‘Hidden caste system.’ Why so few Black women are elected in the Sacramento region

Two years after she was elected to the Citrus Heights City Council, Porsche Middleton watched anxiously as two other Black women ran for public office in neighboring cities. Their losses last year in Elk Grove and West Sacramento showed Middleton once again “what we as Black women already know.”

“In America, there is this hidden caste system,” Middleton said, “and Black women are usually at the bottom of that.”

Last year was a good one for women in local politics. Katie Valenzuela was elected as a progressive outsider on the Sacramento City Council, and Bobbie Singh-Allen unseated the incumbent mayor in Elk Grove.

But across the four-county Sacramento region, Black women fared worse in recent elections than their counterparts. Their numbers are stronger on school boards and other special districts, but the racial gap is most obvious among city and county elected officials.

Only one Black woman currently serves on a city council in the region — Middleton.

After primary and general elections, at least nine women joined city councils and boards of supervisors in the Sacramento region. At least six of those municipalities now count women in the majority. And those gains were notably diverse, too.

The divide is clear in the outcomes of the 2020 races. Sacramento, West Sacramento and Woodland elected Latinas. Rancho Cordova, Sacramento and Elk Grove also elected Asian American women.

But the two Black women candidates seeking city council seats in West Sacramento and Elk Grove fell short. Both women ranked third in a crowded field of five contenders and were out-raised by the winning candidates by $28,000 or more.

What is happening? The required fundraising for a city council race, which in some cases is creeping close to the six-figures, is one of the major hurdles. Candidates and experts also acknowledge that race and gender are factors that lead some to question a Black woman’s so-called “viability” in ways that most other candidates may never face.

“We know that historically fewer women have been elected to office and fewer people of color,” said Kim Nalder, a political science professor who teaches a class on gender politics at Sacramento State. “So if you’re a Black woman, you have the combination of those two factors making it more difficult.”

Would-be donors use fundraising to gauge a candidate’s likelihood of success. But without early financial support winning is impossible, candidates say, especially for those running against well-connected or self-financed competitors.

“We need that diversity out there, we need that voice of Black women because our issues are particularly our own,” said Middleton.

“We have the highest infant mortality rate, we struggle to get access to health care and we face our own issues with our children and the relationship they have with the police. Those are things other people can speak about and champion but unless you live it you don’t understand it.”

Even so, women’s groups said the number of women candidates who chose to run last year was higher than normal, a sign that the gender balance in local government may continue to shift. Attracting more women into local races is important since it feeds into a pipeline for higher office, they say.

After being dormant for nearly six years, the National Women’s Political Caucus of Sacramento revived its chapter because there was so much more interest. The group, which only endorses women, works to increase the number of them serving in all levels of government.

Lauren Hammond, a former Sacramento City councilwoman who is now the chapter’s president, said she remembers there being maybe 10 candidates seeking an endorsement from the group when she last ran for office in 2009. Before the November 2020 races, by comparison, the group interviewed 27 candidates.

“There weren’t enough women involved to keep the caucus active (before),” said Hammond, a political and policy consultant. “There was a big increase. We had to add people to our endorsement committee.”

The group endorsed 21 women and 11 of them were successful. But even among this small cohort of candidates, some groups had better outcomes than others. Three out of the four white women endorsed were elected; three out of the five Asian Americans; half of the six Black women were successful; and only two out of the six Latinas made it into office.

“If you have no idea how to run for office, it’s increasingly difficult. Nowadays, council seats can cost $50,000 to $100,000 — $150,000. That’s ridiculous. And that’s a lot of money to raise,” said Hammond who still hears from candidates seeking advice.

“I always stress raising money. And they’re always concerned with name recognition, and I explain to them that it (recognition) comes with the money.”

One is never enough

Although absent in some corners of political leadership, Black women are well represented as a voter group. Black women are credited with lifting Joe Biden’s waning presidential primary campaign and titling Georgia’s U.S. Senate races in favor of Democrats, winning them control of both chambers of Congress.

“If you look at American politics for the last few decades, the best voter participation group that we have is Black women,” said Nalder. “They’re the most likely to vote of any sub-group that you can name.”

This is also true in California. A survey prior to the last election found that 61% of Black women in California were more likely to vote, the highest share of any group regardless of age, income or political affiliation, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Whether that collective value translates into individual support in a political race is another matter. No Black woman has ever been elected governor of a state. Only 15 have served in statewide executive leadership positions.

In 2019, four Black women served in the state’s 120-member legislature — about 3% of all lawmakers. They accounted for about 10 percent of the 37 women who served in the state Assembly and Senate that year, a survey by the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University shows.

