Grove, Gundy to face off for shot at 12th District

May 12—The race for the 12th District seat in the state Senate is setting up a partisan dichotomy for voters.

The Democratic challenger faces an uphill battle to unseat a Republican senator who won her spot in a similar district by about 28 percentage points in 2018. Numbers from the most recent report from the California Secretary of State don't seem to portend a drastic shift: The registration breakdown is 28.39 percent Democratic and 45.10 percent Republican.

Regardless of the outcome June 7, thanks to California's top-two primary system, voters are virtually guaranteed to get another chance to decide between the two in November.

State Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, is a small-business owner who currently represents the 16th District — which includes a number of the communities that are in the 12th after a recent redistricting — and Susanne Gundy is a retired public health program manager and longtime Democrat who lives in Visalia. (The new 12th District includes parts of Bakersfield, as well as the Kern River Valley, Ridgecrest, Taft, Tehachapi and parts of Fresno and Tulare counties.)

Grove, 57, campaigns on her experience as a legislator who understands first-hand the impacts regulations can have on businesses. Gundy, 80, who worked mostly in education outreach programs and whose business experience includes managing over a dozen properties she owns — a number of which are part of subsidized housing programs — would be a newcomer to political office.

Grove can lean on a lengthy track record of service to Kern voters, as the first female veteran in the Legislature when she was elected 12 years ago.

And while she's an experienced lawmaker — Grove served three terms in the Assembly for the 34th District from 2010 to 2016 before joining the Senate in 2018 — she frequently expresses frustration with how her advocacy on behalf of other small-business owners puts her at odds with many of her colleagues.

"That perspective, signing the front side of a check and not just the back side, puts a degree of responsibility and knowledge of economics that should be some of the skill set that legislators should have," Grove said in a candidate statement to The Californian. "Unfortunately, that is not the case in Sacramento."

Gundy has lived in the San Joaquin Valley since 1977 and, before retiring, spent 21 years administering various program in Tulare County's public health department, working her way up to program manager. She said she supervised staff, millions of dollars in budgets and a number of outreach efforts, everything from promoting dental health for children to HIV/Aids awareness.

She said this work taught a great deal about Tulare County, but she was frank about her need to learn more about the Kern and Fresno portions.

"I have been doing some homework in looking at some of the smaller communities that are in my new district," she said, specifically mentioning Arvin, California City and Tehachapi.

This is Gundy's third run for office after a pair of unsuccessful attempts, one a run for the Tulare County Board of Supervisors about 20 years ago, and then for Visalia City Council about eight years ago. In the first run, she was trying to "kind of get the Democratic message out." She said her second run was prompted by her concern about an animal shelter and challenges the community was having with homelessness.

In this latest run, she heeded the call from the state's Democratic Senate Committee, she said, because no one else was stepping forward.

Despite Grove's frustration with how things work on the other side of the aisle, she counted a number of bipartisan efforts as among her biggest successes over her last four years in the Senate — no doubt a practical necessity in a political arena where Democrats outnumber Republicans about 3 to 1 (60-19, with 1 independent in the Assembly, and 31-9 in the Senate).

Reflecting on her biggest accomplishments of her last four years in the Legislature, Grove noted an effort with Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, that secured $200 million in the 2021 budget for restoring the Friant-Kern Canal, as well as work with Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Irvine, on Assembly Bill 110, which required the Employment Development Department to cross-check unemployment claims against records in state prisons.

Gundy, on the other hand, has served as a member of the Tulare County Democratic Central Committee for a number of years, and noted that one of her main efforts in this round of the election cycle involves working to replace Reps. Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy with Democrats.

A good example of stark differences in their attitudes was the candidates' views on California's so-called "just transition" away from jobs in oil and gas production to employment in clean energy. The topic has received a great deal of attention in the southern valley as the Newsom administration works to phase out petroleum while promoting economic opportunities in industries that help address climate change.

Gundy highlighted the potential for innovation and investment in projects like solar farms and other forms of clean energy. Grove noted that while oil and renewable energy industries can co-exist, as happens in Kern, she called the basic concept of a just transition "punitive and anti-worker" policy, adding the "transition" part is not being "decided by changing market conditions or consumer demand, it is virtually all driven by government regulatory mandates."