Gary Kendrick, the 72-year-old El Cajon councilmember who spent five decades as a Republican before switching parties earlier this year, has withdrawn from his re-election bid after experiencing chest pains while driving home from Comic-Con. Kendrick, who represents District 1 and has held office for 24 years, said he has been hospitalized since the episode and is scheduled to undergo a heart procedure this coming weekend.
Kendrick's withdrawal was confirmed by El Cajon City Clerk Angela Cortez, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. Kendrick told the paper he had not suffered a heart attack, and he stressed that his retirement was not planned. He said he was confident he would have won re-election had he stayed in the race.
The timing is awkward for local Democrats. The San Diego County Democratic Party had been backing Kendrick's re-election bid and, per the Union-Tribune's report, had planned to invest heavily in neighborhoods that have recently trended rightward but are historically Democratic strongholds. Kendrick's departure leaves that strategy without its central candidate in a race that was shaping up as a test of whether a Democrat could hold ground in conservative El Cajon.
A Late Deadline Complication
El Cajon's candidate filing deadline for the city council race falls on Friday, August 7, 2026. But under California Elections Code Section 10225, an incumbent's withdrawal before the standard deadline automatically triggers a five-day extension for non-incumbent candidates, pushing the new deadline for District 1 hopefuls to August 12, according to the City of Goleta, which outlines the same statewide election rule. That means the race is not necessarily settled, even though Chuck Kaye is, as of publication, the only other candidate qualified for the ballot.
Kaye is a former local police chief who has been endorsed by the Republican Party of San Diego, and campaign finance materials from his own committee show he's also backed by the Deputy Sheriffs' Association of San Diego County. His campaign is built around a public-safety platform, and under El Cajon municipal campaign rules and state Fair Political Practices Commission regulations, individual contributions to city council candidates in this cycle are capped at $10,000 per donor per election, according to Chuck Kaye's campaign committee. Local political groups had anticipated a heavily funded, hard-fought District 1 contest before Kendrick's exit changed the calculus.
A 24-Year Career Built on Breaking With the Council Majority
Kendrick's council tenure began after five years on El Cajon's planning commission, and he went on to become, by the city's own account, the longest-serving Republican in municipal office in San Diego County before his party switch in February. That switch left him as the sole registered Democrat on a five-member council otherwise made up of four conservative Republicans, including Mayor Bill Wells, according to OB Rag.
Kendrick told the Union-Tribune he could not ignore what he described as the Republican Party's betrayal of the immigrant community, identifying immigration enforcement as the most important issue behind his break with the GOP. He said he had split with the party on a variety of issues, and he disavowed a 2025 council resolution asserting El Cajon's commitment to comply with federal immigration law — a measure on which he had cast the lone dissenting vote before switching parties, a divide detailed by KPBS.
In that February interview, Kendrick said his decision was shaped by childhood accounts from his mother about Nazi Gestapo raids in Czechoslovakia and by a visit he made to the Dachau concentration camp, memories he cited as the reason he could no longer support aggressive federal immigration sweeps. The same month, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued El Cajon in San Diego Superior Court, alleging the city's police department unlawfully shared automated license plate reader data across state lines for federal immigration enforcement — a controversy Hoodline covered, while Mayor Wells defended the data sharing as an essential public safety tool.
Isolated on Homeless Funding, Too
Immigration wasn't the only front where Kendrick broke from his colleagues. In July, he cast the lone dissenting vote in a 4-1 council decision to reject roughly $5.3 million in state Encampment Resolution Funding, which the majority opposed over the state's attached Housing First mandates, as Hoodline reported in El Cajon Snubs $5.3M Cleanup Cash. It was a preview of just how isolated Kendrick had become on the council in the months before his abrupt exit.
Beyond the immigration and housing fights, Kendrick's legislative record includes a long-running focus on public health. In March 2025, he introduced and voted for an ordinance banning concealed vaping devices after local school districts formally requested it, building on public smoking restrictions he championed beginning in 2007 following his sister's death from lung cancer, according to East County Magazine. He also spearheaded tough regulations on tobacco businesses selling to minors during his time in office.
Kendrick said he hopes his successor runs the city with kindness, compassion and fairness. With his exit, the El Cajon City Council is positioned to return to a fully conservative bloc unless a new District 1 candidate steps forward before the extended August 12 filing window closes.
