Is this the changing of the guard? Why young forces mistrust Steinberg and strong mayor
One of the most interesting stories to emerge in the tumult of recent Sacramento history is how Mayor Darrell Steinberg lost the millennials.
Some of the most politically active members of this ascending group were once Steinberg supporters, and many still like him as a person and appreciate some of his work. But since Stephon Clark was killed by city police in 2018, Steinberg’s support among a younger, more liberal demographic has eroded to where we are now.
Young people are fighting him hard as he seeks to enhance his powers as mayor through Measure A, the Sacramento Mayoral Accountability and Community Equity Act of 2020. City voters will make that call on election day.
Meanwhile, progressive Democrats are fighting Steinberg – and the entire City Council – by supporting Measure C, a stricter version of rent control than Steinberg or his council colleagues wanted. That battle is still locked in court and Measure C still could be invalidated by a judge, but younger and more progressive Dems broke off just the same.
The Sacramento County Democratic Central Committee contributed $20,000 to support Measure C.
That’s an eye-popping amount of money. It’s also an aggressive rebuke of elected city politicians in Sacramento who are also Democrats.
In their sights is Steinberg. After being the leader of the California Senate, where he had a significant infrastructure around him, Steinberg has been subjected to a level of scorn that he had not experienced before.
His inability to assuage his younger critics who want him to take a harder line on city police – or to be accused of being impatient or condescending – has manifested itself in hundreds of people protesting in front of his home in early June. On Wednesday, students at the UC Davis Law School – Steinberg’s alma mater – objected to him appearing at racial justice speaker series.
“Mayor Steinberg’s record on police brutality is appalling,” the students wrote. “(He) has a track record of condoning and supporting police violence against Black men.”
Objectively speaking, Steinberg has neither condoned nor supported any such thing. His comments and proposals for dealing with police are measured, which falls far short of the mark to younger, more progressive people.
This UC Davis Law School letter was signed by 209 current and former students and other anti-racism groups.
‘Shift of a political movement’
At City Hall, a sense of denial about the opposition directed at Steinberg persists. The feeling seems to be that the most critical views about the mayor are shared only by a vocal minority in Sacramento.
We’re going to find out at the ballot box if Steinberg and his long-time supporters are right or if the millennials are right.
“You can really feel the shift of a political movement,” said Katie Valenzuela, a political activist who was elected to the City Council this year and will be sworn in this December. “I’m excited to see where it goes. It feels like the start of something big..”
Are we at a turning point in Sacramento?
Is the opposition of Steinberg, particularly among younger advocates, the beginning of something? A move to the left in a city that likes to view itself as progressive but, at least in policy areas, is quite moderate?
Does the opposition to Steinberg signify the end of something? A changing of the guard? Will younger, more progressive elected officials begin to replace the generation of the 61-year-old Steinberg, who has been an elected official on the local scene for nearly 30 years?
The deaths of Clark, Floyd and others at the hands of law enforcement, and the inequality exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, have created a sense in Sacramento that elected officials – led by Steinberg – are ignoring the calls of a younger generation calling for fundamental change in how police services and struggling communities are funded.
After Floyd, Steinberg resisted calls to “defund” the city police department. Younger advocates wanted more community input in decisions. They wanted Steinberg to take millions out of the police budget and move to investment in communities.
They questioned whether more police made people more safe.
Claiming that a majority of Sacramentans disagreed, Steinberg made sure the police budget was kept whole, raises included. Changes were procedural: an extra city employee to monitor police investigations, shifting some 911 calls away from police and to mental health specialists.
It wasn’t nothing, but it wasn’t “defunding” either. His claims that he is doing something revolutionary fell on deaf, young ears.
Trying to bridge the gap
Steinberg actually did what he’s always done in his career. He tried to close a gap between two distinct constituencies – the cops and their supporters on one side, a younger community viewing cops as oppressors on the other.
He tried to be on both sides and ended up on neither. He admits the cops are leery of him, but so are the advocates. The thing is: His method was fully supported by the entire City Council.
Steinberg is trying to bridge the gap of generations while standing on the shaky terrain known as the year 2020.
He called in the National Guard in May after destruction of property after Floyd demonstrations . The business community still didn’t think he did enough but the advocates were furious that the guard was called at all. In late summer, Steinberg didn’t call in the National Guard, got trolled by Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones for it, but the advocates are still upset he called the guard the first time.
The irony is that Steinberg is now pushing for enhanced powers because the police chief doesn’t report to him under an arcane city charter that gives that power, and the crafting of the city budget, to an un-elected city manager.
So the more advocates pushed him to make bold moves, the more Steinberg did what he does. For him, the answer is always crafting the system to meet the problem. Also he believes elected officials always should call the shots. That’s why they are elected.
He does not want to give real authority to the advocates, which is what they want.
They don’t want too much power concentrated in the hands of one person. Advocates have told him they don’t want to give that power to one white man. Some have formed The People’s Budget, Sacramento, which calls for a redistribution of the city and county budgets. They want more citizen input into policing the police.
What distinguishes a stricter version of rent control in Measure C is it would empower a community rent board like ones in San Francisco in Berkeley. As reported by Theresa Clift of The Sacramento Bee, the citizen board – and not the elected council – would “be able to set allowable annual rent adjustment.”
The people, led by young people, want more authority. Steinberg wants more authority.
Obviously older people are within the ranks of those opposing Steinberg. But it has been the millennials, whose key representatives have been young women of color, who have been Steinberg’s most impassioned critics. Joining Valenzuela are rent control advocate Michelle Pariset, City Council candidate Mai Vang, and justice advocate Kula Koenig.
“I voted for Steinberg in 2016 but not in 2020,” Flojaune Cofer said.
Cofer is an epidemiologist who chairs the Measure U Committee, a group of citizens organized to advise the city on how to distribute sales tax money to the community at large. She began to change her view on Steinberg when, right after Clark was killed, Steinberg said it “was not his place” to criticize police.
“That’s literally your job,” Cofer said. “From that point forward, what it feels like to me, is that he doesn’t really engage with people who are upset. He wants people to like him.”
Cofer has made excellent points on how civilian city leaders should question the police more. They should challenge bloated police budgets that exceed overtime projections. And yet the entire council is either reverential or deferential in ways that, frankly, are kind of weird.
The young people are not wrong for finding fault with how their city tiptoes around its police department and they have their reasons for being blunt about it.
“Before we hit 40, my generation has experienced two economic crashes, 9/11 and a pandemic,” Cofer said. “More of us are disillusioned with an American dream that never was.”
So they are all in with challenging a police department they see as dangerous to their health and they don’t have time for politicians who don’t hear what they say on that subject. They are all in on rent control in a city where rents have skyrocketed by more than 40 percent.
The voters will decide who they think is right and what they decide will say a lot about the future of the city. In the meantime, Steinberg’s young opponents don’t want to be mollified and they don’t have any problem with calling out the authority they see standing in their way.
