Councilmember Mitch McKay Chosen as New Mayor of Imperial Beach
- Media
- Aug 8
- 2 min read
Jim Hinch, writer for theVoice of San Diego, wrote the following about the newly appointed Mayor:
"Councilmembers voted 3-1 to appoint District 3 Councilmember Mitch McKay to replace outgoing Mayor Paloma Aguirre, who stepped down last month after winning a special election to fill a vacant seat on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.
After McKay is officially sworn in on Aug. 20, Councilmembers will make a similar decision about whether to appoint a replacement to serve the remainder of his four-year term or schedule a special election in his Council district.
McKay now will serve the remainder of Aguirre’s mayoral term, which ends next year. McKay said he currently has no plans to run for a second term. But he didn’t rule it out.
McKay, 67, grew up in the South San Diego community of Nestor, just outside Imperial Beach city limits. His father was in the Navy. “I always thought I lived in Imperial Beach,” he said.
He graduated from Imperial Beach’s Mar Vista High School and attended San Diego State University without graduating. He landed an internship at the aerospace company General Dynamics in 1984 then spent most of his career doing various customer support and engineering jobs at Rohr Industries in Chula Vista, now called Collins Aerospace.
Prior to joining the Imperial Beach City Council in 2022, McKay served three years on the citizens forum board for the International Boundary Waters Commission, which oversees a major sewage treatment plant on the Tijuana River. He also served on Imperial Beach’s Design Review Board and on the board of directors of the city’s Little League.
He is married with three adult children from a previous marriage.
“I look at things from a pragmatic viewpoint. If there’s a problem, how do I solve it? What skills and tools do I have at my disposal?”
He said in addition to keeping up pressure on federal officials to address the sewage crisis, he would seek to support Imperial Beach’s business community, which has struggled amid a drop in tourism."
The full article—written on August 7, 2025—can be read at "South County Report: Imperial Beach Picks New Mayor."
Comments