Redding would certainly give them a run. I've lived in the Bay Area and San Diego, and my experience is that San Diego is the cleanest, most well organized city in California and I absolutely love it. As far as the "atmosphere", I found the people of San Diego to generally be much nicer and open to individuals with different opinions than anywhere around SF. The level of elitism in the SF Bay area is despicable.

Here we see that part of SD's cleanliness is from police fining or enforcing on the unclean, whereas SF just throws money at the homeless. SD's cleanliness is very similar to Irvine's concept of cleanliness.

10 Democrat reps for every 1 Republican, a 20% loss in the last presidential election, a sanctuary city and a Republican mayor.

That’s not a very red city or county in any sense of the phrase, it’s at best purple regardless of whether you’re comparing it to California, Californian cities, or cities in general.

Simply experiencing shades of red after an entire life spent in the bluest city in America can color one’s thinking, mind. I thought Houston of all places at the time was a very blue city when I first moved away from home.

That was true 15 years ago, but is not true any more. (It's still "redder" than LA or SF, but not even close to the reddest place in CA).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_San_Diego_County

Nothing in there says "hate the homeless more than other places".

Yes, it does.