City Beat

Unless he runs the worst local campaign in history, Kevin McCarty gets elected mayor in November. No need to wait weeks for updated vote tabulations. We’re talking landslide.

McCarty drew the perfect opponent in Flojaune Cofer. Inexperienced, impulsive and far more progressive than any mayoral candidate in city history, Cofer has kicked goals into her own net since her campaign started.

Soon after Cofer submitted candidacy paperwork, the city discovered she violated campaign finance laws. City Council members generously decided the rules were too confusing and kept her on the ballot.

I know a guy who knows more about Sacramento than anyone. Spent his life here. Sees things, talks to people, thinks deeply about what he observes.

That’s why I thought it was significant when he told me the town was never better than right now.

I knew what he meant. He wasn’t talking about new pavement on Interstate 5 that replaced shattered chunks of concrete between Meadowview and Sutterville on-ramps. Or a casino in Elk Grove.

Darrell Steinberg exposed his insecurities when he claimed credit for the latest homeless estimate.

The mayor’s performance was by turns narcissistic and self-defeating. His audience walked away confused.

The egomaniacal part was Steinberg’s insistence that his policies over the past eight years worked.

It’s not news that mayoral candidate Flojaune Cofer is OK with homeless camps in city parks. She wants to defund cops, too.

But there’s something else on Cofer’s mind—the end of Sacramento as “full service” city.

Dismantling city services is one of the more bizarre ruminations from a novice politician who thrives on outlandish public policies.

Cofer’s cheerleading for free-range homeless camps and a shrunken police force is typical for progressive candidates. Decriminalization politics are standard in San Francisco and Oakland.

But Cofer veers into another universe when she supports consultants who want to make Sacramento a contract city, where unionized public employees are replaced by private companies and vendors.

Finally got around to reading the city auditor’s “Preliminary Report on the City’s Homeless Response.” Hated it. Then I read it again. Loved it.

People told me the report was a lightweight, whitewashed effort, a statistical compendium lacking analysis on how the city’s political leadership failed to manage encampments, drug sales, fires and crime.

On the surface, critics were right. The report makes zero effort to analyze decisions that turned Sacramento into a national disgrace, a place where tents line sidewalks, enforcement is discouraged and residential pleas for help are answered with, “Sorry, nothing we can do.”