Well-known pastor, school board member face off in competitive Sacramento City Council race
On a recent Saturday, Mai Vang’s Meadowview home was filled to the brim.
In the kitchen, two women stuffed rice into plastic baggies and prepared food for a barbecue. The living room and bedrooms were full of people – including high school students – calling voters. A calendar packed with activities and signs that said “Heart and Hustle” in big bold letters lined the walls.
Vang, after rushing home from making an appearance at an event, sat in one of the rooms of her house, decorated with purple walls and framed photos.
“Ground game is everything,” said Vang, 34. “As a community organizer, I know that’s how you win.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the district, Pastor Les Simmons, his wife, father and other supporters were gathered in his campaign headquarters in a Parkway strip mall taking a quick break before going back out to knock on more doors. Five hundred newly-delivered light blue yard signs and posters with the slogan“#LesIsMore” lined the walls.
As soon as Simmons started knocking on Meadowview doors, using a phone app to guide him to likely voters’ houses, one woman driving by in a car rolled down the window to say hello. She had never met him, but her son had been going to the youth program he runs at the former Cal Skate facility. The woman said Simmons definitely had her vote. It was not an unusual occurrence.
“If they don’t know who I am already, the simple fact that a person that’s running for office went to their door resonates hugely,” said Simmons, 41.
Vang and Simmons are seeking to capture a City Council District 8 seat being vacated by Councilman Larry Carr, who is not running for re-election after serving since 2014.
The race has emerged as the most competitive campaign in the city this election cycle, placing two well-known community voices against one another. Three other candidates are running for the seat, but none are considered serious contenders to either Vang or Simmons, both of whom have secured key endorsements from local elected leaders and organizations.
Who is Les Simmons?
Simmons is a senior pastor at South Sacramento Christian Center and a longtime community activist in south Sacramento. He served on a city committee that was asked to recommend how the city should spend revenue from the original Measure U sales tax increase, and was also on the city’s police commission in 2015.
Simmons has been demonstrating in the city for more than 30 years, including after police shootings of unarmed black men Joseph Mann and Stephon Clark. He has emerged as what he calls a “bridge builder,” working with both community members and police – a trait he says resonates with voters.
Councilmen Steve Hansen, Jay Schenirer and Rick Jennings have endorsed him. He is also endorsed by Elk Grove Unified School District Superintendent Chris Hoffman; Barry Broome of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council; Jackie Rose of the Rose Family Creative Empowerment Center; Cassandra Jennings of the Greater Sacramento Urban League; the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and the Sacramento City Teachers Association.
His campaign has raised about $94,000, according to city campaign finance records.
Who is Mai Vang?
Vang is a Sacramento City Unified School Board member and former staffer for Carr. If elected, she would be the first Hmong woman elected to the City Council.
She would also be the second woman to sit on the current council and the only Millennial. Vang teaches at Sacramento State and UC Davis and is the director of a scholarship program. On the school board, she has fought for resources for schools in the Meadowview area, where she grew up in a poor immigrant family, the oldest of 16 siblings.
Council members Carr, Angelique Ashby, Jeff Harris and Allen Warren have endorsed her. She is also endorsed by the city firefighters’ union; State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon; State Assemblyman David Chiu, D-Los Angeles; State Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento; State Controller Betty Yee; State Treasurer Fiona Ma; and Elk Grove Mayor Steve Ly.
Her campaign has raised $122,000, according to city records.
What would they do if elected?
Both Simmons and Vang talk about how they want to ensure District 8 gets its fair share of city resources. But how would their approaches differ?
Simmons wants to push the city to dedicate more resources for what he calls “safe spaces” for youth in underserved neighborhoods. He also thinks the city should give more money to grassroots organizations that do that kind of work.
Simmons and his family purchased and renovated the old Cal Skate facility partly with their winnings from the Family Feud game show. At the facility, teens receive job training, mentorship and can play basketball on the former Kings basketball court and skate on the restored rink.
“I feel like that there are jewels like that within our community,” Simmons said. “There’s vacant land within our community. There’s opportunity within our community. If you see it, if you dream it up, there’s a way to facilitate it and allow it to come to pass.”
Both Vang and Simmons support Measure G, which would require the city to aside 2.5 percent of the general fund budget, about an additional $12 million a year, for youth. They also both said they want to consider an alternate proposal recently pitched by Mayor Darrell Steinberg that would require the city set aside 20 percent of its year over year revenue growth on youth.
Simmons said he wants to bring new businesses to south Sacramento and create more jobs. His first job was at Albertsons grocery store on Mack Road, which is now closed. So is the Raley’s, and two nearby Food Source stores are about to close, Simmons said.
“I think you need folks in office that know how to broker deals that are able to help ensure that when something leaves, something equal replaces it,” Simmons said.
Simmons also wants to bring more healthy food to the district, which has many low- and middle-income residents. He helped start a seasonal farmers’ market on Mack Road and wants to find more uses for vacant property that uplift the community, he said.
Also focused on fresh food access, Vang said she wants the district to become “the heart of the Farm to Fork movement” and educate residents to do their own farming, which is allowed under the urban farm ordinance she worked on as Carr’s staffer.
“We have so much talent and skills of Hmong farmers, of black farmers, of folks who are just so passionate about food,” Vang said. “I think what it takes is someone to be able to uplift that, to showcase that.”
While on the school board, she learned of several initiatives that needed a City Hall advocate, such as a proposal that would allow the city and school district to share facilities for sports and after-school programs. Discussions have happened, but there’s been no movement, Vang said.
“You need a champion at City Hall to say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get moving on this,’” Vang said. “And so I would love to, you know, be the one to push.”
On homeless shelters
While Simmons went door to door, nearly everyone who answered mentioned homelessness as their top priority. It’s at the top of his list, too, to told them. One couple said they rarely used to see homeless in the district, but recently had to ask a homeless woman who had been camping next to their house to leave.
In August, before either candidate had officially announced they were running, Vang and Simmons sat in a packed church auditorium listening closely as Steinberg and Carr engaged in a heated debate.
At the time, the mayor was proposing the city open a homeless shelter for adult men and women on a piece of city-owned property next to the Pannell Community Center on Meadowview Road. Carr was vehemently opposed. Two days before the vote, the mayor said the shelter would be for women and children only, and the council approved it in a 6-3 vote. Now, when it opens in late spring the plan is for the shelter to serve only adult women.
Both Vang and Simmons say they support the shelter today, but both are critical of how it came to be.
“There should’ve been opportunities for community involvement to carry out the conversation of possible sites, but I ultimately believe a shelter has to happen somewhere,” Simmons said. He offered the parking lot of his church for a shelter, but it was too small.
Vang agreed the community should have been more involved in the process, and disagreed with the frequent changes to the plan.
“When it gets changed, that’s how you break trust,” Vang said. “I think moving forward, we have to be really clear on what the proposal will be and the implementation process with the community.”
In addition to the Meadowview shelter, both candidates say the city needs more shelters and affordable housing.
If neither candidate gets at least 50 percent of the vote in the March 3 primary, the winner will not be decided until November. Ronald Bell, a retired pastor; Daphne Harris, a real estate broker; and Santiago Morales, a government program analyst, are also running for the seat.
