The prospect of billionaire financier George Soros injecting his money into San Diego’s campaign for district attorney has some people worried — namely, incumbent Summer Stephan and her campaign folks.

Soros has made it his mission to elect people he considers progressive and reform-minded — some of whom have never been prosecutors before, such as San Diego Deputy Public Defender Genevieve Jones-Wright — over establishment backed-candidates who take a more traditional law-and-order approach. And he’s been having considerable success.

Last year he put some $11 million behind 12 candidates across the country; 10 won.

He acts behind the scenes, putting big money into independent campaigns to help his preferred candidates, whom he often doesn’t even know personally. This was the case in Philadelphia, where civil rights attorney Larry Krasner said he had never met Soros, yet benefited from $1.4 million spent by the liberal businessman on his behalf. Krasner, a Democrat who represented Occupy Philadelphia and Black Lives Matter and who has sued the police department dozens of times, was elected over the establishment Republican in November in a blowout.


Jones-Wright shares some of the same views as Soros-backed candidates: rather than focusing on traditional law-and-order themes, they say they are seeking to overhaul a criminal justice system they believe is too often stacked against minorities and the powerless. They want to direct qualified drug offenders to diversion programs instead of traditional court and address racial disparities in sentencing and police stops.

Soros’ organization, Democracy Alliance, reportedly held a private conference recently in La Costa, attended by liberal luminaries and featuring video messages from Sen. Kamala Harris and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. Hedge-fund billionaire and liberal activist Tom Steyer is a board member.

The stated purpose was to size up dozens of district attorney races across the country. Stephan’s political consultant, Jason Roe, sounded the alarm to friend and foe alike, posting a link to a story about the meeting on Twitter.

Soros, an 87-year-old Hungarian-born U.S. citizen, is an investor who has become fabulously wealthy over the decades. In October, he transferred most of his wealth — $18 billion — to the Open Society Foundations. Prior to that, Forbes listed his personal net worth at $23 billion.


Founded by Soros, the worldwide Open Society Foundations’ stated mission is to “work to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens.”

He has long supported liberal candidates and causes, and revamping the judicial system and drug laws. He was an early advocate of legalizing marijuana.

Soros could upend the current trajectory of the San Diego district attorney campaign now heavily tilted in Stephan’s favor.

He also might make it more of a fair fight for a campaign that was stacked in favor of Stephan from the start.


If Soros gets in, we’ll get plenty of warnings about out-of-town influence, “dark money” and the possible motivations of the somewhat mysterious liberal activist and investor who’s been known to obscure his political maneuvers. It would be great if Soros and everybody else let us know what they are going to do, but politics doesn’t work that way. His money sometimes overwhelms campaigns, and has been used to both attack the establishment candidate and promote the reformist view of the challenger.

But if it happens and cries of foul from the Stephan camp follow, consider this: Is that much worse than the Machiavellian moves aimed at not only handing the seat to Stephan but suppressing competition to do so? The centerpiece of that effort, of course, was the early exit of DA Bonnie Dumanis, giving her handpicked successor the incumbent mantel nearly a year before the primary election.

County supervisors were on board and appointed veteran prosecutor Stephan to the vacancy. They are also backing Dumanis for a supervisor’s seat that opens up next year. This town’s Republican establishment quickly lined up behind Stephan, along with law enforcement organizations and several top Democrats.

And what likely would have been a highly competitive race for the region’s top law enforcement office has become anything but, so far. No other marquee figures from San Diego’s legal and political worlds have bothered to file to run for the open seat next year.


Stephan predictably has raised more money than Jones-Wright and, barring an outside infusion, likely will throughout.

In the end, Stephan’s biggest advantage may be that she’s widely considered the best person for the job: a veteran prosecutor of nearly 30 years who knows how to run the office and has a keen grasp of issues facing the county, as she demonstrated at a forum Tuesday night in which she touched on the horrific crimes she has prosecuted, diversion programs she’s helped shape and an extraordinary effort she made to exonerate someone who had been wrongly accused.

Still, the heretofore unknown Jones-Wright has plenty of room to make a name for herself. Though lacking prosecutorial experience, she has shown she’s no shrinking violet. Visibly frustrated by detailed questions Tuesday about how she would run a 1,000-person bureaucracy, Jones-Wright eventually put a charge into the friendly crowd by making general statements about problems she has with the criminal justice system and how she’d like to see it changed. She then took some shots at what she claimed, without explanation, was an ethically challenged DA’s office.

Unfortunately, the better-funded campaign likely will decide the race, not a thoughtful, one-on-one before a few hundred people, as was the case with the forum hosted by the Latino American Political Association of San Diego Tuesday night. (LAPA endorsed Stephan the very next day.)


Some cash from Soros could guarantee a real public-debate campaign about criminal justice. There’s lots to discuss: the District Attorney Office’s record, the wonder of still-low crime rates, decisions about who gets prosecuted and whether civil rights are being protected — for minorities, marijuana dispensary owners or crime victims among the have-nots.

That may be an idyllic view. Soros has the means to tilt the scale too far in the other direction.

Soros may have little connection to San Diego, but so what? Jones-Wright was born and raised here. And while Soros certainly could be accused of trying to buy an election, his views on reshaping the justice system are shared by many here and across the country.

Both Stephan and Jones-Wright are talented attorneys who have shown a passion for a fair criminal justice system, albeit through vastly different prisms.


Let them put their ideas out there, and may the best candidate win. On a level playing field.

The question may be whether Soros would create one.

Tweet of the Week

Goes to Christopher Cadelago‏ (@ccadelago), Sacramento Bee reporter and Union-Tribune alum.

“‘I don’t know if automobile standards really excite me,’ @JerryBrownGov says when asked by @tomfriedman about what clean technologies get him going. ‘I’d say my wife excites me.’”