We dissent: The Ed Board’s generational divide splits the District 4 endorsement | Opinion

The official endorsement of The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board for District 4 on the Sacramento City Council has gone to challenger candidate Phil Pluckebaum.

We respectfully disagree.

In a microcosm of California at large, the city’s District 4 race has come down to the issue of homelessness. Here, it hinges on the exasperated feelings of voters in the politically centrist, mostly wealthy, homeowner neighborhood of East Sacramento — drawn into the district in 2022 — where anti-homeless sentiment runs high.

Any suggestion that incumbent Katie Valenzuela has not shown political will on the region’s biggest crises of the moment shows a willful ignorance of the successes of her first term.

Valenzuela was elected to the council in 2020 in the throes of a global plague and has been in the political minority throughout her tenure. She is an advocate for policies that offer meaningful solutions to homelessness and center the working class, urging the council to consider viewpoints it never has before.

Because she places individuals over the corporations that have long enjoyed power in Sacramento, she is their public enemy No. 1. These groups, which have long held political sway in the city, are clearly seeking retribution in their support of a middling planning commissioner who will bring nothing of significance to the dais.

Valenzuela is a reliable vote in favor of tenant protections for the city’s ever-increasing cohort of renters and for mental health services for the homeless. She is against more pay raises for the highest-paid city manager in the state and against buying more tactical weapons for the city’s police — as evidenced last year when she argued against the city spending more than $400,000 to buy yet another armored military vehicle for the Sacramento Police Department.

For those stances, and for holding to her beliefs in the face of an incredibly vocal minority opposition, she has been punished.

Several of her colleagues on the Sacramento City Council have worked against her, exemplified by councilmember Lisa Kaplan’s public endorsement of Pluckebaum.

She is the only council member to have opened a Safe Grounds site in her district for people who are homeless. The Miller Park site provided shelter, bathrooms, showers, drinking water and other services to hundreds of unhoused people, and hundreds more were moved directly from the site into housing. It was closed solely because of the city’s looming budget deficit.

During her first term, Valenzuela partnered with the mayor and the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission to implement the strongest use-of-force standards in California and led the effort to end the city’s decades-old, racist ban on cruising. She secured funding to launch a reconciliation process with the Office of Public Safety and Accountability seeking to repair relationships between communities and law enforcement; worked with local businesses and nonprofits to secure $28 million in economic recovery funds during the pandemic; and partnered with the mayor and local climate leaders to implement Sacramento’s climate action plan — a success the county hasn’t been able to match in over a decade of debate.

Pluckebaum, by comparison, is backed by a host of dubious political characters, including those who seek retribution for the loss Steve Hansen suffered to Valenzuela in 2020. Hansen, now a mayoral candidate, offers the same platform as Pluckebaum, one that is based on false promises and glossy rhetoric to exploit public frustration over homelessness, as evidenced by their mutual support of Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho’s baseless lawsuit against the very city they seek to serve.

In his endorsement interview with the Editorial Board, we found Pluckebaum’s answers for fixing the issue of homelessness to be facile and tired.

Pluckebaum’s campaign has been flooded with donations by developers, realtors and business interests. Bardis & Miry Development and its owners have given Pluckebaum roughly $28,000. The Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce is operating an independent expenditure committee for him that has an unknown amount of cash, but has raised at least $30,000, according to Bee reporting. He is backed by the Sacramento Association of Realtors and the Metro Chamber, as well as by Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper and the police union; likely because he has promised to increase the police budget from what is already an all-time high and to add 100 new officers, even though the department struggles to hire and retain the current force.

The fact is that homelessness is not an issue that can be boiled down to the decisions of one council member or even one city. It’s much easier to be against something than for it, and neither Pluckebaum nor Hansen have made a viable case on how they plan to solve the crisis. Instead, they levy disingenuous attacks at Valenzuela.

We recognize something profound in this board’s fracture: Our 50/50 split along generational lines is indicative of the conversations taking place across not just District 4, but across the whole city. This race is a quiet bellwether for an emerging political consciousness not just in Sacramento, but in California — and quite possibly in the nation.

The youth vote is angry at the status quo, and woe betide anyone — locally or nationally — who seeks to ignore or dismiss it.

Valenzuela has a stated agenda and ideas to help Sacramento’s struggling middle class that she stands firm to and abides by even in the face of downright insulting opposition. Pluckebaum works for downtown power players and the wealth of East Sacramento; forces which know little of the struggle of renters, of young professionals or of the realities of life outside Sacramento’s moneyed and influential political sphere.

Valenzuela has our vote for many reasons, but ultimately because Sacramento doesn’t need nine centrists at the helm steering us yet again into familiar but unhelpful territory. Such prosaic leadership has served only to arrive Sacramento at this crisis point.

We represent the future of Sacramento, and we believe Valenzuela does, too. And so we look forward to seeing what Valenzuela can do in a second term — this time with a council and mayor that will work to back progressive policies instead of stymie them.

Correction: An earlier version of this column misstated that Sacramento City Manager Howard Chan had endorsed Phil Pluckebaum, a candidate for the District 4 seat on the Sacramento City Council. Chan has not endorsed Pluckebuam.

This story was originally published February 10, 2024 at 5:00 AM.