Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty makes headlines, but for the wrong reason | Opinion
Kevin McCarty narrowly won the mayor’s office in Sacramento by promising a hard-nosed approach to homelessness — a sharp contrast to the empathy-driven policy ideas of challenger Flo Cofer.
That no-nonsense mentality resonated with just enough Sacramentans who were frustrated by the growing crisis and skeptical of softer solutions. (In an election where 190,928 ballots were cast, McCarty won by just 1,938 votes.) But in his first year as mayor, the narrowness of McCarty’s victory, his lack of a mandate, and his own stylistic demons are starting to show. Mayor McCarty’s two immediate predecessors -- Kevin Johnson and Darrell Steinberg -- were big personalities who burst into City Hall with big ideas. McCarty has been invisible by comparison, until now.
A Bee story revealed that McCarty threatened to place homeless encampments in Councilmember Mai Vang’s district after she opposed his proposal to ban people from sleeping outside City Hall. “Next time, I’m going to make sure there are encampments around the (Sam and Bonnie) Pannell Community Center,” McCarty told Vang during a July 1 meeting. The center, named after two longtime community leaders, is located on Meadowview Road in Vang’s district. “The mayor and I met afterward, and he apologized,” Vang wrote in a statement. “I look forward to working with him to continue serving our Sacramento community, and want to thank city staff and my colleagues for their support.” I happen to agree with McCarty’s common-sense approach to homelessness — one that includes helping the unhoused while also establishing practical places for them to be. But what I cannot condone, nor should anyone condone, is a politician threatening to “dump” homeless people in a councilmember’s district simply because they voted against a resolution. Even if it was in jest, as McCarty suggested, we know that politicians use the “I was joking” line when they get blowback. And even if McCarty was joking, the comment makes no sense on any level. The vote to ban homeless encampments at City Hall was always going to pass and did by a 6–3 vote, with Vang, Lisa Kaplan, and Caity Maple dissenting. Why, then, did McCarty single out only one councilmember? To his credit, McCarty apologized to Vang. But he also seemed to ignore how sensitive the subject is in Vang’s district, where residents have already pushed back against the idea of becoming a hub for homeless services. Just this March, community members from Vang’s district attended a council meeting to voice concerns about the city’s interest in turning a 102-acre plot of land into a facility for people experiencing homelessness. Their worry was clear: their neighborhood would bear the brunt of the city’s crisis. And beyond that, why threaten to put a homeless center in Vang’s district, when the mayor doesn’t have the unilateral power to make such a move?
Results do not happen with threats
Councilmembers cannot do their jobs — advocating for the values and needs of their districts — if leadership lashes out whenever there’s disagreement. City Hall is already known as a place with too much retribution politics. Before he was elected, McCarty was respected for his intelligence and work ethic, but somewhat reviled for being known to be vindictive. And quite frankly, the ban on sleeping at City Hall is a small measure in the long list of actions Sacramento needs to build a sufficient system for addressing homelessness. My hope is that this becomes a lesson for McCarty: stop painting homelessness as a matter of political contrasts and start treating it as the collective challenge it is. Homelessness isn’t a political game. It’s a crisis that affects people, neighborhoods, and businesses alike. If McCarty wants to solve it, he needs to lead with solutions — not threats.
This story was originally published August 28, 2025 at 10:30 AM.
