One little-known office in San Diego County serves as the revenue engine for all of county government.
The treasurer-tax collector takes in about $9 billion in property taxes every year — a big responsibility, as the county relies on property taxes for about 20% of its revenue.
But this year, for the first time since 2002, the name Dan McAllister will not be appearing on the ballot.
McAllister, the county’s longtime former treasurer, stewarded the office for more than two decades. He retired last August and died a little over four months later after what his family described as a lingering illness.
Now, four candidates are vying to become McAllister’s permanent successor, and they’re injecting political attacks into the race for a position that’s ostensibly nonpartisan.
There’s Republican Supervisor Joel Anderson, who faces term limits on the Board of Supervisors. Shirley Nakawatase, a Republican, an accountant and former Imperial Beach mayoral candidate, is also seeking the job. So is former Oceanside Treasurer Victor Roy.
Also in the running is Larry Cohen, a Democrat and longtime congressional aide whom the Board of Supervisors appointed last year to serve out the rest of McAllister’s term. He’s now seeking a full term.
In interviews with The San Diego Union-Tribune, Cohen and Anderson named clear shortcomings at the office they want to work on improving if they’re elected, while Nakawatase and Roy pitched themselves as steady hands for a position they describe as a fiduciary steward for county finances.
In all, the job of county treasurer is less a policymaking role than a management one. The office has a $27 million budget and 125 employees, who work not only on tax collection but also on the county’s $18 billion investment pool and deferred compensation program, a retirement-account program county employees can opt into.
In the race, Cohen, 56, sees an advantage in already holding the position and having had the chance to learn the minutiae of the job since being appointed in December.
“I think I’m doing exactly what the residents of this county expect of their treasurer-tax collector — not partisan, do your job,” he says.
San Diego County Treasurer-Tax Collector Larry Cohen poses outside the County Administration Center on Thursday, April 9, 2026. The Board of Supervisors appointed Cohen as interim treasurer in December. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Cohen was previously chief of staff to Rep. Juan Vargas; before that, he worked in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. He says that past experience in the private sector has helped him pinpoint a big need for his office — more staff.
Although the county’s tax base has grown by billions of dollars in the last 25 years, the treasurer’s office has roughly the same number of employees now as it did in 2001.
That has a practical impact on county property tax collection, Cohen said.
While 75% of people pay their taxes online, the rest pay by check and sometimes cash. That means hundreds of thousands of checks flow into the treasurer’s office, especially ahead of November and February deadlines.
Many checks arrive in envelopes issued by the treasurer’s office, which get processed by a machine and clear in a day or two. But Cohen estimates another 100,000 to 150,000 arrive in regular envelopes, which must be opened by hand and reviewed individually. Those checks can take up to 60 days to clear, Cohen said.
“No robot can do that,” Cohen said, adding that if a check goes uncashed, that means it isn’t earning a yield in the county’s investment pool.
“It’s a proven fact that I get money quicker, it’s invested for longer,” Cohen said. “When you’re talking about billions of dollars, it’s a very simple financial calculation.”
With the county about to kick off annual budget talks, Cohen will soon have a chance to try to boost his staffing.
But neither his five months in the job nor his desire to staff up have kept Anderson, who’s been a county supervisor since 2020, from attacking him over the long wait times for cashing checks.
In an interview, Anderson called Cohen as a “bonehead” who’s “losing millions of dollars in interest” for the county by not clearing checks faster.
“It’s entirely up to that office. It’s their failure,” Anderson said. “We’re losing money each and every day, and nobody seems to care except for me.”
In a political career that spanned four terms in the state Legislature before he was elected to two as a supervisor, Anderson said he’s always been a problem-solver. He says his approach to the treasurer’s office will be no different.
“I have a great relationship with my colleagues — a great relationship with others regardless of party,” Anderson said. “Because at the end of the day, people know they can count on me to fix the problem.”
San Diego County Supervisor Joel Anderson during an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune about his candidacy for treasurer on Wednesday, April 29, 2026, in El Cajon. If elected, Anderson pledged to only serve one term. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Anderson said he initially learned of check-cashing wait times and raised his concerns with McAllister while he was still in office. But after the former treasurer fell ill, nothing changed, Anderson said.
He said he needs to get into the job before he can know with certainty what is causing delays in cashing checks. But he hypothesized it’s likely a mix of staffing shortages — echoing Cohen’s complaint — and old technology.
Anderson has two years left in his supervisor term, and he’s quick to list what he says are his bipartisan achievements as a supervisor, like the creation of a secure parking lot for homeless people in San Diego’s Grantville neighborhood.
