West Sac and Christopher Cabaldon were meant to be. They transformed each other
On Dec. 9, Christopher Cabaldon spent his final day as mayor of West Sacramento after 18 consecutive years in the job.
That’s easily longer than anyone served as mayor in the history of West Sacramento or Sacramento, for that matter. It may be a record for any mayor of any city in this region. And only a handful of current mayors across America have served more consecutive years than the 55-year-old Filipino American who first traveled to West Sacramento by accident.
Yeah, true story: Cabaldon took the off-ramp into West Sac one day, couldn’t immediately find an on-ramp back to Sacramento and was smitten by the neighborhoods he saw. That one chance encounter changed the course of his life and the course of West Sacramento.
From Raley Field (now known as Sutter Health Park) and the burgeoning development around it, to the river walk, to the revitalization of West Capitol Avenue, to landing an IKEA store (a sales tax boon that Sacramento really wanted), to the managed growth of a city that had fewer than 30,000 residents when he arrived and has more than 50,000, Cabaldon’s imprint on his adopted city is indelible.
The community he helped reshape voted him out of office last month, with City Councilwoman Martha Guerrero winning by a narrow margin.
“You can’t throw a rock in this community without hitting a project or program that Christopher didn’t influence or have a part of” said Chris Ledesma, a bank vice president and West Sacramento City Councilman for 10 years. “He was mayor at an extraordinary time. We were ripe for development. The stars aligned. His knowledge of state and local policy allowed him to step out of the traditional council role for a small town.”
And so Cabaldon did. He hasn’t transformed West Sacramento alone, obviously. The city incorporated in 1987, six years before Cabaldon moved in. Many people saw the potential for West Sac to be more than a dumping ground for sleazy hotels and neglected neighborhoods. West Sacramento is right across the Tower Bridge from Sacramento’s urban core. It’s actually all part of the same urban core and Cabaldon’s magic has been as a salesman and alchemist for the betterment of his community.
Landing the River Cats
That alchemy started in the late 1990s when influential people wanted to bring Triple A baseball to the area but the City of Sacramento was disinterested and slow moving. Cabaldon sold West Sacramento as the place that could move fast so that investors could make their money fast.
Boom.
The time between the initial launch with River Cats investors to Opening Day in 2000? It happened in an astounding 18 months.
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“He got it right away,” said Warren Smith, the entrepreneur behind the River Cats and Sacramento Republic FC. “He understood the opportunity. He had a vision for the community that many in the community didn’t have.”
“He wasn’t a pushover,” Smith said.
Sacramento County – led by former County Supervisor Roger Dickinson – helped provide critical bond funding to make Raley Field happen. And what happened? Everybody won, a community institution began. We have had many glorious summer nights with the Tower Bridge gleaming beyond the lush green berm in center field ever since.
Was Cabaldon alone in this victory? No. Was he a critical player? Yes. He’s been Mr. Inside, working the wonky details late at night, early in the morning and on airplanes flying all over the world for quick power vacations and excursions before always returning to West Sac.
Making West Sac ‘can-do’
When saluting someone, as West Sacramento planned to salute Cabaldon at its Dec. 9 council meeting, it’s easy to give the impression that the recipient of praise was a one-person gang. That wasn’t Cabaldon and that isn’t West Sacramento.
No, the hallmark of Cabaldon’s time in the mayor’s chair of West Sacramento has been a time of collaboration and inspiration. Of providing the prod when necessary, but falling back and letting – his fellow council members, city staff – do their jobs.
Frankly, until recently, West Sacramento put Sacramento to shame. West Sacramento was “can-do” while Sacramento was “studying” issues.
“Christopher was willing to step forward when it was necessary but he knew when to step back,” said Mark Friedman, who is part of the Kings ownership group and is developing The Bridge District, an urban housing development in the shadow of Sutter Health Park.
Said Ledesma: “He inspired a lot of people to get involved in our city. Smart people at every level. And now, we’ll get 200 applications from people at a time – people who want to play a role in their government.”
