By Arturo Castañares
Publisher

The South Bay of San Diego has long endured being treated as a dumping ground for power plants, junkyards, and landfills. Only recently, through projects like the Chula Vista Marina development, have we started turning the corner toward attracting quality investment.

When environmental activist Paloma Aguirre won the July 2025 Special Election to fill the District 1 seat on the County Board of Supervisors, our communities felt a collective sense of relief. We expected her to protect our interests with qualified, competent leadership.

Instead, politics took priority over competency.

Within her first 24 hours in office, Aguirre joined her two fellow Democrats to push highly regarded County Counsel Claudia Silva—the county’s top lawyer and highest-ranking Latina—into immediate retirement after Silva gave competent, but contrary, legal advice to the Board majority. It was a calculated, purely political opening salvo that sent shockwaves through county leadership. Aguirre never worked with Silva, but agreed to fire her on her first day in office.

Then came the second act. Aguirre blindsided insiders and community leaders alike by appointing her young campaign staffer, Kevin Sabellico, to the County Planning Commission—a powerful body that votes on major land-use approvals.

KEVIN SABELLICO

Rather than seeking input from the vested, experienced community leaders who actually live in the South Bay, Aguirre handed the seat to a twenty-something political operative with little background in county urban planning, affordable housing, or local environmental issues.

Sabellico is a textbook carpetbagger. In just three years, he moved his voter registration three times in a desperate bid to climb the political ladder. As a native Chula Vistan involved in local politics for over 35 years, I’ve seen my share of political opportunists and carpetbaggers, and this guy fits the bill.

First, he launched a brief, aborted campaign for the Carlsbad City Council after renting an address right before filing papers. To launch his campaign, he sent out emails announcing his candidacy, but mistakenly used a picture of County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, who had just resigned from the County Board of Supervisors amid allegations of sexual harassment by a female transit agency employee. Sabellico had worked on Fletcher’s campaigns.

SABELLICO'S TEXT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR CITY COUNCIL

Before the campaign could even start, Sabellico abandoned his run for City Council and moved again, this time to run for the San Dieguito School Board, where parents vocally rejected him for having no children in the district and no background in education. To make matters worse, Sabellico publicly claimed to be a "substitute teacher" in the district when, in fact, he had merely applied for the job and was never hired. His campaign rightfully went down in flames.

During Aguirre’s supervisor race, Sabellico moved yet again—this time to an apartment across the street from Petco Park—to barely qualify as a resident of her district which spans from East Village, Barrio Logan and Logan Heights, to National City, Chula Vista, and San Ysidro.

Why did Aguirre appoint someone with so little commitment to our neighborhoods? 

Just look at the power behind the throne. Sabellico works for political consultant Daniel Rottenstreich, husband of San Diego's most powerful labor union leader, Bridget Browning. Having accepted the heavy backing and money of Browning’s Labor Council, Aguirre became inexplicably beholden to Rottenstreich’s team of operatives.

The internal pushback against this political payday was immediate. When Aguirre’s own Deputy Chief of Staff, Aida Castaneda, objected to appointing a transient political hack over a proven local leader, she was unceremonious asked to leave. Cruelly, the termination was delivered not by Aguirre herself, but by her Chief of Staff, Paul Worlie—the very insider who served in the same role for Nathan Fletcher before his spectacular public implosion.

Aguirre is legally free to appoint whomever she wants to the Planning Commission. But South Bay residents deserved someone with lived experience in our communities—someone who understands the traffic, environmental burdens, and housing shortages we face daily.

We have dozens of deeply qualified, heavily invested community members who could have served with distinction. By passing them over for a serial ballot-hopper, Paloma Aguirre chose transactional politics and union bosses over the residents she represents.

It is an indefensible appointment. Aguirre let our community down.