The race for Sacramento mayor is less than a year away — and shrouded in mystery | Opinion

In less than one year, on March 5, 2024, residents of the city of Sacramento will vote for their next mayor.

But first, everyone wants to know what the current mayor is going to do. Will Darrell Steinberg run for a record third term? Or will he pursue another achievement in a distinguished career and trigger a free-for-all among a slew of potential candidates?

There is no great enthusiasm for either possibility at the moment. Instead, there is a curious sense of apathy and apprehension about the next mayoral race that the city hasn’t experienced since 2008.

That year, Heather Fargo appeared to have a clear path to a third term as mayor even though few outside of Fargo’s circle seemed excited about it. Then, at the absolute 11th-and-a-half hour, former NBA star Kevin Johnson materialized as a challenger. Despite a raft of unseemly allegations about Johnson, he won a June primary but failed to win more than 50% of the vote. Then Johnson trounced Fargo in the same November general election when Barack Obama won the presidency.

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Johnson’s personal baggage notwithstanding, he had name recognition, money, access to resources and enthusiastic followers, as well as city insiders who helped him cobble together a winning campaign.

At least right now, there is no one in the private sector who appears poised to replicate what Johnson did more than 15 years ago. Johnson was not only the first Black mayor in city history, but he also was a political anomaly. Every other person elected mayor in the last generation of city leaders in Sacramento — Steinberg’s generation — came up through the ranks of local politics.

If Sacramento stays true to form, then the names being tossed around town as potential mayoral candidates should sound familiar.

Former state Sen. Richard Pan, Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, former councilmembers Jeff Harris and Steve Hansen, and former Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones all have been discussed as possible contenders. Maggy Krell, a former supervising deputy attorney general of the Special Crimes Unit, has also been mentioned in the mayoral talk.

Someone else could materialize, but we won’t know until Steinberg decides whether he wants to add years nine, 10, 11 and 12 to his tenure — or try something else.

The current mayor remains respected, but it is fair to say that key leaders in Sacramento’s business community do not want him to run again. To them, Steinberg has been a disaster. They blame him for the proliferation of homelessness in the city and particularly in the urban core. They say Steinberg’s problem is that he is too eager to please too many people and that he tells Sacramento’s sometimes warring constituencies what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

This dynamic was on full display recently at the annual “State of Downtown” breakfast where Steinberg was the final speaker and was greeted by tepid applause after an effusive speech about Sacramento. It was tough to watch but revealing.

If anything, Steinberg’s experience should be a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to succeed him.

This town is a terribly difficult place to be the mayor. Too many residents believe that the mayor runs the city when that is not true. Insiders know that the city charter empowers the unelected city manager to run Sacramento, and they want to keep it that way, even as they complain about Steinberg — to his face and behind his back.

Sacramento is divided by homelessness

The issue that triggers most people is homelessness, and Steinberg’s toughest critics blame him for the crisis that is currently unfolding. But Sacramento’s public sentiment on homelessness is often irrational, a tug-of-war between two extremes.

On one side, you have business leaders and residents who want homeless people out of their sight, and they don’t give it much more thought than that. On the other, you have citizens and advocates who rail about any enforcement playing out on our streets. They refuse to acknowledge the social cost homelessness exacts on our urban core.

Steinberg has tried to bridge these two worldviews, upsetting people on both sides whose views seem calcified. What the business types don’t acknowledge is that the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver are in many ways seeing even more significant impacts related to homelessness than Sacramento.

What the advocates seem to dismiss is that our downtown is an essential economic engine that generates sales tax revenues that fund services. The current state of downtown, where the homeless situation is becoming increasingly desperate, is bad for everyone in the city.

What both sides haven’t fully grasped is that instead of yelling at Steinberg, they should be putting pressure on Sacramento County to do more to address the homeless issue.

It’s frustrating to recall that as recently as the start of 2020, Sacramento was booming. Then came the pandemic, the departure of most of our downtown workforce, the loss of Sacramento’s primary owner for its Major League Soccer franchise and a series of calamities ranging from the George Floyd protests to the worst mass shooting in city history.

Steinberg has kept fighting, despite the challenges and statutory limitations of his job. It’s hard to imagine anyone who could have done better with the hand he drew, and easy to imagine less experienced leaders doing much worse with the challenges he has faced.

Hopefully, Mayor Steinberg will find another challenge because it seems time for him and the city to move on. Steinberg is a good man, and Sacramento is a wonderful city. Both have weathered tough times, and both deserve better days ahead.