And until recently, Vice President Kamala Harris was the only Black woman serving in the U.S. Senate.

“With the ascension of Kamala Harris to the vice presidency we lost the only Black woman in the U.S. Senate,” said Glynda Carr, CEO of the Higher Heights Leadership Fund, which works to raise the political profile of Black women. “It is a stark example of not being complacent about ensuring there’s not just one Black woman sitting at a decision-making table.”

That could change after Gov. Gavin Gavin Newson said that he will appoint another Black woman to replace longtime U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein if she retires. Then their representation as a group will be back to one even though they represent nearly 8% of the population.

“The work moving forward for organizations like Higher Heights, partners and party infrastructure is that it cannot just be one,” Carr said. “We’re trying to break that.”

In 2016, Middleton eyed an open seat on the Citrus Heights City Council and decided to run, even though she got in late. Middleton lost but learned a lot. In 2018, she ran again with a “full-blown” plan and strategy. Her path to victory wasn’t a straight line.

During the second election, city officials protested Middleton’s request to use her title as a planning commissioner on the ballot, denying her the added gravitas of government experience that voters often look for on the ballot. Middleton had indeed served on the Citrus Heights Planning Commission, but the city argued that it wasn’t acceptable, she said.

“Because we (women) have so many strikes against us already, every advantage that we can get counts, and that was something I knew I couldn’t let go,” Middleton said. “Being a planning commissioner is important. Titles are important.”

With about $15,000 in her campaign account, Middleton sued the city over the ballot designation and won because she discovered a candidate in a prior election was allowed to use the same title. She was elected to one of three seats on the City Council after taking 20% of the vote in November 2018.

In an interview, Middleton did not say whether it was a blatant attempt to obstruct her candidacy, but she didn’t dismiss the idea either.

“The second lesson I learned is when you fight for something and you win, the next thing you have to do is build relationships with them,” Middleton said. “You don’t want someone blocking you way down the road because you didn’t try to mend things over.”

‘Electability’ barrier

Women have repeatedly faced questions of “electability” when they run.

Former California Attorney General Kamala Harris faced it while running for President. So did San Francisco Mayor London Breed. That line of inquiry can become a double-edged sword for first-time candidates trying to establish themselves and it is often only asked of women, candidates and advocates say.

“There is a stereotypical view that Black women are not qualified to be generalists,” said Nadia E. Brown, a professor at Purdue University who studies Black women in politics. “They can’t speak about everything from tax reform to foreign policy to education or health care policy.”

Brown said voters often use heuristics to make decisions in low information races like the city council. They may not have time to read about each candidate so they rely on shortcuts: Is the candidate Democrat or Republican? Are they a man or woman? Black or white?

“Those things often are rooted in people’s stereotypes,” Brown said.

Research also shows that people give less money to women candidates. Carr of Higher Heights said oftentimes women of color are overlooked by political parties that may be leery of choosing sides between members.

“The narrative around being electable is labeled to women and women of color in particular,” Carr said. “It is a code word that slows down the ability of women candidates to raise money because if someone shapes the narrative that someone is not electable you don’t necessarily want to move money and support.”

For that reason and others, Black women often run outsider campaigns without the backing of the powers that be. That’s how Hammond won her seat on the Sacramento City Council in 1997 after years of community activism, working in the state legislature and serving on the Sacramento County Planning Commission.

“Most people didn’t give me a shot but the people that knew me,” Hammond said, “many of them volunteered and have never done any other campaign because that’s not what they do.”

Then-Mayor Joe Serna Jr. and the District 5 incumbent Debra Ortiz backed her opponent. Sam Pannell, the only African American on the City Council, eventually endorsed Hammond along with police and fire unions.

“It took him a while to come around but when he finally did support me, the money started coming in,” Hammond said. “It wasn’t like I raised a ton of money. I had enough to run. I had to borrow some.”

Hammond said she won by 208 votes and became the first elected Black woman to the city council. Bonnie Pannell joined the city council shortly thereafter to succeed her late husband Sam. Hammond left to run for the state Assembly in June 2010 and lost in the primary to Roger Dickinson.

Bonnie Pannell, who died in 2017, left her seat representing District 8 in 2014 and no other Black woman has been elected to the City Council since.

‘Not a part of the machine’

Many cities in the region are even farther behind without ever electing a Black woman on a City Council. And it’s not always because they don’t run.

After Sacramento, Elk Grove is one of the most diverse cities in the region. It wasn’t always that way, with a history that dates back to the mid-1800s when it was a farming community. Today it’s one of the area’s largest suburbs, attracting transplants from the Bay Area and other parts of the state. But Elk Grove only became a city in 2000.

