Sacramento News & Review - Run, Roger, Run! SN&R’s CEO urges Roger Dickinson to enter city council race - Greenlight - Opinions - January 7, 2016:
Run, Roger, Run! SN&R’s CEO urges Roger Dickinson to enter city council race
He may not be running, but he should be
Please join me in supporting former Sacramento County Supervisor and former member of the California state Assembly Roger Dickinson in his race for Sacramento City Council. (Jeff vonKaenel is the president, CEO and majority owner of the News & Review newspapers in Sacramento, Chico and Reno. )
There is just one problem: Roger is not running for city council.
I have never spoken with him about running for city council. However, I am writing this column because I believe that Sacramento would be a better place with Roger on the council. Here is why:
We in Sacramento are moving out of the Kevin Johnson era and into the (hopefully) Darrell Steinberg era of city government. This new era will be marked by regional cooperation instead of noncooperation, government transformation instead of public relations. And I anticipate that we will be able to more effectively solve critical issues.We face challenges with homelessness, transportation and economic growth, and we need to develop community-wide programs that reform our criminal justice system and expand the region’s mental-health programs. I anticipate improvements, in part because we will have a new and very experienced mayor. But regional cooperation will require more than just changes in the city government.
In Sacramento, our biggest regional county, we already have new leadership. With the addition of Patrick Kennedy to the board of supervisors, which already includes Phil Serna and Don Nottoli, we have a working majority of knowledgeable, progressive board members. They have already been making an impact.
We’ve seen other impressive regional changes. The new president of Sacramento State, Robert Nelsen; the new CEO of Greater Sacramento Area Economic Council, Barry Broome; and the new President and CEO of the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce, Peter Tateishi, are all moving their organizationSacramento News & Review - Run, Roger, Run! SN&R’s CEO urges Roger Dickinson to enter city council race - Greenlight - Opinions - January 7, 2016:
Reinventing Angelique
From struggling single mom to mayoral candidate, can Councilwoman Angelique Ashby distance herself from K.J. and become Sacramento’s next mayor?
The Starbucks on Ninth and I streets bustles with a morning rush of potential voters: the businesswoman who talks too fast and laughs too loud, the guy who takes one look at the snaking line and gulps “nope,” the young professional whose friend lends her cash for a beverage, the homeless man with a scraggly beard who keeps rising to offer his seat. Regular folks. Constituents. Everyday Sacramentans.
The candidate walking past outside will need their support if she wants to become the next mayor of Sacramento. And by all accounts, District 1 Councilwoman Angelique Ashby really, really wants the job.
“I’m poised to step in right now. There’s no learning curve for me,” she said, a not-so-veiled dig at her main rival, Darrell Steinberg, a onetime councilman who served most recently at the state Capitol. “I don’t have to figure out who’s in charge of what in the city or who’s been working on what.
“I’m a day-one-ready mayor.”
Ashby’s rise from a broke, 20-year-old single mom to a 40-year-old mayoral candidate is the stuff of stump-speech gold. But not many outside her Natomas-centered district, where Ashby evolved from a well-liked community activist to a well-liked elected representative, know it.
Her campaign is an opportunity to redress that, as well as to extract herself from the long and complicated shadow of Mayor Kevin Johnson, with whom she was closely aligned until his star imploded over resurfaced sexual-misconduct allegations. And until Ashby pre-empted K.J.’s announcement that he wasn’t going to run again with her own mayoral bid.
Others contend that Ashby is rewriting the past out of convenience, and because she can.
“I get the sense that she is trying to distance herself from the mayor, but there is a record,” said Heather Fargo, Johnson’s predecessor and a Steinberg supporter. “Because she’s not that known citywide, I think Reinventing Angelique