Susan Peters has represented District 3 on the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors since 2004. Stepping down this year, she helped recruit a Highway Patrol chief, Rich Desmond, to run for her seat. On the Nov. 3 ballot, Desmond and SMUD board member Gregg Fishman are in a runoff.
While the campaign has become a largely virtual affair in the pandemic, Desmond and Fishman have worked hard to distinguish their views, many of which are similar.
There’s a big company in Sacramento that provides services everyone needs but tries to avoid. The pandemic wrecked the company’s business plans but made it more essential than ever. And the company is in trouble with the state attorney general.
The company is Sutter Health.
Dirty cops always lie. They know lying is an automatic way to get fired, but they lie anyway. This is where retired Sacramento Police Capt. Kevin Johnson comes in.
Johnson, who runs a business called Command Strategies Consulting, works for police departments across California. He breaks down the blue wall of silence and catches lying cops.
Katie Valenzuela won’t join the City Council until December. But she is already learning how she won’t fit in. Steve Hansen, the two-term councilmember Valenzuela defeated in March, won’t speak to her. Other members smile and offer congratulations, but the words carry little weight.
At first, this bothered Valenzuela. “I was pretty depressed when the pandemic started,” she says. Sheltered in her Boulevard Park home with her two rescue terriers, socially distanced from work and friends, months from being sworn into office, Valenzuela felt disconnected from the motivations that propelled her run for office.
Salvador Bradford takes pride in keeping his studio apartment tidy. His converted hotel room has around 250 square feet for a bathroom, stove and mini-fridge.
There is space for the trappings of a home: a shelf of Star Wars and Star Trek DVDs, and a small shrine to Jesus Christ, to whom Bradford credits his past five years of sobriety.
To see how Sacramento is managing the economic crisis, visit Fifth and K streets. That’s the heart of the Downtown Commons entertainment center. It’s a six-block stage where the city’s recovery will play out in miniature.
Until March, DoCo represented everything grand and hopeful about Sacramento. The whale was Golden 1 Center, drawing audiences from valley to foothills. Profitable symbiotic relationships formed with multiple restaurant groups, including Yard House, Polanco Cantina, Sauced BBQ, Punch Bowl Social and Echo & Rig, plus a handful of retailers and the Sawyer Hotel.
