The Sacramento trailblazer voted out of office in the tumultuous year that is 2020
Despite claiming to be a progressive city, Sacramento didn’t elect its first openly gay City Council member until 2012.
That historic victory was secured by Steve Hansen, and it came four years after Sacramento County voters supported a statewide ballot measure to outlaw same-sex marriage. It came five years after a gay man named Satender Singh was beaten to death in broad daylight at Lake Natoma.
Those events made Hansen’s election and re-election in 2016 all the more significant and celebratory. But the feeling was different and poignant when Hansen was defeated while seeking a third term in March.
Hansen exited the council last week after eight productive and consequential years in which he was responsible for significant progress in the downtown and midtown neighborhoods he represented.
Hansen’s defeat was fraught with irony and recriminations in that voters in his district chose someone else despite his tangible wins for the arts community, small business community and for the development of previously blighted city properties. Hansen was also an important broker of compromises in politically delicate standoffs in a hyperpolitical town.
What happened? Just eight years ago Hansen became a public servant ascending from a previously unrepresented community in the city. Just as suddenly, he was defeated by another change agent.
Katie Valenzuela is a millennial and a renter, two constituencies not represented on Sacramento’s council.
This outcome realized just before the first wave of COVID-19 shutdowns proved to be an omen for incumbents. North Sacramento’s Councilman, Allen Warren, was defeated in November while seeking a third term. There were other casualties around the city and region, but the messages sent by voters could be conflicting.
One of Hansen’s significant citywide victories was finding a compromise for a rent control ordinance that many in the city didn’t want. Advocates like Valenzuela and Michelle Pariset were among leaders who felt the city’s ordinance didn’t go far enough. The result was a ballot initiative, Measure C, that would have established an independent rent control board, among other proposals.
Hansen, and the rest of the council, opposed the measure.
Despite the passionate support of people campaigning against Hansen, Measure C was routed at the polls. Valenzuela hired Pariset as her chief of staff after defeating Hansen, and Hansen’s rent control ordinance remains the only one the city has.
“Ironies abound,” Hansen, 41, said by phone this week as his staff closed down his office, city workers removed his photograph from the lobby of City Hall and as he pondered what’s next.
Making Sacramento better
“I really wanted to change the city for the better,” Hansen said. “I wanted Sacramento to shine beyond being the state capital. I wanted Sacramento to be a vibrant, urban and modern city.”
A big guy in stature, personality and intellect, Hansen was one of the most effective people elected to local office in the last decade.
He was a force behind the completion of the SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity, which is scheduled to open in late 2021 along the Sacramento River just north of downtown. Hansen was key to relocating the B Street Theater to The Sofia, the gleaming arts venue on Capitol Avenue.
Hansen was deeply involved in the renovation of the Community Center Theater and the Sacramento Convention Center. After years of trying, Hansen finally helped secure new construction for the blighted stretch in the 1000 block of J Street.
Hansen was also a champion for LGBTQ rights and businesses. He’s behind the rainbow crosswalks in Lavender Heights. He helped root out anti-gay ordinances in the city.
“It will take time to realize the impact of a guy who turned out to be amazing,” said Dennis Mangers, a former state legislator, influential adviser to city and state leaders and a senior statesman of Sacramento’s gay community.
“We have long had the aspiration to have an openly gay member on the council but neither the city nor (past candidates) were ready. We knew we had a winner (with Hansen). I was amazed at his level of intelligence at such a young age.” Hansen had just turned 33 when he was elected.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg credits Hansen for his work on the city rent control ordinance and the establishment of a housing trust fund in the city. He also helped Steinberg pass a sales tax increase — Measure U — that was larger than some wanted but funds many core city services.
“Steve picked up the mantle,” Steinberg said. “He helped me land the plane on Measure U. He did significant work in his district and citywide.”
Brokering compromises
Hansen also stepped in and helped forge a compromise when some members of the gay community objected to having uniformed city cops — some of whom were gay — march in the 2019 Pride Parade.
“This agreement reflects so much of what I love about our city, the embrace of dialogue and the building of bridges,” Hansen said at the time. Hansen governed as a centrist presence on the board. He endorsed Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert even though Schubert was a registered Republican at the time.
Some of Hansen’s colleagues, such as Steinberg, endorsed Schubert as well. But Hansen is the only one who paid a political price for it.
In late February, campaign door hangers funded by the Service Employees International Union Local 1021 employed a darkened image of Hansen on one side and Donald Trump on the other. Hansen’s endorsement of Schubert spawned the link to Trump, which was preposterous and the worst kind of politics. John Shaban, a leader of SEIU, told me that Hansen hadn’t done enough for rent control, despite the fact that Hansen did more than most elected officials in the region.
Although it would be a stretch to suggest the last-minute door hangers sank Hansen, they didn’t help. When Steinberg joined Hansen to decry the campaign tactics of SEIU, it was a sign that Hansen was in trouble, as all incumbents were this year. Like all elected officials who do the hard work of governing, one can grow a list of detractors simply by saying “no” enough times.
Hansen, who is quite open about living in poverty as a child and fleeing to a battered women’s shelter with his mother, was criticized for being abrasive and imperious.
“He’s complicated,” said Mangers, a mentor to Hansen. “But he always gave me the room to tell him something he needed to hear.”
Was it Land Park residents frustrated with homelessness? Was it downtown renters agreeing with Valenzuela that Hansen should have done more? Was it South Land Park residents who wanted a bike trail and haven’t gotten it? It was all of the above and the fact that Valenzuela was a legitimate challenger who worked hard and was supported by a small army of friends.
It’s politics, but it’s also personal. There are people who have been voted off the City Council this year and in recent years and, quite frankly, the reaction was: good riddance. Hansen is not in the category.
He worked hard, he did important things, he cared, he mattered.
“I have a deep and abiding love for Sacramento and its people,” Hansen said. “That doesn’t change even if the relationship does.”
Hansen has left open the possibility of running for mayor in 2024, but that’s a ways off. He’s not sending his resume to Washington, D.C., as some friends are, however. He’s staying put.
“Maybe I just pushed people really hard to do too much but I try to see the silver lining in things,” he said. “We did a lot.
This story was originally published December 21, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
