Retired Grant High School vice principal vying for Loloee’s former seat on Sacramento council
Kim Davie has been knocking on doors for months canvassing for a seat on Sacramento City Council.
But it’s not her first time knocking on strangers’ doors in north Sacramento.
When she was an English teacher at Grant Union High School, as soon as she got her class list each year, she would go visit each of her future students in their homes.
It’s one of the experiences that she says has connected her with her neighbors, and part of why she says she feels she should be the next councilwoman representing the underserved area.
In contrast to former Councilman Sean Loloee — who resigned earlier this month partly due to the U.S. Department of Justice confirming a Sacramento Bee report that he actually lives in Granite Bay — Davie has lived in north Sacramento since she was 4. Her mother Leslie Campbell was a longtime member of the now-defunct Del Paso Heights School Board.
“I’ve been here a long time,” said Davie, 64. “I’ve seen Del Paso Boulevard when it was thriving. I wanted to do more for this community. I was sitting there retired and thought, ‘How can I make it better where I live?’”
Davie retired last year as vice principal of Grant Union High School, where she worked since 1996, including as a girls softball coach.
“We never won a game but we had a lot of fun, and did a lot of mentoring,” Davie said. “The women still in the community still call me ‘Coach.’”
Davie is endorsed by former Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn, whom she worked with when she taught at Fairbanks and he was an officer. Despite that endorsement, she does not want the city to increase the all-time-high $228 million police budget, she said. Instead she wants to find new ways to educate the officers on the community. She also wants to find ways to increase city and grant funding to nonprofits that work to reduce gun violence, such as Brother 2 Brother.
“Some people call Brother 2 Brother before they call 911,” she said.
If she were to be elected, she would want to find one of the many vacant lots along Altos Avenue and fight for city and private funding to open a large community garden and new park, she said.
To address homelessness, Davie said she does not want the city to open any more shelters in the district, even though the city wait list for a shelter bed is over 2,400. Instead she wants the city to invest in creative new ways to spark new affordable housing, and address mental illnesses and substance use among the unhoused.
Davie said she has concerns with the city’s current rent control ordinance, which still allows annual rent increases of nearly 10%.
“I think that 10% is a lot because nobody is getting a 10% raise every year in their salary,” Davie said.
Five other candidates have so far raised more than Davie, who has $794 in cash on hand. But due to the district’s relatively low number of registered voters, it does not typically see much campaign spending.
The primary will be held March 5. If no single candidate receives at least 50.01% of the vote, the winner will be determined in the Nov. 5 general election.
