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.
History and commonsense favor McCarty.
Aside from Johnson, city voters always chose experienced politicians over business owners, outsiders, extremists and flakes.
The city began direct mayoral elections in 1971. Every winner other than Kevin Johnson had City Council experience.
That’s where comparisons end between Johnson and Cofer.
Johnson was a celebrity, an NBA star with the Phoenix Suns who came home to Oak Park and started charter schools at Sacramento High and Strawberry Lane Elementary. He was a registered Democrat but old-school Eisenhower Republican at heart.
His charter schools infuriated teacher unions. They worked hard to defeat him. He had enough money to self-fund his mayoral campaign and enjoyed support from the business community. A landlord and property developer, he considered himself a businessman.
Cofer is unknown, working in an obscure corner of public policy. Her only municipal experience was on the city’s Measure U Community Advisory Committee, where she criticized Mayor Darrell Steinberg and the City Council for ignoring her and giving police too much money.
Cofer swings politically left of Steinberg. She’s a progressive who marches with democratic socialists. She really dislikes cops.
I can testify about problems that happen when voters elect a mayor who’s never held public office. I was Johnson’s special assistant for his first term.
My job carried no written description—none of us knew what we were doing—but evolved into cleaning up problems created by the mayor’s inexperience, ego and stubbornness.
When I wasn’t apologizing for Johnson, I took meetings with people he didn’t want to see.
My advantage was age—I was 10 years older than Johnson and presumably wise compared to young graduates we hired from Harvard and Stanford business schools. I knew everyone on City Council from decades as a local newspaper columnist and TV and radio broadcaster.
But talking to councilmembers as a special assistant was not like interviewing them as a reporter. Councilmembers were resentful when the mayor’s aide showed up in his place.
Councilmembers knew Johnson sent me because he was too busy to bother with them. Lack of collegial grace cost us several important votes.
The crisis of almost losing the Kings turned Johnson’s mayorship into something substantial and enduring.
Throughout his first term, Johnson desperately tried to avoid being tagged as a sports-obsessed mayor. He wanted to stretch his reputation beyond his basketball glories.
That’s why Johnson devoted so much time and effort to homelessness, economic development, public safety, arts and education. His goal was to run for governor. I’m serious.
But Johnson’s legacy as mayor would be settled by fate and events beyond his control.
The Kings were ready to move. But NBA Commissioner David Stern anchored the team in town because he had an All-Star mayor at City Hall. A former NBA player couldn’t be allowed to lose his city’s NBA team.
Thanks to Johnson’s basketball connections, Downtown has an arena, hotels and entertainment district. The alternative was a blighted shopping mall, windows covered with plywood.
My guess is any other mayor would have failed where Johnson succeeded. Including McCarty or Cofer.
As a city councilman, McCarty opposed municipal bonds for Golden 1 Center. Cofer sounds clueless on economic development. But the Kings and the arena aren’t the point here.
Here’s the point. When it’s time to vote for mayor, you’re better off with an experienced candidate. In the end, Kevin Johnson made success look easy. He was the exception.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
