West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon got the boot Monday, but not by voters.
He came out of a coffeehouse and found an orange device attached to the tire of his sports car.
Cabaldon had accumulated too many unpaid parking tickets.
It could have been worse. The incident happened in downtown Sacramento, not in the mayor's own city.
But it also could have attracted a lot less attention.
After Cabaldon's car was booted, who should drive by but the campaign chief for Cabaldon's political rival, Yolo County Supervisor Mariko Yamada. Cabaldon and Yamada are competing for the 8th Assembly District seat in the June election.
Brian Micek said he couldn't believe his luck.
About 11:30 a.m., the campaign consultant had just picked up a load of Yamada envelopes at a print shop on L Street by the Capitol.
He hung a right on 10th Street and there was Cabaldon's distinctive black Nissan 350Z, parked at the corner of 10th and J, booted.
"I said, 'You gotta be kidding me,' " Micek recalled. "No way."
He looked inside. It was full of plastic water bottles, Starbucks cups and donation envelopes for Cabaldon's campaign, he said.
He knew it was the mayor's.
He called a friend who brought her camera. Then he called the news media.
In the meantime, Cabaldon had gone to City Hall, a block away, to pay his fines.
Within a short time, a parking enforcement officer came to remove the boot. The cameras caught it all on tape.
"This is evidence," Micek later proclaimed, "that Mr. Cabaldon feels he doesn't have to play by the same rules the rest of us do." Yamada, he said, has no unpaid parking fines.
Cabaldon, sounding ruffled on his cell phone, said he had let his personal affairs lapse in the course of doing public business.
When meetings in downtown Sacramento – about levee improvement and the Port of Sacramento, for example – went longer than the meters allowed, he found tickets on his windshield.
Cabaldon said he'd take the tickets home, toss them on the kitchen counter, and unintentionally forget about them.
Eight or nine unpaid tickets later, he got the boot.
On Monday morning, Cabaldon said, he was attending a meeting at Temple Coffee to talk about education reform. He came out and saw orange.
He walked to City Hall and coughed up $567.
Cabaldon said he has learned his lesson and vowed to devote more time to his personal affairs.
"I need to pay more attention to the kitchen counter," he said, "and I will."
Call The Bee's Hudson Sangree, (916) 321-1191.
