City Beat

Sacramento makes safe choices when it’s time to elect a mayor. For the past half-century, voters picked nothing but incumbents or experienced City Council members to lead City Hall.

With one exception.

In 2008, voters rejected two-term mayor Heather Fargo in favor of Kevin Johnson, a retired basketball star who returned home to build charter schools and buy real estate in his Oak Park neighborhood.

Today voters have a chance to install another political amateur in the mayor’s office.

Flojaune Cofer, a public health nonprofit policy director, is running against longtime State Assembly and City Council member Kevin McCarty.

Some business owners I know want Flojaune Cofer to win the mayor’s race. That’s crazy, I say, a vote against the city’s future.

Whatever qualities voters might attribute to Cofer, alignment with the business community is not among them.

As a neighborhood activist, Cofer made no secret of following a democratic socialist political agenda that treats businesspeople as a trope—greedy capitalists, agents of commerce who conspire against common folk.

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.