Davis, CA – Last week in my column, “If People Are Angry, Why is the City Council So Stable…” I point out that despite people’s professed anger – incumbents in Davis have rarely lost and the voters keep voting roughly similar candidates.
I don’t – as I noted later – buy into the notion that Davis is controlled by powerful developer interests – though there was certainly a time when the firefighters’ union had a disproportionate impact on local elections.
It starts of course with who chooses to run for elected office. For example, it is difficult to knock off an incumbent when no one challenges the incumbent.
That’s what we are seeing right now. Two incumbents are running for reelection – Mayor Josh Chapman and Councilmember Donna Neville. Neither one has a challenger who has pulled papers – at least at this time.
Now in fairness, Neville was just elected in a contested election last year to fill out the remainder of Lucas Frerichs’ term – but still, if people are angry, you would expect someone to emerge.
We have seen challengers for each election to date – though the incumbents have held the decided advantage.
Sunday Commentary: If People Are Angry, Why Is the City Council So Stable in Terms of Elections?
Since district elections started in 2020, we have had now five regular elections and one special election – each one with at least two candidates.
Incumbents have won easily EXCEPT in one notable exception. That was in 2022 when Dan Carson – who was subject to all sorts of controversy from the previous spring, lost overwhelmingly to Bapu Vaitla.
In 2020, Will Arnold and Lucas Frerichs won reelection overwhelmingly. Even Gloria Partida, despite a challenge in 2022, won with around 60 percent of the vote.
We have seen two open seats – Josh Chapman beat former Councilmember Rochelle Swanson and the special election last year where Donna Neville defeated Francesca Wright.
The only challenged election this time is for Will Arnold’s open seat where we have three candidates who have pulled papers – Dillan Horton, Linda Deos and Victor Lagunes.
There is no true slow growth candidate here.
So where is all the supposed anger?
And yet, we saw it come forward during the commission issue, and we saw it come forward during the revenue measure discussion at the council.
Indeed, Alan Pryor filed a Form 410 – Statement of Organization to oppose the sales tax increase – calling the committee “No on Measure Q – Quit Wasting Our Taxes.”
Had there been a Measure J Measure, you could bet there would be an opposition. Had there been a Measure J Amendment Measure, you can bet there would be an opposition.
But for some reason these battles are being waged not at the city council level but rather on the initiative level.
It’s an interesting facet of Davis political life. The opposition is fairly good at getting measures defeated but not great at getting themselves elected to city council.
As I pointed out last week, the defeat of Dan Carson was exceptional in the last decade. Policy disagreements with the community and/or their constituents is not sufficient to lead to electoral defeat.
Gloria Partida won reelection easily in a district that went heavily against DISC – and where there was a declared candidate in part running on that issue. Will Arnold and Lucas Frerichs won easily in elections where DISC was defeated narrowly in 2020.
It is unusual that no one is contesting Chapman and Neville – at least at this time – but it’s not unusual that city council incumbents will be easily reelected this fall, despite pockets of clear anger.
We will have more on this in a subsequent article.
