the fees, and the costs keep going up. We give raises and we do all those kinds of things and it drives the costs astronomically high.”

He also is proud of reversing a policy of having the mayor select the auditor who inspects the city’s books. Former Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who also recently ended his term, had tried to appoint longtime city employee DeeDee Alari to the post in 2019 but Sherman, who chaired the council’s audit committee, was able to block the appointment.

He then wrote Measure D, allowing the council to choose the auditor. 

“How can you have an independent auditor picked by the person that the auditor’s supposed to oversee?” he said.

A ballot measure was overwhelmingly approved by voters March 3. Now the council selects the auditor.

Sherman said additional reforms and improvements are often blocked by city staff, making matters “frustrating” at times.

“The bureaucracy kind of controls most things,” Sherman said. “They’ll always find a way to delay things and not make it happen.”

He would like to see changes in the collective bargaining agreements with city employees. Sherman said if he could have incentivized or disciplined staff members, they would be more effective and serve the people better.

In his view, government workers who excel usually move on, while others remain at their jobs for years.

Sherman said voters also need to be more responsive and more aware of what is happening. They need to elect people who will do what they promise and not be looking for their next office, he said.

He was glad to see the city raise the pay of elected officials, after a ballot measure passed in a landslide in 2018. The mayor’s salary more than doubled from $101,000 to $206,000, while council members went from $75,000 to $124,000. Their pay will increase to $155,000 on Dec. 10, 2022.

Sherman, 58, said asking people to operate a $3 billion enterprise for such comparatively meager salaries kept talented people from running. He also said more people with experience in the private sector need to serve, unlike some government officials who have always drawn a paycheck from taxpayers.

Faulconer has said he seriously considering running for governor in 2022. Sherman said they had a “pretty good” relationship. But he said Faulconer was extremely cautious, afraid to move without the approval of almost all voters.

“He’s very timid about leading,” Sherman said. “If you’re really going to lead, you got to have a little bit of gumption and get out there and do what you think is right and explain to people why you’re doing it.”

Sherman said he isn’t ready to endorse Faulconer for governor, preferring to see who else runs.

“I think his chances of winning are going to be tough, that’s for sure,” Sherman said, in large part due to the evolving demographics in the state.

When Sherman took office in 2014, there were four Republicans on the council. Today eight of nine seats are held by Democrats. While the offices are officially nonpartisan, the party identification of the candidates is known.

Sherman said if the city’s finances turn sour, and there is a projected $10 million shortfall of general fund revenue in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it could be blamed on the Democratic supermajority.

“It might open up some opportunities,” he said. “But it is California, making it tough.”

That’s why he was ready to depart from the council. 

“I served my eight years. It was time to get back to the private sector,” he told San Diego City Wire.

Sherman said a political comeback also is unlikely, but he declined to permanently close the door.

“At this point in time, I don’t think so, but you never know what the future brings,” he said. “I never planned on doing this in the first place. But you never say never.”

As he prepared to leave office, Sherman wrote an op-ed published by the San Diego Union-Tribune. In it he urged council members to work on behalf of the people of San Diego, and not the special interests who have the loudest voice.

“During my time in office, I have served with many so-called ‘activists’ who have forgotten this fact or never realized it in the first place," he wrote. "They seem to take pride in delivering services to taxpayers as if they were gifts. They’re not. Our government did not earn that money. The money came from hard-working San Diegans struggling to make ends meet. It came from exhausted small business owners operating on razor-thin margins. It came from the people. Remember this fact because many of your colleagues won’t.”

Sherman sold his insurance business while he was on the council, since it was a full-time job that involved long days. Now, he said, he will “hang out his shingle” with his old insurance firm, which is owned by people he knows and trusts.

“Get back to a world of a handshake actually meaning something,” Sherman said.

On his Twitter page, his most recent post indicates his changed approach to life. “Gone fishing,” it states.