Davis, CA – Friday was the close of the November filing period. Both incumbents running for reelection are doing so unopposed.
That means that Josh Chapman and Donna Neville have both been reelected by virtue of the fact that no one filed to run against them.
There is only one competitive district and that is the one where incumbent Will Arnold is not seeking reelection. Technically, because there is no incumbent, the filing period is extended until August 14.
District 2 figures to be an interesting race. You have Linda Deos who ran for Council in 2018 and Board of Supervisors in 2020. You have Dillan Horton, who ran for council in 2020 in this district and finished second. And you have Victor Lagunes, the DTA president running for the first time.
This will be the third district election—and the first time there are candidates, incumbents, running unopposed.
This is yet another apparent disadvantage of district elections—the power of incumbency means that often incumbents will not be challenged.
Had this been the old, at-large days, for example, we would have at least five candidates battling for three seats, one of which was open. That would force the incumbents to run campaigns, defend their record. Now most of the city will be disengaged from this local election.
While the District 2 race figures to be interesting with no incumbent and probably no clear favorite at this point, the stakes are actually fairly low.
It will be interesting to see on what issues the candidates diverge. For instance, there is no clear slow growth candidate.
The council next January will still feature: Gloria Partida, Josh Chapman, Donna Neville and Bapu Vaitla. The only question is who the fifth council member is—but for the most part, it doesn’t appear like there will be much change in terms of council direction.
The most intriguing race in Davis will likely be Measure Q—the sales tax measure.
On that issue, there is opposition filed to the sales tax increase.
My question is, really, how deep does the opposition really go on this issue?
Consider that the tax measure only requires a simple majority. When the parcel tax measure was defeated in 2018 for roads, it still received 57 percent of the vote. While that was not sufficient in a two-thirds election, it would have easily passed a 50 percent threshold.
That’s a difficult hurdle for the opposition to clear.
Adding to that, the actual impact on people figures to be minimal. Most people will really not even notice a one percent increase. Think about it, if you purchase something for $100, that’s $1 more in taxes, and even at $1000 it’s only $10 and at $10,000 it’s only $100. At no point can you really say that at some point that becomes real money—it just doesn’t.
The idea that people will go somewhere else to shop—well, both West Sacramento and Woodland have the same sales tax measure on the ballot. The difference across the region will not be worth the gas people expend to travel out of town.
So this largely becomes a symbolic issue—an issue that becomes a surrogate for anger establishment.
Ask some of the folks and they will come up with a long list of grievances, anything from the commission issue to Mace Blvd. to the ladder truck.
There is no doubt that there is a group of people who are angry at the direction of council. Heck, recently I’ve been critical of the council and its failure to address housing issues, not to mention economic development.
But overall, the fact that neither incumbent is being challenged suggests that the anger doesn’t go very deep.
In fact, it’s not clear that the anger this time is as much as it was last campaign cycle. In that cycle, both incumbents faced a vigorous challenge. Glorida Partida was able to survive hers rather easily. But Dan Carson, who angered many when he filed a challenge to the DISC opposition ballot language, was handily defeated by Bapu Vaitla.
The opposition to Partida was likely related to her support for DISC as well, but that wasn’t enough to knock off an incumbent.
Can the opposition rally the community against the sales tax measure? It would be a symbolic victory at best. But it doesn’t seem all that likely.
After all, a housing development or the DISC could impact people’s lives—more traffic and congestion, more people, potentially an impact on property values, potentially an impact on people’s views of Sacramento or open space.
The sales tax is likely to have a few pennies impact on most people. The anger in the community doesn’t seem to go deep. We shall see what happens, but the fact that neither incumbent has a challenge is suggestive that there is not a huge wave of anger that goes deep into the community.
