Campa-Najjar’s campaign remains optimistic

Although trailing by 8.6 percentage points with all precincts reporting, first-time Democratic candidate – and former Jaguar – Ammar Campa-Najjar feels he still has a chance against incumbent Duncan Hunter in the race for the 50^th District seat in the U.S. House.

His confidence stems from the fact that as of Thursday last week, 740,000 votes had yet to be counted in San Diego and Riverside Counties, according to the Times of San Diego. The Campa campaign maintains the uncounted votes could still swing the election.

“We know this campaign, this election is full of surprises and I believe that we have one more surprise left by the time all the votes are counted,” Campa-Najjar said late on election night during a speech to supporters who had gathered at downtown San Diego’s Golden Hall. “We’re going to win the seat.”

It is not known how many of those outstanding votes are in the 50th district. This considered, flipping the 50th district is still a long shot despite the optimism of his supporters.

“Don’t give up on the people in District 50 and don’t give up on Ammar,” said volunteer Danny Jackson said. “I’m just asking you stay the course. Be positive. We can do this. We didn’t come this far to stop.”

Hunter did not show up to Golden Hall and Sun reporters could not reach him for comment.

Many doubted Campa-Najjar’s ability to gain traction in the historically red 50th district which encompasses central and northeastern San Diego up through a small portion of Riverside County. But at 29 with virtually no public political experience, Campa-Najjar surpassed many people’s expectations. He built his campaign from the ground up by relying on the south San Diego county community he grew up in.

Campa-Najjar maintains many of his personal connections to the community. He is still in contact with his pastors at EastLake Church and with SWC instructors like philosophy professor Peter Bolland, who has known Campa-Najjar for about nine years.

“We call him our adopted son,” Bolland said. “Because my wife and I don’t have any kids. He would come over and we grill steaks and stuff. We’d hang out.”

Bolland met Campa-Najjar in a world religions class. Bolland said Campa-Najjar takes a philosophical approach to politics, asking questions like “what is the just society?”

“Those are questions Plato asked 25 centuries ago, Buddha and everybody else. So this isn’t a Christian thing, it’s about being a man or woman of integrity, values, where the word compassion actually means something,” Bolland said. “Those are things that really matter a lot to him. That’s what makes him really an unusual candidate. He comes from a place of a real lived passion around those philosophical questions.”

Campa-Najjar chose to run his campaign without taking corporate PAC money, instead funding his campaign through individual donations.

“It’s about putting country over party. It’s about putting patients over pharmaceutical companies. It’s about putting your interests over the special interests in Washington,” he said while campaigning only a month prior to voting day. “I can honestly look at all of you in the eye and tell you that I will be able to stay true to my word because I never took the bait of corporate money and so that’s something I could I could hang my hat on.”

Campa-Najjar’s views on the future of America and the constitution are simple.

“The founding fathers had a vision of America that was ahead of their time, and these are people who own slaves,” he said. “So they didn’t think freedom extended to people of color or women. I think ever since then we’ve been trying to broaden our definition of what equality is, and I think that means, regardless of your views or your faith or your orientation, you should be protected by the Constitution.”

“His future is bright,” Bolland said. “We talked about this two years ago when he was toying with running. We both agreed this is a ridiculous long shot. We never thought it would be this close, but he was going to go for it and he was always in it to win it. This isn’t a career move for him. He wanted to serve the community.”

Campa-Najjar wants young people and supporters to keep pushing for change.

“It takes a couple steps forward, two steps backward, but the arc of history bends towards justice and bends toward equality and progress,” he said. “If we keep pushing, we’ll be able to do that.”