Flo Cofer is back for a bigger fight, taking on Sacramento County this time | Opinion
She’s ba-ack!
On Tuesday, former mayoral candidate and epidemiologist Flo Cofer announced her campaign for Sacramento County’s 1st Supervisorial District, a seat that’s been held by Phil Serna for the last 16 years.
Many — including yours truly — have long believed a role as county supervisor would be a more natural fit for Cofer’s skills and political aspirations, even though she’s a relative newcomer to Sacramento politics.
Since Serna announced his retirement last year, he has endorsed Sacramento City Council member Eric Guerra.
While Guerra could be a natural successor to Serna, the unabashedly progressive Cofer would add a perspective to the board that’s been missing for many years.
It could also help to balance the board from its noticeable lean to the middle right, such as their recent vote to approve SMUD’s environmental disaster in the making that is the Coyote Creek project, and the even more recent decision to criminalize camping on private property, removing tents and encampments without the property owner’s knowledge.
And whether you agree with her politics, a more balanced board of supervisors could go a long way toward resolving some of the historical conflict between the city and county of Sacramento.
Old divides, new opportunities
In 2024, Cofer surprised many in the state’s political establishment when the progressive outsider gave former Democratic Assemblyman Kevin McCarty a serious run for his money. The now-Mayor McCarty barely eked out a win by 1,938 votes — just half a percentage point overall.
Cofer sees their shared history as an opportunity for the city and county to work together and grow.
“He is the mayor of a city where one in two voters didn’t vote for him, so this is an opportunity for bridge building,” Cofer said.
Cofer was holding very casual interviews with local press after her announcement on Tuesday, seated at her favorite Oak Park coffee shop, Broadway Coffee. “Now people return my calls,” she joked, looking at her phone which never stopped buzzing.
She said she feels more prepared for the fight ahead this second time around.
“This campaign is different because I’m not a first time candidate,” Cofer said between bites of a breakfast sandwich and checking her phone. “When you are, everything is new. I’ve been on this journey before. And a lot of things we talked about in the city overlap with the county.”
Roughly half of District 1 covers the city, and the rest is mostly unincorporated Sacramento County.
“So much of the municipality is not just the city,” Cofer said. “There’s a big responsibility there, and right now we’re working at cross purposes and that doesn’t have to happen.”
What’s working, what’s failing — and what’s missing
At the top of Cofer’s to-do list is rethinking how the county works with its cities to aid and service Sacramentans living in homelessness.
“The two top questions asked of me (during the run for mayor) were: What are you going to do about homelessness? And how are you going to work with the county?” Cofer said.
For her, Cofer said the issue boils down to three questions: What is the county doing that’s working? What is it doing that’s not working? And what is it not doing that it should?
“We have named and claimed that (homelessness) is a problem, finally,” Cofer said. “We are aware of the strengths and the drawbacks of how we use data collection to understand the scope of our challenges… Now our challenge is to address the problems that we have data on, and what do we do to fix the things that are counterproductive to our overall goal?”
Cofer said “sweeping people away with nowhere for them to go is just cruelty,” shuffling them from place to place without providing solutions “undermines trust with people in the community who are at their most vulnerable.”
So the first thing on her docket would be to “make sure we have immediate places for people to go.”
At the same time, “some of the most visibly unhoused people may not be people who will ever be able to live independently, (and will) require some level of support,” Cofer said. “It’s irresponsible of us to pretend like the end goal (for everyone) is independence.”
What it takes to say yes, again
“I know a lot of people feel an excitement about this race, and also feel a level of frustration at what’s happening in the country right now,” Cofer said. “I feel the same.”
But throwing yourself back into politics and back in front of the public eye is never an easy thing to do, and Cofer admitted she was feeling some nervousness, at least on the first day of her official campaign for a supervisor’s seat.
“I’m probably even more nervous this time around because I know what’s coming,” Cofer said. “The lesson I learned last time is about how sometimes you get punished for having a good idea — and I’m worried that one of those ideas is gonna end up on a mailer somewhere.”
Before making her announcement, Cofer said she’d had a lot of deep conversations with friends, family and neighbors about running for office again, ultimately asking herself: “Does it have to be me?”
If the last year under the Trump Administration has taught America anything, I think the answer to that is probably “Yes.” If you’ve got the drive and skill and desire to make the world a better place — then it has to be you. Seems like Cofer came to the same conclusion.
