Kevin McCarty is relentless and ‘vindictive.’ Can he play nice as Sacramento mayor? | Opinion
Former Assemblymember Kevin McCarty will take his oath of office for the Sacramento City Council on Dec. 10, returning to the chambers for the first time in a decade, since he last served as a councilmember from 2004 to 2014.
But this new mayor of ours almost didn’t make it there — and there are plenty who wish he hadn’t.
Flo Cofer pushed the longtime Sacramento politician into the thinnest margins of victory; McCarty will be mayor with just 50.5% of the vote. He needs to accept from Day 1 that he was not the choice of half this city.
Though, I think he may already know.
Typically, a mayor’s swearing-in has occurred at a larger venue, with an accompanying party. Darrell Steinberg opted for The California Railroad Museum when he was sworn in in 2016, and more than 1,700 people attended. In 2012, Kevin Johnson threw himself an inauguration party at Memorial Auditorium, and before that, Heather Fargo held her party at the old Radisson Hotel in Woodlake.
But since McCarty has chosen to be sworn in with the rest of his council, maybe it’s a good sign? Maybe he wants to play nicely with the other kids on the playground — whoops, I mean dais?
I doubt it. McCarty is a relentless campaigner who hasn’t lost an election in more than a decade, but his personal relationships with some colleagues have been… fraught.
That doesn’t bode well for the Sacramento City Council, nor for Sacramentans who may have been hoping that a vote for McCarty meant getting a mayor with state legislature experience and therefore with better relations to important people.
It turns out that quite a few of those important people simply don’t like the man, and the word “vindictive” was said to me more than once. Even McCarty supporters will say he can be too transactional and overly political. At the state Capitol, these traits obviously served him well. But the job of mayor requires a smile over a sneer. It requires more goodwill than ill will.
No ‘screaming mandate’
Former Sacramento City Council member and now State Senator Angelique Ashby had strong words to share about her former colleague.
“(McCarty) needs to get right with people that he has bad relationships with,” the state senator for District 8 said. “There are a significant amount of people who are in key positions for this region who did not endorse him in this race. I’m one of them. The sheriff is one of them. Those are people he’s going to need to work with to be any kind of successful mayor.”
Ashby said she hopes the new mayor recognizes there was no “screaming mandate” by the people to put him in office.
When McCarty emerged out of the three former electeds running in the primary, she said, referring to mayoral also-rans Dr. Richard Pan and former councilmember Steve Hansen, “I think people believed he would coalesce the city, and that did not happen.”
Ashby, whose senatorial district covers the city, said she’ll work with McCarty as mayor. But she pointed out that through her good relationships with outgoing Mayor Darrell Steinberg and current city manager Howard Chan, she was able to bring $175 million mostly in state budget funding to the region over the last two years, including $70 million in direct investment for homeless outreach programs and $29 million for Sacramento Regional Transit to expand local infrastructure and transportation just this year.
Those victories depended on the city maintaining good relationships with local leaders like herself, she said.
“We want to continue to be able to do those things, (but) Kevin McCarty has some relationships he needs to work on in the community and in elected leadership roles,” Ashby said.
McCarty fumbled Flo’s call
Characteristically, McCarty already seems to have gotten off on a bad foot.
When Cofer called to concede the race, he didn’t bother to pick up. That’s a massive slight in local politics where basic courtesy, even to opponents, is king.
When she was finally able to get a hold of him, Cofer let McCarty hear some hard truths.
McCarty ran a campaign that sought to scare voters away from Cofer. He kept stating that Cofer wanted to convert active parks into places where homeless people could live. She didn’t.
Cofer said she told McCarty that he “will be mayor at a time when people are looking to their local government for some respite and reprieve,” but that some of the tactics McCarty and his supporters used during this campaign were “incredibly racist and sexist.” Cofer said there was “some healing work” with certain communities that McCarty will have to do, including the Black community.
“He asked ‘Are you calling me racist and sexist?’ And I said ‘No, some of the tactics you used were,’” Cofer said, referring to some of the rhetoric deployed by McCarty supporters that implicitly called for violence against her “extremist views.”
“Other elected officials have said (he is) vindictive against people who don’t support (him) in campaigns, and this time it’s half the city,” Cofer said.
“So I hope that you are not going to have … a score to settle,” she reportedly told McCarty.
“I hope that you’re not going to lead from your childhood traumas, and I hope that you’re actually going to lead from a place of love and of bringing this city together and governing in a way that is going to be helpful to us.”
Cofer said that McCarty felt the call was “very negative,” and she replied “not negative, just uncomfortable truths.”
“You need to be able to distinguish between the two,” Cofer told the new mayor. “And you need to be able to hear from people who don’t agree with you and not immediately dismiss them.”
Moving forward with humility
McCarty has some relationships to build, certainly — and it sounds like he may need to rebuild some, too. But I find it particularly omniscient of Cofer to point out that Sacramento will be looking to local government for stability, respite and reprieve from the surely tumultuous next four years that await us on the federal level.
McCarty will need to navigate vocal and angry opposition on serious issues like homelessness, affordable housing, gun control, police budgets and much, much more. Can you imagine him handling something like a Gaza ceasefire resolution the way Steinberg did? I can’t.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, local government works best when personal grievances are set aside and courtesy comes first. I have faith in Ashby and others to do that — it’s McCarty I’m not so sure about.
But Sacramento has just seen an excellent example of how far niceness can take you in this city, thanks to Mayor Steinberg’s incessant likeability.
McCarty would do well to learn from his predecessor’s example, and he would do well to heed the people around him speaking truth to power, rather than only listening to what he wants to hear.
