This progressive challenger for city council could help shift Sacramento’s future | Opinion
Two-term Sacramento City Council member Eric Guerra has a challenger for his district seat in the next election: a local law librarian who says she’s tired of their district being ignored.
Amreet Sandhu has risen as a challenger for the council seat. She has no prior experience running for political office, though that’s hardly a deficit since Guerra himself had no prior experience when he ran in a special election in 2015 to fill then-recently elected Assemblyman Kevin McCarty’s vacated seat on the city council. Guerra handily won reelection the next year.
Here though, I should divulge that I’ve known Sandhu for a number of years, and I can actually pinpoint the day we met: April 21, 2016. We met at a community dance party Sandhu had organized (rather speedily) on the same day music legend Prince died.
She’d just returned to the area after graduating law school and working in the mayor’s office in Portland. I had also recently returned home to Sacramento, and we bonded over our shared history growing up in the region while we vibed to “Raspberry Beret” under the porch lights of Low Brau — a scene that’s as Sacramentan as a still from “Lady Bird.”
Since then, we’ve stayed in touch through social media, and I’ve followed her remotely through her years of local activism in protecting tenant rights, including her work with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, which advocates for eviction protections and rent control.
Sandhu now lives in the Elmhurst neighborhood, just three miles from the public housing community on Seavey Circle in Land Park, where her grandparents settled after immigrating from the Punjab region of India in 1972. Sandhu helped mobilize groups to oppose the West Broadway Specific Plan that would have threatened the historic housing complex at Alder Grove with demolition by the city during the pandemic.
She told The Bee that, if elected, she wants to open shelters and Safe Ground-sanctioned camping sites in District 6 “even if the city has to pay to lease one of its many vacant buildings from private owners.” She’s also pledged not to take any campaign donations from fossil fuel industries or law enforcement groups.
Sandhu told me she’s running because she, like others in the district, feels like she can do a better job than their current representative. She suggested that Guerra has paid more attention lately to his ambitions for higher office than the community he’s supposed to be representing on the council.
In 2022, Guerra made a play for the State Senate seat his colleague, Angelique Ashby, now holds. He switched tracks to instead vie for California’s newly-redrawn 10th Assembly District, which now encompasses South Sacramento and Elk Grove. He ultimately lost that race in the general election to Elk Grove Councilwoman Stephanie Nguyen by about 9,000 votes.
A possible shift on council
Sandhu sees herself as a more progressive candidate than Guerra, who typically sides with moderate Democrats like Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Council members Lisa Kaplan and Karina Talamantes. In recent years, the city council has seen the addition of more progressive council members, including District 4’s Katie Valenzuela, Mayor Pro Tem Mai Vang of District 7 and District 5’s Caity Maple, whose district neighbors Guerra’s.
Sandhu is one of several progressive candidates who have recently announced their run for political office as part of the 2024 election. On the state level, Evan Minton is running for McCarty’s now-open assembly seat, and Dr. Flojaune Cofer is running for Steinberg’s soon-to-be-open mayoral seat as a progressive.
If Cofer and Sandhu make it to the city council and Valenzuela retains her seat, the combined power of those five women could see Sacramento swing away from the moderate Democrat — and mostly male — voices that have dominated city politics for decades. That shift would coincide with the growing political voice of a younger electorate that veers left: According to the Pew Research Center, Gen Z and Millennials hold consistently more liberal views than even that of the next oldest generation, Gen X.
Gen Z, those born after 1996 to approximately 2010, is mostly in its majority this year (most of them are now at least 18, and by 2026, Millennials and Gen Z will constitute the majority of the electorate). It stands to reason that the capitol city in our progressively liberal state would begin to elect officials who represent that ideology.
Whether or not she wins the District 6 seat, Sandhu is part of a cohort that signifies a new wind in Sacramento blowing from the left. If progressives become the majority of the city council, maybe the city could move past its penchant for punitive measures against the homeless and begin to implement the kind of wraparound services we have seen work in other cities. Maybe the council will finally break away from the stubbornly persistent influence of former council members and moderate Democrats in the pocket of business and developer interests, including State Senator Angelique Ashby and former City Council members Steve Hansen and Jay Schenirer.
Sacramento could look like a very different — and much more equitable — place with a few more forward-thinking, women of color on city council. Let’s dare to imagine.
This story was originally published August 31, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
