The Love of Beer
From left: Sunny O. Enyoghwerho, Nicolas Espinal and Andrew Gade
- Photos by John R. Lamb
“Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of that choice.” —Unknown
Spin Cycle presses on with its effort to recognize all candidates running to be San Diego’s next mayor. While most media would have you believe that only those named Carl, Nathan, Bonnie and Bob are worth hearing from, the list of folks who’d argue otherwise has now grown to 16 candidates.
Here’s a glimpse into three relative newcomers to the race:
Sunny O. Enyoghwerho, 64, credit counselor, Ph.D in psychology:
Can you imagine a better representative for our glistening hamlet than Mayor Sunny? Spin thinks not. But to get to know Enyoghwerho (pronounced Enyo-WAREho) is to understand a man who’s worked his way up the social ladder in a town far removed from his native Nigeria.
The son of a money-lending father and a mother he never knew (she died early in his childhood), Enyoghwerho came to America more than three decades ago to pursue an education in sociology and psychology, first to Huntsville, Ala., to earn a master’s degree, then here to the former USIU campus to gain his doctorate.
As Enyoghwerho says on his website, it’s this background that helps him understand what ails San Diego. And he’s not shy to note: “A state of euphoria will radiate in the city of San Diego if I’m elected mayor.”
Except when he sat down recently with Spin outside a Starbucks on Euclid Avenue, there was no “if.” “I’m going to win,” he said with supreme confidence. “The way I’m doing it, I’m going to win. I’m going to torpedo those people.”
By “those people,” the Mira Mesa Republican is referring to the Blessed Four, those who get the media attention at the expense of everyone else. It’s a topic that doesn’t sit well with Enyoghwerho.
Last week, voiceofsandiego.org ran a letter he wrote on “media discrimination.” His blunt assessment:
“The four candidates are part of the establishment. The rest of the candidates are outsiders…. As a result, the media is not promoting them.”
Why fear an outsider? Special interests, he argued, “run the city as a family affair, rather than as a business.”
“All they want is to get elected and forget about you,” he wrote. “How many times are you going to be fooled before you stop voting for the wrong candidate?”
Instead, Enyoghwerho visits shopping malls and churches and mosques, earning people’s interest one handshake at a time. He talks about politicians who’ve had the chance to change San Diego’s bad habits but have lacked true vision. His vision includes smooth roads, a Department of Tourism, affordable housing and slashing government waste after reviewing all city functions.
“I don’t want to be mayor just to be a figurehead,” he said. “I want to improve the status quo of the city. Let’s find solutions that benefit everybody and not just a few.”
Nicolas Espinal, 43, pest control expert, cultural champion:
Nicolas Espinal may have dropped out of high school, but he’s a committed student of life. Growing up on gang-dominated streets in San Diego and North County, Espinal has faced many challenges.
“I dealt with a lot of gangs, with a lot of police,” Espinal said. “Every police where I was stopped in a different neighborhood would document me as a member of that gang.”
Guilt by association created a close bond with family and friends— and an understanding of the double-edged nature of San Diego. “I was part of the other side of the coin in terms of education and all of the problems we’ve always had in this community,” he explained.
He watched his parents work multiple jobs to keep the family housed and fed. “Just getting by,” Espinal said.
He said he doesn’t understand how the city can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on public trinkets like ballparks while schools need money and people need jobs. “They could put people to work with that kind of money,” he said. “We’ve got gardens that we need to build. We need nurses. We need more trees, more clean solar. People can die here without a neighbor knowing. It’s crazy.”
Espinal, a Democrat, said he hopes to have a mayoral website up soon, but for now he points to his site, which lays out his true passion. “I named it that because those rights don’t exist now,” he said. He hopes to unite the Hispanic communities to promote change.
“I’m putting out a direct invitation to every San Diegan to be part of the solution or part of the problem—there are no sidelines here. The way politics are run today is very sad because we’ve put profit before people.”
Andrew Gade, 30, businessman, acute listener:
Andrew Gade’s first love is cars. That was in his mind when he started San Diego Tint, a successful window-tinting business with shops now in La Mesa and Sorrento Valley.
In that capacity, he’s done tinting work for city employees and law enforcement. And he frequently finds himself talking to these folks about their work. A self-described “big talker,” Gade said he was shocked by what he heard.
“Oh, they talk about the pension crisis, how they’re paying more for healthcare,” he said, “but what you really sense is a complete lack of morale. They say supervisors aren’t supervising, and many simply say, ‘I can’t wait till I get out of here.’ It’s troubling to hear good people say bad things about the city I love.”
A Bay Area native, Gade came to San Diego a month before 9/11 to attend San Diego State University, where he earned a degree in economics. He worked a dozen jobs— from restaurants to commodities trading—before the focus on cars.
Talk in the shop led to the suggestion he run for mayor. His plan is to run on less than $1,000 as an independent. He has a website up that hits on many subjects. “I’m a problem attacker,” he said. “Most people out there just put problems aside. I don’t see the four frontrunners solving the underlying issues.”
Got a tip? Send it to johnl@sdcitybeat.com.
