This week outgoing Councilmember Will Arnold submitted his reflections on his eight years on the council, with a few parting shots buried at the end of his piece. It got me looking at the latest round of endorsements for his replacement, who will be one of the candidates on the ballot in just under four weeks.
While the City Council for most of the last decade and a half has been fairly civil and has operated with a surprising amount of consensus on major policy issues, I was struck by how split they were as to who should replace Arnold in District 2.
Will Arnold in late August announced he was endorsing Victor Lagunes. He has been joined by Bapu Vaitla in supporting Lagunes.
Meanwhile, Linda Deos is backed by Mayor Josh Chapman and Donna Neville.
Finally, Dillan Horton has the backing of Gloria Partida.
Given the number of candidates and number of council members, a 2-2-1 split is as evenly split as you can get.
In August, we asked whether endorsements even matter—and they probably do not make a huge difference. Nevertheless, I look at endorsements, particularly at the local level, less as a persuader and more as an indicator of who is backing whom and what that might mean.
Moving beyond the council, I would note the preferences of the Davis members and of the Board of Supervisors. You have an interesting mix here, because there is Lucas Frerichs currently on the board, and Jim Provenza who is on the board but outgoing, Sheila Allen who is the Supervisor Elect, and Don Saylor who just stepped down in 2022 after three terms.
Both Frerichs and Saylor are backing Linda Deos.
Sheila Allen confirmed to the Vanguard on Tuesday that she has not endorsed in the city council race and, just on Tuesday night, the Dillan Horton campaign announced that Jim Provenza was endorsing Horton.
One body really isn’t split at all—the School Board. Four of the five current members of the school board have endorsed Victor Lagunes, who of course they know well as a teacher and the past president of the Davis Teachers Association.
One exception is Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald (to whom of course I might have a connection), and she is backing Dillan Horton who has served with her for six years or so on the Davis Police Accountability board. (The Horton campaign released a piece on Tuesday highlighting differences between Horton and Deos on police accountability). (Correction): Horton also has the endorsement of Elizabeth Moon, school board member, who is endorsing Lagunes as well.
As someone who doesn’t live in the Second District, and who has known each of the candidates for a number of years, I personally don’t have a dog in this battle and frankly don’t see a huge difference between the candidates on the issues—I highlighted this a bit in my piece on affordable housing.
So it should be no real surprise that, for the most part, the Davis elected official community is rather split on which candidate they have endorsed.
I assume that the Davis Enterprise will announce their endorsement perhaps as soon as this week, given that ballots drop this week. The Vanguard of course, as a non-profit, does not endorse candidates.
At this point, I would say that, just as the Presidential campaign has no clear favorite, the same may very well hold for the District 2 council race. There has been a lot more focus on Measure Q, the sales tax, which has been kind of the traditional contentious race.
Meanwhile, the Davis City Council race has been quiet and fairly tame. In the long run, that may have a much larger impact on the future of the community than a relatively small sales tax increase. However, we shall see.
