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 (correction: current) 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.
Another correction – was just informed that Jim Provenza endorsed Victor Lagunes as well on Tuesday.
Ugh…everyone of these candidates is pretty much a social justice crusader. Don’t get me wrong all leadership organizations at all levels (local, state, fed) needs them. But Davis doesn’t need any more activists in leadership positions.
Davis needs a Gilded Age tycoon (Mr. Monopoly) who will try anything and everything to get every single money making business into Davis and flood it’s coffers with tax money. If a company needs a 10 story 500K sqft facility…You Got It! You want a surf park (one is being planed in Sacramento)? How much sand do we need to approve to be trucked in? You think the Mall of America is big? The Mall of California in Davis can be bigger! I’m being absurd of course (I have to state this because some are going to take my comments literally).
Mr./Ms. Davis Monopoly is the guy businesses and developers call to get some thing in Davis. Mr./Ms. Davis Monopoly is the person behind the economic engine that funds all the things we need in Davis for infrastructure and social justice reform and environmental efforts. In an ideal system, it would be up to the rest of the city council to curb Mr./Ms. Davis Monopoly’s proposals to manageable community projects. The social justice council members would approve these compromise projects because they would fund things that the social justice and environmental interests want: a kale garden roof for city hall, solar and wind powered buses, a local bicycle powered power plant, move I80 (that one’s for Todd)…oh yeah, affordable housing (funded), city homeless outreach program (funded), better/more roads and bike paths and parks.
Everyone wants all kinds of nice social reforms, environmental goals and to help the needy with housing…etc.. and that’s great. But no has really shown any sort of plan to pay for those things other than more taxes and hoping and begging for money from the state and feds.
To be fair, its not the social justice activists keeping developments and businesses from Davis – it’s the NIMBYs and boomer homeowners that have been voting to keep out things like Costco and innovation parks.
Actually, the Council has been fairly moderate. There’s only so much they can promote and do. They supported DISC. But it’s the social/environmental activists that spoke out against DISC. The NIMBYs reacted to traffic considerations. But the activists reacted to peripheral growth over farm land, amount of affordable housing, bicycle paths…etc…
That’s probably a more interesting observation than you intended. I suppose it depends on how you define moderate. I doubt very much that people like the other Keith agree with that comment, nor would people from red California.
It reminds me of something I saw early after Kamala Harris became the candidate for President, someone on the right dismissed her as a San Francisco liberal. The truth is, she wasn’t a “San Francisco” liberal, she was in the more establishment wing of San Francisco. But being from San Francisco, that’s still pretty liberal by standards of most of the rest of the country.
Sorry to interject that, I just found your comment interesting. The council for example had no problem sticking their noses into Gaza, supporting Police reform, backing LGBTQ rights, etc. I understand you probably feel they could go further and I probably agree with you there. Just thinking outloud here.
I’ll simplistically put it: it’s all relative.
I remember a couple years after I got out of college and was working for real estate developer; I used to go in to the president’s office and we’d talk politics. At the time he was a man well in his 60’s and I was in my mid to late 20s. He was a staunch Republican and at the time we were talking about Bush taxes and eventually Iraq (I’m guessing he’d have nothing to do with the current Republican party). I of course had the far more liberal outlook compared to him. But in that office I was probably the most politically liberal person there. Some years later I would move to San Francisco. There I was maybe slightly right of what I considered center in San Francisco…though I’d probably fit in with the older traditional local democrats. A decade later, I moved to Davis. Here, I’d say I’m significantly right of center. The interesting question is if my relative political position is due to changes in me over time (possibly but I don’t think it’s the biggest factor), changes in location (more likely) or changes to society over time (IMO even more likely).
As for the council, I was referring to their moderate stance in regard to pro-growth/development. In general they seem to support it but seem to be hamstrung to how much they can support it or push it through or will hold it up for specific interests. Again, there’s only so much they can do because they’re elected officials.