The heartbeat of Kevin McCarty’s mayoral run in Sacramento is the woman who raised him | Opinion
Editors note: This is the third of four profiles of the main candidates running for mayor of Sacramento that will be published ahead of a mayoral forum The Bee Editorial board will co-host with KVIE on January 31. There, the hopefuls will be questioned about their qualifications and the issues important to voters. In this profile and the others, the goal is to give readers a stronger sense of who the candidates are as people. These profiles are not endorsements but personal stories detailing the work the candidates have done in Sacramento and what drove them to run for mayor. Ultimately, our board will endorse one candidate on February 5, the day ballots are mailed to voters.
Of the four major candidates running for mayor of Sacramento, Kevin McCarty is the only one who grew up in Sacramento. Born in Washington D.C., McCarty moved to Sacramento as a toddler with his mother and siblings after his parents split. His father, Elliott McCarty, is Black and his mother Barbara was white.
As a youngster, McCarty grew up in various apartments as his mother worked hard to make a living and to empower herself after two failed marriages, the second being with McCarty’s father.
“She was just an absolute hustler,” McCarty says today. When he speaks of his mother, Kevin McCarty changes outwardly. He’ll turn his face away sometimes, with his eyes glistening, when he normally looks colleagues or constituents in the eye while speaking confidently and directly. Thinking of his mom causes him to stop and collect himself. There is a lot there.
Her name was Barbara Joan Judd from Lincoln, England, which is about 160 miles north of London. As a young woman, Barbara married an American who worked in the aircraft industry and he moved them to Sacramento, back when Sacramento was an Air Force town. She had two kids with her first husband, then left Sacramento and had two kids with McCarty’s father. With her children, she moved from Washington D.C. back to Sacramento in 1974.
From the time McCarty was 5 until he was 14, Barbara McCarty was working hard to improve the lives of her four children, which caused her to be away a lot while Kevin and his siblings took care of each other. Barbara worked as a bank teller and took classes at American River College all while making ends meet with Medi-Cal and food stamps.
With the primary adult in his life working day and night, McCarty lived in after-school programs.
“I played flag football, tackle football. Basketball. It kept us engaged and on the right track,” McCarty said.
“I’m very grateful for the public programs offered to my family. These programs offered my mom child care. They helped her get a scholarship to Sacramento State and eventually go to Lincoln Law School.” His mom graduated from Sacramento State. She met former Sacramento Mayor Phil Isenberg, who encouraged her to go to law school, which she did for four years – at night.
During some of this time, McCarty lived with his dad in Oakland. His mom passed the bar in 1984 and became a success story, a partner in her own workers’ compensation law firm.
But Kevin McCarty struggled as a teenager to find himself. He was messing up in high school and did not graduate with his class. He had to finish up in adult school, at night, with people much older than him.
“That was a shocker, kind of a slap in the face,” McCarty said. “I hit rock bottom by flunking out of high school my last semester, but it taught me a lesson about bouncing back. I thought about my mom’s journey with four kids and no education. Just all grit and hustle. I thought, ‘You know what? This is ridiculous that I’m messing around like this. People in my own family worked so hard and they were able to surmount larger problems than I had.”
Since that moment, when McCarty was 18, no one has ever outworked him. It wasn’t long before McCarty’s newly found work ethic intersected with his life in politics. As always, his mom played a big role. Barbara volunteered for the Democratic party for many years. She donated money to help women escape violent environments. She would eventually be a coordinator for Democratic legislative candidates.
This meant that she got invited to many rubber chicken dinners for candidates. For one, McCarty doesn’t recall which one, she encouraged him to go in her place. He did. He met people and related to them, which he found came easily to him. He had, after all, forged friendships with all types of kids in after-school programs while his mom was working. He connected those experiences with the role that governments can play in helping working people like his own family. He took to politics as he had youth baseball, only he was better at it.
“I was a mediocre baseball player at best,” McCarty said. He was not a mediocre politician. McCarty was elected to the Sacramento City Council in 2004, at the age of 32. He was the youngest member by far and looked like a kid at the adult table at first. He got elected because no one could outwork him. He got re-elected twice for the same reason. McCarty was then elected to the Assembly in 2014 and he developed into a thoughtful, influential legislator. He’s still slim and youthful at 52, though his rough edges have smoothed, and his delivery is more polished.
He could be brash as a council member. It took time before the hard lessons of his youth were tempered with hard lessons learned in politics.
“Sometimes I grew up in absolute chaos,” McCarty said. “I can’t believe we made it sometimes. Sometimes, when I talk to my wife, I say, ‘Man, I should be a statistic. It’s all given me resilience and perseverance. And later on, when I failed, I dusted myself and got back at it.”
McCarty married Leticia Garcia, a former Sacramento City Unified School Board member. He’s forged relationships with people throughout the Sacramento political spectrum.
In 2008, on Mother’s Day, McCarty called Barbara to give her joyous news. He and Leticia were expecting twin girls. By this time, Barbara had retired and moved to Maui. She had become a success, a self-made woman who raised a political success story in Sacramento and three other really good kids.
“When I called my mom, I said, ‘Happy Mother’s Day, mom. Your Mother’s Day gift is two girls (his now 15-year-old twin daughters).’”
It was a beautiful moment, their last together as mother and son. Just days later, Barbara died of heart failure at 66. Her irrepressible heart now seems to beat within her son, on the campaign trail for mayor of Sacramento.
An earlier version of this column incorrectly stated that Kevin McCarty had never lost an election. In 2010, McCarty narrowly lost to Roger Dickinson in the Democratic primary for what was then the 9th Assembly district.
This story was originally published January 25, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
