Update: Hunter Spokesman Responds to Rep. Davis Remarks on Colleague

Updated at 5:40 p.m. Jan. 5, 2012

Rep. Susan Davis received cheers and applause Wednesday night at the La Mesa Foothills Democratic Club when she said: “No more Hunters.”

Boundaries of her San Diego-based congressional district were certified Aug. 15, signaling that La Mesa would no longer be represented by Republican Duncan D. Hunter, who succeeded his father after 28 years in Washington.

“It’s nice to be in the 53rd District,” Davis told 100 members of the club at the La Mesa Community Center.  But she noted: “I can’t claim you yet.”

According to the California Secretary of State’s Office, La Mesans won’t be represented by Davis until the November election—if she wins a seventh term in the House. Until then, Hunter is La Mesa’s congressman.

In her first visit to the local Democratic club since redistricting, Davis, 67, spoke for 7 minutes.

She outlined her new district—which is losing coastal communities but expanding east to parts of El Cajon and Mount Helix and south to Chula Vista and Bonita east of Interstate 805.  She’ll have parts of Santee south of Mission Gorge Road and expand her footprint in Spring Valley while retaining Lemon Grove.

Although she saluted Hunter for “outstanding” constituent services, she said in a brief interview Wednesday night that the son of GOP congressman Duncan L. Hunter “did not necessarily look out for working families the way the same way that I’m dedicated to doing.”

Davis also said she expected a “pretty smooth” move of La Mesa concerns into her district.

“I don’t see La Mesa as so different from a lot of the older communities in San Diego that I’ve been representing all these years,” said Davis, a mother of two and grandmother of three.

Taking a microphone off the stand and moving closer to the audience, Davis asked the Democrats: “Has this area been represented by a Democrat?  Never? Wow, that’s exciting. No more Hunters. … That’s great. I’m looking forward to that.”

[Democrat Lionel Van Deerlin was defeated by Duncan L. Hunter in 1980 after representing a San Diego-based district for 18 years.]

Davis, who was a social worker before being elected to the San Diego school board in 1982, noted the results of the Iowa caucuses the day before.

“Something exciting happened today—aside from the fact that Michele Bachmann dropped out” of the GOP presidential race.

She saluted President Barack Obama’s recess appointment of former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“There’s going to be a lot of  pushback” against Obama on the appointment, she said, referring to Republicans and Wall Street critics of Cordray. But: “I think we have a great person to be at the helm of that agency,” helping citizens get help from agencies on banking and mortgage issues.

She said Americans became victims “when greed took over” the financial industry. “The agencies and the system somehow acted against them.”

“We know that the issues of housing continue to really disrupt lives in our community, and that’s a shame,” she said.  “I also know that it’s the Democrats that are fighting to reignite the American Dream in this country.”

She added:  “That’s what we’re all about, and we know that those other guys are not.”

Wednesday night, Rep. Hunter’s press secretary responded to some of Davis’ remarks.

“It sounds like she was just catering to her audience,” said Joe Kasper, Hunter’s Washington-based spokesman. “She apparently has a very different idea of what it means to represent working families and the middle class.”

If anything, Kasper said via email, “the accumulated debt and regulation, and growing government agenda pushed by this administration, which she's on record supporting, is better representation of an America in decline.”

Kasper said Hunter “is proud to be on the other side of things—supporting tax relief and tax reform, debt reduction and better conditions for small businesses.”

After her remarks, Davis handed the program over to one of the three authors of Paradise Plundered, a new book that tells how San Diego got into its budget and pension mess.

In a half-hour PowerPoint talk, Vladimir Kogan told the club that San Diego’s fiscal problems go back to Mayor Pete Wilson in the 1970s and City Council decisions to eliminate property taxes as a funding source for public employee pensions.

Kogan said that more recent actions that led to unfunded pension liabilities were the “proximate” cause of San Diego’s troubles but not the underlying cause. He also blamed voters and business leaders for a culture of rejecting tax increases while at the same time demanding public services.

In introducing Davis, club president Linda Armacost said:  “We’re so excited to be able to work and vote for her.”

Although Davis said she has been to the La Mesa Community Center often and visited the club on many occasions, she told members: “We’ll need your help introducing us—telling us who we should know and when to get together with folks and what meetings are going on.”