Mayor Kevin Faulconer speaks at a recent news conference. | AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi Kevin Faulconer, San Diego mayor, quietly mulling run for governor

SACRAMENTO — San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer has quietly started discussing a potential run for governor with advisers and prospective donors, according to a former Los Angeles mayor and sources familiar with Faulconer's deliberations.

Faulconer, a Republican who said last year that he would not seek the governorship, remains hesitant, the sources said. But he is tentatively assessing how supportive GOP donors might be in a race that is widely expected to be won by a Democrat.


Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan told POLITICO California that Faulconer visited him in Los Angeles last month and told him he plans to run. Riordan, a moderate Republican who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2002, said Faulconer asked for his support but, “I don’t know him well enough to make that decision.”

Faulconer’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Faulconer traveled to the Silicon Valley about a week after the November election to meet with technology industry donors assembled by former Rep. Tom Campbell. Campbell said he organized the meeting of more than 100 of his political supporters to encourage them to support Faulconer if he runs.

“I’m very much hoping that he chooses to run for governor,” Campbell said, calling Faulconer a politician who can “work across the aisle.”

Campbell said Faulconer was noncommittal about running.

“He was very careful not to say anything on that subject,” Campbell said of the meeting at the Stanford Faculty Club.

The Republican Party is scrambling to field a credible candidate for the 2018 election. In a top-two primary dominated by high-profile Democrats, a Republican with even modest funding could advance to the runoff, likely helping down-ticket Republicans in the fall.

Faulconer, a moderate, big-city mayor, ran second behind Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom in a Field/IGS Poll in November.

The 49-year-old Faulconer rose to prominence as a calming influence in San Diego after then-Mayor Bob Filner’s resignation amid scandal in 2013. Faulconer, a former city councilman, was elected mayor the next year and re-elected in 2016. During his re-election campaign, Faulconer said he would not run for governor if re-elected.

“I am here for four years as mayor,” he told the Associated Press.

Still, the state has become so heavily Democratic that no Republican holds statewide office and the GOP bench is thin. Many Republicans are holding out hope for Faulconer, seeing shades of former Gov. Pete Wilson, also a former San Diego mayor. Though Wilson was only elected governor after running successfully statewide twice for U.S. Senate, Faulconer’s success in San Diego, a Democratic city, suggests he could make inroads with some independent and Democratic voters statewide.

No other prominent Republican has said he or she will run for governor; former Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin has said she will not. Several Democrats, meanwhile, already are raising millions of dollars for the wide-open contest to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown.

In the November Field/IGS Poll, Faulconer held the support of 16 percent of registered voters, second to Newsom but far ahead of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Treasurer John Chiang.

Riordan donated $14,100 to Chiang’s gubernatorial campaign in December but said he will not necessarily endorse him. He said he also holds a favorable view of Villaraigosa.

Riordan said Faulconer did not ask him to pledge financial support in their meeting, while suggesting financing was the subtext.

“It’s one of the horrors of being wealthy and well known,” Riordan said. “Everybody and their brother, the presidents of colleges and politicians, everybody wants to talk to you, get advice from you, which translates into get money from you.”

This story has been updated with comment from former Rep. Tom Campbell.