How did Cabaldon inspire people? He was being positive in the face of negativity. He continued by imagining ways to do something instead of pondering reasons why something wasn’t possible. Cabaldon started off as a loner, someone who was always in his head and keeping secrets.
He made headlines in 2006 when he told his constituents – this sort of thing was big news back then – that he was gay. The news never became what defined Cabaldon. It was serving in West Sacramento that turned the loner into the community guy.
A city as a canvas
The unfinished city before him, and all the challenges and obstacles to making it more than it was, became a canvas for his intellect and his heart. The outsider suggested to the long timers a different way to live and his ideas and influence gained acceptance even when he didn’t.
In the ensuing years, a new city was created to replace an old, regional punch line.
“Our culture was one part desperation and one part cynicism,” Cabaldon said of his early days in West Sac. “There was a lot of disrespect for West Sac. People would say, ‘Don’t go there after dark.’ The city was incorporated but not the paths to get there, not much expectation. There was 100 years of potential but people thought ‘God must hate us.’”
“I saw so much potential here. I thought, ‘I’ll serve and go back to doing in important things.’”
Then a crazy thing happened: He realized that there was no more important work to be done than in the place he was never meant to be.
This was never the plan. Cabaldon, a UC Berkeley graduate originally from Los Angeles, came to Sacramento in 1988 to work at the state Capitol, living in his apartment at 14th and G streets.
Cabaldon was to return to L.A. after a year or two, but he found politics and policy to be his passion, even if living in Sacramento was boring to him.
Then came that fateful life detour in the early ‘90s.
“I was working at the state Capitol and I would go back to Berkeley on the weekends because I was bored out of my mind,” he said. “I was driving across the Tower Bridge when I realized I had forgotten something, so I got off on this off-ramp and couldn’t find my way back. I was trying to get back across the river and none of the roads connected. So I started snaking through all these neighborhoods that I didn’t know existed. They were from the same era as Land Park, really cool places.”
That was twist of fate No. 1, but there was an immediate problem in Cabaldon’s sudden desire to live in this place: “Nobody ever moved out, nobody ever left West Sacramento. Someone had to die.”
Twist of Fate No. 2: Someone did.
‘I loved every minute of it’
Cabaldon moved to West Sac in 1993. Then he first ran for city council the next year, won a seat on the council in 1996, and was in and out of the job as mayor for a few years because West Sac used to rotate the position. He rotated back into the job in 2002, became the first elected mayor in city history in 2004 and had been re-elected every two years – a total of seven times – until finally finishing 889 votes behind Martha Guerrero last month.
He conceded to Guerrero the week before Thanksgiving.
“I’ve loved every minute of it,” he said. “But I’m very much ready to move onto the second half of my life.”
One could easily see Cabaldon being tapped by the Joe Biden administration for an important job, or combining forces with his friend and recent presidential contender, Pete Buttigieg, or doing something else significant in politics, government, policy or education.
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But until then, Cabaldon has left his mark on West Sacramento. He proves that individuals matter, collaboration matters. In 2014, West Sac was named the “Most Livable City” for a city its size by the U.S. Council of Mayors. It has more places to eat now, places to shop, new neighorhoods connected to old ones. A transformed community.
Ledesma said Cabaldon was always the one working for West Sacramento day and night when everyone else was at home. One hopes now, that whatever he does, that he’ll be happy and fulfilled. He’s been like no one else in this region, an intellectual and political force of clarity and certainty.
Unfortunately, he leaves the scene during a pandemic when people can’t gather and salute him properly. He truly left his place better than he found it and those people are rare.
The irony is that the new community that wasn’t there before, the one Cabaldon helped create, was the one that voted him out of office. Cabaldon doesn’t regret that or anything else.
“I wish it had turned out differently, that I would have exited under different circumstances, but I would make exactly the same choices. When I got elected, the council was entirely white and everyone was from the same neighborhood. Now the council is entirely Latino. People don’t often get a chance to live life with such a clear sense of purpose and be immersed in a sense of purpose of a life well lived. I’m grateful.”
So are we, Mayor Cabaldon. So are we.
This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 11:16 AM with the headline "West Sac and Christopher Cabaldon were meant to be. They transformed each other."
