Trump’s local ambassadors

Two Californians on president Donald Trump’s list of administration nominees submitted to the Senate this week for confirmation have longtime San Diego ties. Most famous is ex–Union-Tribune publisher Douglas Manchester, whose 2017 nomination by Trump to be U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas has been resubmitted after failing to garner a final vote last year.

The second is ex–San Diego mayoral spokesman Ric Grennell, nominated by the president as his ambassador to Germany. In 2004, after a stint at city hall as press secretary to GOP mayor Susan Golding, Grennell was briefly named vice president of corporate communications for La Jolla–based military contracting giant Titan Corp, where Golding was on the board. But amid allegations about the company’s role as a contractor in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, Titan subsequently said Grennell had not been hired. Grennell also played a pivotal role in the bitterly fought 2014 House campaign of ex–city councilman Carl DeMaio against victorious Democratic incumbent Scott Peters.