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Last Updated June 22, 2005
San Diego began as a port, but today most metropolitan area residents live out of sight of the sea, in hilltop neighborhoods inland that look out over distant ridges and freeways or in warm, sunny valleys amid the mountains which become denser and higher as one travels east from the Pacific. There is a discernible difference in attitudes and values between those who have settled inland and those nearer the ocean, part of the split that became critical in California's political struggles and culture wars since the 1980s. In San Diego, both groups tend to identify as Republicans, and coastal people may be more affluent. But those who settle inland are more likely to be conventionally religious and to have traditional moral values; they tend to be more supportive of the military and assertive foreign policy; they are more dubious about the ability of government to shape poor citizens' lives. They are more conservative on most of the cultural and foreign issues of recent times, and therefore more reliably Republican: When oceanfront voters in San Diego shifted sharply toward Democrats in the 1990s, the movement was much less among voters inland. Inland San Diego County produced higher percentages for George W. Bush in 2004 than in 2000, while coastal San Diego County did not. The 52d Congressional District of California takes in many of the inland San Diego suburbs and most of the mountain and desert interior of San Diego County. It includes the part of San Diego north of I-8 and east of I-15; Santee, an East County city of 53,000; El Cajon, which has the nation's second largest (after the Detroit area) community of Chaldeans, Catholic Arabs from Iraq, who own half of San Diego County's independent retail convenience stores and are known for their toughness--it was not easy being a Christian in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It includes high-income Poway, north of San Diego, and more modest La Mesa, east of San Diego. The mountains and the desert to the east are lightly inhabited. In the mountains is tiny Alpine with one Indian casino and another sought by a tribe with a membership of seven adults and one child. In the desert is the town of Borrego Springs amid the giant Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. This East County area was swept by horrific fires in October and November 2003, which killed 17 people and destroyed more than 2,400 homes. Politically, this is a solidly Republican district. The congressman from the 52d District is Duncan Hunter, a Republican first elected in 1980, an upset winner in the Reagan landslide who is now chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He grew up on a ranch outside Riverside, where his father was a real estate developer. He dropped out of college to serve in the Army, and was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in 24 helicopter combat assaults in Vietnam. He graduated from Western State University law school in 1976 and started a legal practice in San Diego's Barrio Logan. In 1980 his father urged him to run against Democratic Congressman Lionel Van Deerlin in what had been a safe Democratic district. But it was a Republican year in southern California and Hunter won 53%-47%. "Your real campaign is just starting," his father told him. "You've got to get on Armed Services." He did, and redistricting gave him a safe Republican seat. In the 1980s he was part of the group of young conservative Republicans around Newt Gingrich, but he concentrated on military issues. On the committee, Hunter supported the Reagan defense buildup and was ardent backer of the Strategic Defense Initiative, which had few backers in the services or among senior committee members, and of the 600-ship Navy. After the 1994 election he failed in his attempt to get into the Republican leadership when he lost the Conference chairmanship to John Boehner. But he became chairman of the Military Procurement Subcommittee. He worked to accelerate development of the F-22, arguing that the Navy needed a stealth-equipped carrier plane. He argued for building more B-2s and against reducing the number of B-1s. He tried to push the Pentagon to build more nuclear submarines and match apparent Russian gains in quiet technology. He argued that the Pentagon had too many procurement officials who held up weapons development, and he inserts in each year's defense authorization amendments requiring that their numbers be reduced by 25,000; by 2002 the number had been reduced from 300,000 to 190,000. Hunter argued for many years that the Clinton administration cut defense spending far too much, and he was willing to buck the Republican leadership and the incoming Bush administration to get more spending. He was disappointed with the increase in the first Bush budget, and in November 2001 called for a $32 billion increase in current spending, and said the administration was trying to "conduct an aggressive Ronald Reagan foreign policy with a Jimmy Carter defense budget." By January 2002 he was asking the Bush administration for a $50 billion increase in the next fiscal year; later, when the administration called for a $45 billion increase, he said he wanted $30 billion more than that. In 2000 Hunter passed up a chance to run for the committee chairmanship but got the position two years later. Chairman Floyd Spence was rotated off as chairman because of House Republicans' six-year term limit; Hunter supported the next most senior member, Bob Stump, over Curt Weldon. Hunter said that he would be a candidate if Stump lost in the Republican Steering Committee; Stump won by one vote. On April 26, 2002, Stump announced that he was retiring because of poor health; that day Hunter said, "I'll be working hard for the chairmanship position." Weldon was considering running, but on May 20 withdrew and endorsed Hunter. During much of the rest of the year Stump was absent and Hunter was chairing committee meetings. In January 2003 he revised the subcommittee structure, establishing a new subcommittee