Editor's note: Last in a series of stories on issues facing Sacramento's next mayor.
If Kevin Johnson is elected mayor of Sacramento on Tuesday, he probably can thank residents of North Natomas, the Pocket and the city's other outlying neighborhoods.
Should Heather Fargo defeat Johnson and win a third term, she'll likely owe her victory to inner-city neighborhoods such as Curtis Park and midtown.
A Bee poll of 500 likely voters conducted in late October found stark differences in voter preference depending on ZIP code. The poll, conducted by Baldassare Associates, echoes the voting pattern of the June primary.
If you made a map of the Sacramento mayor's race, it would look almost like a donut. Fargo would own the hole in the middle; Johnson the outer edges.
Poll respondents in the core Sacramento ZIP codes favored Fargo, 49 percent to 40 percent. Johnson led in the outer ring of ZIP codes by a larger margin – 53 percent to 34 percent.
The reasons for this pattern lie in the varying cultures, concerns and expectations of people in different neighborhoods in the city and the level of attention residents feel they've received from City Hall.
They also reflect party differences. Sacramento's interior neighborhoods tend to be its bluest – with the highest proportion of registered Democrats. Democrats favored Fargo in the poll, 49 percent to 41 percent.
According to a map produced by the Sacramento County election office, North Natomas and the Pocket are a more checkered, maroon hue – with a mixture of Democrats and Republicans. Sixty-two percent of Republicans surveyed in the poll preferred Johnson.
The poll found that residents in Sacramento's outer neighborhoods are more concerned about crime and more likely to feel the city is headed in the wrong direction.
Crime worries Natomas, Pocket
Such dissatisfaction runs high in the city's newest frontier, North Natomas. Johnson won this expanse of suburban neighborhoods north of downtown in the primary.
Historically, North Natomas has been Fargo's turf. She lives next door in South Natomas, in a historic farmhouse on the Bannon Creek Parkway, and represented both neighborhoods on the City Council before she was elected mayor. She got her political start in the 1980s as a South Natomas activist fighting City Hall.
North Natomas has a relatively low violent crime rate, but a string of home invasion robberies earlier this year put residents on edge. They complain they don't have enough police coverage and that promised police and fire stations haven't materialized.
Earlier this year, they got a piece of bad news when the federal government determined the levees protecting Natomas from deep flooding are inadequate – a finding that makes flood insurance mandatory.
When Fargo represented North Natomas, it was mostly farm fields. Residents of the 15,000 homes built there in the past decade have less history, and less loyalty, to the mayor than their counterparts in South Natomas, which Fargo carried in the primary.
Many of the recent arrivals owe more on their houses than they are worth. The curving streets and cul-de-sacs are checkered with foreclosures.
"I would predict North Natomas will go to Kevin Johnson," said Angelique Ashby, president of the Creekside Neighborhood Association and co-founder of a local public safety committee. Ashby hasn't taken sides in the mayor's race.
"People in North Natomas are disappointed in the city," Ashby said. "It may or may not be fair to blame it on Heather, but when you're the mayor, sometimes you take the blame for things you have no control over."
North Natomas resident Ken Stevenson said Fargo is too focused on downtown.
"When I've seen her speak, that's what she talks about," he said. "I just think the city is kind of forgetting the basics."
Public safety is also a big concern in the Pocket, a suburban neighborhood on the city's southwestern edge. Like North Natomas, the Pocket has one of the city's lowest violent crime rates.
Call The Bee's Mary Lynne Vellinga, (916) 321-1094.