“We had only had one woman who had ever been on the city council — ever,” said Tracie Stafford, who ran to become the city’s mayor in 2016 and 2018. “What I set out to do is change the narrative because so often people have to see it to believe it. There’s never been a Black woman elected to any position in the city of Elk Grove.”

Today, two women preside over City Council meetings: Stephanie Nguyen, who is Vietnamese American and was first appointed, and Mayor Singh-Allen, an Indian American and Sikh who is the first directly elected woman to hold the position.

One Black man, Assemblyman Jim Cooper, has sat on the city council.

The main currency in local politics is mutual support. Political leaders endorse and contribute to each other’s campaigns or pool resources and run on the same slate. And a number of women serving in public service in the city were first appointed. Black women candidates say they often have to upset this system to make it into office.

“If you are not a part of the machine then you have to be independently wealthy or have an army (of volunteers),” said Stafford, who chairs the Democratic Party of Sacramento County.

‘Challenging out the gate’

Maureen Craft, who has run twice for a seat on the Elk Grove City Council, would know. She’s been thinking about running for elected office since she was in middle school when Feinstein, then the San Francisco mayor, ame to visit her 7th-grade class to meet with the student body president and vice president.

“I was like: ‘I’m going to be in politics,’ ” said Craft, who would successfully run to become Pelton Junior High School’s vice president so she could also meet the mayor. “I just didn’t realize how I was going to get there.”

Craft stayed in Fresno after college where she says she was being groomed to run for elected office while working at the local chamber of commerce. She moved north to be closer to her mother who was a few years out from retirement and Craft knew she would be her primary caregiver and has lived in Elk Grove for about 12 years.

Making it into elected office as a Black woman seemed tangible more than a decade ago. Two Black women — Hammond and Pannell — were serving at the same time on the Sacramento City Council.

Craft decided to run for the first time in 2016. Although the city had district lines, Elk Grove council members were elected by the whole city at the time. That put challengers like Craft at a disadvantage, requiring them to compete for votes throughout the city’s 42 square miles. The incumbent already has name recognition and a donor base.

Craft said running a competitive race takes between $80,000 to $100,000. To send a single mail piece to the whole city can probably cost upwards of $20,000 as opposed to $7,000 for a district, she said.

Still, as a newcomer Craft got all the right endorsements but a late start might have hurt her chances, she said.

Craft ran for the same seat last November and came up short again in a three-way race with Kevin Spease, a city planning commissioner who previously ran for mayor. She also lagged behind first-time candidate Amandeep Singh.

Even though Craft launched her campaign at the beginning of the election year — which is early by some standards — her competitors raised more money. Spease raked in nearly $118,000 (which included a $30,000 loan) and Singh raised nearly $68,000 (a sum boosted by a $23,700 loan), dwarfing Craft’s $47,000 in campaign cash, records show.

“It’s challenging out the gate because there’s the viability question and people have to believe in you. And if they’re not dialed into believing in you then you don’t have a chance,” Craft said. “It doesn’t mean you’re not smart enough. It doesn’t mean you’re not educated enough.”

More firsts to come

A researcher by training, Dawnté Early admits that fundraising is not one of her strengths but it didn’t stop her from running for a seat on the West Sacramento City Council last year.

“It wasn’t something that was necessarily planned but it felt like the right thing to do,” Early said, adding that she was encouraged by a number of people to consider it. Other than serving on the city’s aging commission, Early didn’t have a “political network or connections in the right organizations,” she said.

She found allies on a slate with longtime West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon and other candidates.

The costs were made clear almost immediately. She had to pay $1,200 for the candidate statement in English and Spanish. Early said it could cost as much as $40,000 to run for a seat in the city that’s about a quarter the size of Sacramento and a population of about 53,000 people, according to the U.S. Census.

“I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to raise enough to tell people what I stand for because that’s really why you’re raising money,” Early said. “I don’t think I fully understood the cost, the commitment and also just how deep your network has to be and your connections have to be in order to really be in the game.”

Early came within striking distance of a seat — and history — but lost by 89 votes. She would have been the first Black person to serve on West Sacramento’s City Council since the city was incorporated in 1987.

There was talk of appointing Early to the City Council to fill a vacancy created after Mayor Martha Guerrero unseated Cabaldon. But the local lawmakers couldn’t agree so they chose to send Early to a special election in August which could cost the city as much as $250,000.

“By the time that election happens, there will be about one year left on that seat,” said Early, who plans to run again, “so whoever does win has to run in a year.”

This story was originally published March 26, 2021 at 4:44 AM.