on emerging threats and giving the other subcommittees jurisdiction based on service activities rather than Pentagon procedures. On some issues Hunter has been at odds with the Bush administration. He said that the campaign in Afghanistan, fought with no area air bases, showed the need for more B-2s and B-1s. He called for more F-22s than the Pentagon wanted and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Joint Strike Fighter. He said there was a danger that the military was no longer capable of fighting two wars at the same time and he argued that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plans for transforming the military should be accompanied by a buildup in troops. In November 2002 he argued that the administration's budget request still left the military $30 billion behind on modernization projects. In November 2002 he got the administration to back down on the issue of full retirement and disability benefits for veterans with Purple Hearts or injured during training or hazardous duty. Hunter has also frustrated the Senate: Senator Richard Lugar charged that he and Weldon took money away from the Nunn-Lugar program to dismantle Russian weapons of mass destruction to pay for weapons programs. "It is not the House," said Lugar, "it is two people." In 2003 Hunter supported the administration budget request but disagreed with the cancellation of the Crusader armed vehicle and tried to postpone the 2005 base closing round. He added more B-1s and B-2s and authorization for a new bomber. Hunter has long favored restrictions on trade--he opposed NAFTA, GATT, normal trade relations with China and trade promotion authority and endorsed Patrick Buchanan in the 1996 presidential primaries--and in 2001 he barred the Army from buying berets made in China. In the 2003 defense authorization he increased the percentage of purchases that must be bought in America; this was opposed by the administration and led to a long deadlock with the Senate. On transformation he said, "Everybody has a different idea of what transformation means. The lesson of Iraq is some of the old and some of the new." In September 2003 Hunter and ranking Democrat Ike Skelton backed a permanent increase in the Army from 485,000 to 525,000. In early 2004 Hunter lined up House Republicans to back George W. Bush's $421 billion defense spending request against other claims on the money and called for a new international agency to keep weapons from terrorists. He supported Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during the clamor about the Abu Ghraib abuses in May 2004 and pointedly refused to hold hearings on the subject as the Senate Armed Services Committee was doing. Hunter played a major role on the intelligence reorganization bill in late 2004. In October Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers told him that the new director of national intelligence could use his budgetary power to interrupt the flow of intelligence to the battlefield; Hunter urged him to put that in writing, which he did. At a closed-door meeting of House Republican leaders November 20 Hunter demanded changes in the intelligence bill that had come out of the conference committee, because the Senate had removed White House language assuring the secretary of defense power over military intelligence. He said that troops in the field would be imperiled and noted that his son Duncan Duane Hunter, who enlisted in the Marine Corps after September 11, was serving in Iraq. Also, Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner wanted to insert provisions on driver's licenses and asylum. Speaker Dennis Hastert pulled the bill from the floor and negotiations commenced. On December 6 Hunter accepted language proposed by Senator Susan Collins, that the bill "respects and does not abrogate the statutory responsibilities of the heads of departments," and the administration agreed to issue regulations maintaining the flow of intelligence from aircraft and satellites to troops in the field. In 2005 Hunter again supported administration requests but sought more. He and Skelton questioned whether the Navy would have enough ships. He insisted the refueling tankers be built by an American firm. He hailed the award of a contract for the X-Craft Sea Fighter, a catamaran that can travel at 50 knots and deliver Special Forces teams to shore, a project he and Duke Cunningham had been pushing for several years. Hunter was angered by the large number of illegal immigrants in the early 1990s, and at one point he called for using military aircraft for "deep deportation" of illegal immigrants. He wrote the 1997 law requiring the 14-mile, 15-foot high fence along the Mexican border from the Pacific Ocean to Otay Mountain; the inland 10 miles was built despite the threat to the endangered California gnat catcher and Least Bell's vireo. When the California Coastal Commission rejected the plan to build the remaining four miles to the ocean because it would fill in gulleys and interrupt the flow of a stream, Hunter denounced the decision as "nutty." In February 2005 he managed to include an override of this state decision in Sensenbrenner's driver's license and asylum bill. But San Diego's natural environment can cause problems. The border fence has reduced illegal immigration but seems to have led to more immigration in East County and Imperial County, and hundreds of illegal immigrants have died of thirst in the desert or by drowning in the All-American Canal. In 2000 Poway resident John Hunter, Duncan Hunter's younger brother, organized volunteers to put bottles of water in the desert to keep illegal immigrants from dying of thirst. Duncan Hunter thought it was a good idea and got Bureau of Land Management permits for his brother's project. And Duncan Hunter has been touched by nature too. In October 2003 his house in Alpine was engulfed by the wildfire; everything was destroyed, he reported, except an old station wagon he had been trying to get rid of. Hunter has been routinely reelected by wide margins.
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