By Robert J. Hansen | OBSERVER Staff Writer

With Assemblymember Kevin McCarty and political newcomer Dr. Flojaune Cofer making it to the Nov. 5 election, Sacramento will have its second Black mayor. What will this mean for Black voters come November?

Kevin Johnson served as Sacramento’s first Black mayor from 2008 to 2016.

Sam Walton, a retired political consultant who worked on the campaigns of former councilmembers Sam and Bonnie Pannell as well as former Councilmember Larry Carr’s campaign, said having two Black candidates for mayor has historical and political significance.

A Black mayor, Walton said, can drive perception among Black voters that the mayor will be more responsive to their needs.

“Whether that’s true or not it is the perception, and that perception helps give people greater confidence in whether they will be treated fairly or not, or whether they’ll be considered and listened to with respect to various policy decisions and the distribution of resources,” Walton said.

Walton thinks having two Black mayoral candidates is likely to make Blacks more inclined to vote this November.

Having two Black candidates will give voters the feeling of being able to make a choice based upon political values, Walton said.

“Now it’s not just a question of race but a question of policy choice,” Walton said. “That’s the significance of this race … this race in all likelihood will have one of the higher voter turnouts [for African Americans],” Walton said.

Johnson’s lasting accomplishments include creating Sacramento Steps Forward, a nonprofit dedicated to addressing homelessness, and helping get Golden 1 Center built in tandem with keeping the Kings in Sacramento.

“I was honored to be elected Sacramento’s first Black Mayor at the same time that Obama was elected as the country’s first Black president,” Johnson told The OBSERVER. “More than anything it’s important that we show our young people what is possible through representation. I always say ‘The first, but definitely not the last.’”

Nearly eight years after Johnson left office, homelessness remains the leading issue for Sacramento voters. Following the 2018 shooting death of Stephon Clark at the hands of police, law enforcement accountability became another top issue.

McCarty told Sacramento State journalism students that regarding police accountability, training is a big key.

“I would keep pushing our police department to look for alternative ways to focus on confrontations and deescalation. If an officer does cross the line, there needs to be accountability,” McCarty said. “I think that most officers don’t, but every once in a while there is an officer who crosses the line, and that makes it bad for all other law enforcement officers.”

The OBSERVER reported Dr. Cofer as saying that police reform has become such an issue in Sacramento that the city in recent years has made budgetary allocations to pay settlements in cases of alleged police misconduct. “We need to start having an honest conversation because we have an Office of Public Safety Accountability and inspector general, we have a police review commission, and quite frankly our police department has not played nice with any of them.”

On homelessness, McCarty said at a mayoral town hall in November that the city needs to clear sidewalks so that kids can walk home from school and not have to walk in the street, but that the unhoused also need to be told where they can go, not just where they can’t.

“Everywhere I go people are saying, ‘Why can’t we solve this?’ We are all in this together. The city can’t solve it,” McCarty said. “It’s got to be the county, the federal, the state, it’s going be community partners like the NAACP. We need to look for solutions focusing on the urgency today.”

At that same town hall, Dr. Cofer said that in her first hundred days as mayor, she would set priorities on homelessness.

“We need safe ground,” she said. “We need places where people can go immediately so they can have bathrooms where they can have showers and do laundry, somewhere to charge their cell phones and a safe place to sleep. We cannot continue to tell people where they cannot be until we tell them where they can be. We also need a plan to keep people in their homes.”

Following The Money; Forecasting November

Dr. Cofer’s primary source of campaign funding came from individual and small-dollar donations. Of her $174,440-plus war chest, some $141,861 of it poured in directly from voters, reported Scott Thomas Anderson of Sacramento News & Review. Many were doctors, nurses, mental health professionals and religious leaders.

Dr. Cofer was the only mayoral candidate to get contributions from people listing themselves as poets, artists, writers and filmmakers.

Organized labor, a bracket that didn’t include public safety or building trade unions in SN&R’s categorical system (both separate brackets), amounted to Dr. Cofer’s second-largest area of support at $9,550.

Several Sacramento-area attorneys backed Dr. Cofer and contributed $8,004. Sacramento-area small businesses also supported Dr. Cofer, contributing $3,775, her fourth largest source.

McCarty’s biggest funding source was others working in politics. “Other elected officials and political candidates in California” contributed $32,450. That is nearly half of his total $74,000 available campaign monies.

His second largest funding source was individual and small-dollar donations, which totaled $16,850. Third was gambling interests, which collectively gave him $12,150.

Other supporters came from the tech and telecommunications industry for $4,050 and $3,600 from Sacramento-area small businesses.

Sacramento-based political consultant David Townsend, who ran Johnson’s campaigns, said that although representation and symbolism are important, it comes down to who is right for the job.

“Kevin Johnson was an awesome mayor,” Townsend said. “He happened to be African American but it’s got to be the whole package and more than just a symbol.”

Townsend said he knew from polling that the primary would be very close. He said Pan and Hansen split votes among moderate Democrats, McCarty got some moderate votes and some progressive votes, and Dr. Cofer mobilized progressive voters.

“She was able to effectively communicate to the progressive voters in the city of Sacramento that she was the progressive in the race,” Townsend told The OBSERVER.

Townsend said the question come November is which candidate moderate Democrats will vote for.

“Do Pan and Hansen’s supporters go for the progressive? I don’t think they do,” Townsend said. “What you’re looking at is two candidates that are pretty left.”

Townsend said he thinks moderate Democrats will either vote for McCarty or not at all.

“If you are to the right of McCarty or Flo then you’re going to say I’m not going to vote for either one of these two or I guess McCarty is better than Flo in terms of my values,” Townsend said.