Kevin McCarty had a good first year as mayor. I say this with confidence because McCarty didn’t spend the last 12 months telling everyone how great he’s doing.
By not broadcasting his every step and promoting alleged accomplishments, McCarty shattered a City Hall tradition.
The last two mayors, Kevin Johnson and Darrell Steinberg, spent much of their time at City Hall inundating residents with mayoral visions, goals and presumptive victories.
They held countless press conferences and updates about programs and policies to heighten the city’s (and their own) status.
When they finished talking, the workday was over. There was no time to turn a wrench and fix anything.
McCarty found a better way. He saves his humble brags for City Council meetings where he guides colleagues through agenda hedgerows with pertinent questions and brief, pertinent observations.
I checked with the mayor’s office to find out precisely how many press conferences McCarty held in his first 12 months. I only remembered two and figured there must be more. I was right.
McCarty held three, not two, press conferences in the year since taking office in December 2024.
Steinberg set a different tone his first day in December 2016. He debuted with a media tour, leading reporters across town, filling notebooks and airwaves with his ambitions.
He stopped at Oak Park Community Center for a neighborhood town hall before a dozen residents. He crossed the river to meet West Sac’s mayor and talk about homelessness and youth mentoring.
Then Steinberg headed to Del Paso Heights for another neighborhood listening tour. He finished in Natomas, speculating about the future of the old Arco Arena.
Several problems discussed that first day—dangerous intersections come to mind—are still problems, unresolved by a mayor’s fleeting attention. But the old arena was knocked down on Steinberg’s watch.
I dug through the archives and counted the number of press conferences Steinberg held in his first year. I came up with nine—triple McCarty’s number.
There was a session on Aggie Square, the UC Davis tech center Steinberg considers his greatest triumph. There was a press conference about mayoral efforts to get self-driving cars built locally (fantasy unfulfilled).
Two mayoral press conferences involved lowering homeless numbers (supreme mayoral failure). Another press conference celebrated the Open Walls mural program (big success).
Steinberg stood before cameras to praise Dreamers, kids who immigrated to the U.S. without documentation (federal program, not city business).
The mayor should have canceled his last two 2017 press conferences. One was supposed to persuade Amazon to build a second headquarters in Sacramento. The other was about landing a Major League Soccer team by 2018.
It’s easy to see why Steinberg was desperate to feed the press. He followed Kevin Johnson, an expert at flooding media zones.
When I worked for Johnson during his first five years at City Hall, we held weekly press conferences. We threw press parties even when we had nothing to talk about.
Johnson insisted on juicy topics each week. Sometimes we lacked juice. Spitballing ideas, one of our guys mentioned incorporating the county into the city. Johnson loved it—he saw consolidation as a pathway to more power.
That day, he opened his press conference saying he’d love to be an effective mayor for the whole county.
Too late we realized city-county consolidation was despised by county residents and rejected three times by voters decades earlier. After the press conference, county authorities stopped speaking to the mayor’s office for two months.
This is why I admire how McCarty handles his visibility and communications. His three press conferences focused on important city topics. No global controversies outside the mayor’s reach. No nutty ideas about Amazon or car factories.
One press conference involved the Roseville Road expansion. Another was on the Land Park Interstate 5 bicycle bridge concrete fiasco. Finally, McCarty discussed the new city manager.
How refreshing. A politician who speaks only when there’s something to say.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