But if voters this fall pass a proposed overhaul of the county’s charter, Anderson could have a shot at another term on the Board of Supervisors. The ballot measure, if passed, would extend term limits for supervisor — meaning he could hypothetically run for a third term in 2028.
Asked why he’d give up being a supervisor, Anderson pointed to the job he’s running for now.
“There’s a lot of good people that can be a supervisor,” he said. “We don’t have any good candidates for county treasurer.”
If elected treasurer, Anderson said he’d serve only one term. He declined to say whether he’d consider running for a third term as a supervisor if he loses the treasurer’s race in November.
Even with his one-term pledge, Anderson thinks it “won’t take me more than four years” to solve issues in the treasurer’s office.
“One term to fix it, and then I’m done. I’m retiring,” said Anderson, 65.
Cohen called Anderson’s critiques of him a political attack and said he’s confident voters will see through it.
Delays in cashing certain checks has been a decades-long problem for the treasurer’s office, he added.
“Eight months ago before Dan McAllister said he was going to retire, Joel Anderson had no interest in this office,” Cohen said, arguing Anderson is running only because he might be termed out as a supervisor in two years.
“Suddenly, he has a profound interest in saying this office isn’t being run well,” Cohen said.
Like others in the race, Nakawatase, 66, comes to the campaign as an experienced accountant and community leader in Imperial Beach.
In 2022, she ran for mayor of Imperial Beach but lost to Paloma Aguirre, now a county supervisor. She’s not the only one in her family involved in local politics — her daughter, Mariko Nakawatase, serves on the Imperial Beach City Council.
In an interview, Shirley Nakawatase said she first became interested in the job following McAllister’s resignation.
After learning about the office from McAllister over the years, she says there’s a need to improve its outreach in the community. If she’s elected, she says the office will start holding town halls to help keep taxpayers informed.
“How do you know what services are available? How do you know that you can get assistance before you need assistance?” Nakawatase said. “There is no outlet to get that information out, but I’m going to be creating it.”
Shirley Nakawatase, right, swore in her daughter Mariko Nakawatase, left, as an Imperial Beach City Council member at Imperial Beach City Hall on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
When supervisors appointed Cohen last fall, Nakawatase was among a pool of candidates vying for the job. The Republican contends the selection came down to Democratic supervisors picking a political ally. Cohen has said experience and merit led to his appointment.
“You should be looking for the person best suited for the job, and I believe I am the best person,” Nakawatase said.
Roy, who began serving as Oceanside’s treasurer in 2018 but lost re-election in 2024, also thinks politics should be taken out of the job as treasurer.
“I don’t want any kind of political pressures,” said Roy, who declined to give his age. “I think the office for the county treasurer should be a neutral position, free of political party pressures.”
Roy considers his tenure as Oceanside’s treasurer a success, and he wants to replicate it at the county.
“My No. 1 concern was to make sure that our public funds were safe, that we were getting proper yield and that we had the liquidity to maintain our city budget,” he said.
But his time at Oceanside was marked by controversy when in 2022 he was accused of looking at nude images on a computer at a local library the prior year.
According to a report filed by the library’s manager, Roy was looking at a magazine containing “full nudity” in the library, and even after staff told him to stop, he continued to download the images to a hard drive.
In Roy’s telling, a constituent had previously complained to him that artwork depicting naked people was accessible on library computers, and he had then gone to the library to confirm it for himself.
A city-ordered investigation ultimately found his explanation wasn’t credible.
In an interview, Roy called the controversy “a bunch of nonsense” drummed up by his political opponents, though conceded, “I guess I made a mistake.”
“I wasn’t in the public library officially as the treasurer. I was there as a private citizen and exercising my right to look at the computers in any possible way,” Roy said. “That shouldn’t be an issue during the election for the county treasurer.”
Victor Roy is running for San Diego County treasurer-tax collector. (Courtesy)
Cohen holds a clear fundraising advantage based on campaign finance disclosures filed late last month. Since December, he’s raised $320,000 — including $99,000 in loans he’s made to his own campaign.
Anderson has raised $44,000 but also has about $242,000 in other campaign committees he controls. Nakawatase has raised $57,000, about $41,000 of that in loans made to her campaign, and the only money Roy’s campaign has raised is a $30,000 loan from himself.
Cohen has also spent the most this cycle — about $110,000, with $123,000 still on hand as of mid-April, according to disclosures. Anderson had spent nearly $38,000 and had about $17,000 on hand, Nakawatase spent $32,000 with $6,000 still on hand and Roy spent about $22,000 with $8,000 still on hand.