Singh-Allen won a bitter race for Elk Grove mayor. How consensus builder plans to govern

Bobbie Singh-Allen didn’t have her eye on the mayor’s office before she became the face of the movement to oust Steve Ly in Elk Grove.

That changed one Sunday afternoon in July when U.S. Rep. Ami Bera called. Family friends outside of politics, Singh-Allen said they talked for close to 45 minutes and Bera had clearly joined the chorus of people urging her to run.

“ ‘This is that moment that Elk Grove needs you,’ ” Singh-Allen recalled him saying. “ ‘ You have to step up.’ ”

Singh-Allen was comfortable in her position on the Elk Grove Unified School District board. Some thought former mayor Gary Davis might run again or another person would mount a serious challenge to the incumbent.

But Singh-Allen announced her candidacy the day after the call from Bera, kicking off one of the most contentious elections in Elk Grove history and a surprising win. Singh-Allen was sworn in last week as mayor, unseating the incumbent Ly with 45% of the vote.

Before her campaign announcement, Ly was expected to cruise toward a third term. But then he was accused of mishandling harassment claims against one of his former campaign workers.

The scandal dovetailed with budding opposition to a hospital project Ly supported on the city’s west side. He’d also stumbled in some of the finer points of the job that require collaboration with other lawmakers on the City Council. As a result, Ly did not get an endorsement from any of the city’s lawmakers for the second time this year.

Singh-Allen’s victory was built on more than a string of missteps by Ly. As a trustee for the Elk Grove Unified School District, Singh-Allen developed a reputation as a leader who could calm angry parents and offer compromise during tense union negotiations, colleagues say. She billed herself as the opposite of Ly, a consensus builder who listens.

An Elk Grove resident for nearly three decades, her connections showed as she garnered endorsements from throughout the city and beyond, including from police and fire unions. She pledged more law enforcement training while praising a task force of citizens who advise the police chief. She emphasized the need for ethical governance; and robust local recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Before announcing her run, Singh-Allen was concerned about raising the kind of money needed to beat Ly who had won four political races since 2012. In July, she told The Bee that the campaign would require as much as $200,000 to be competitive.

Bera, who represents a congressional district that spans south Sacramento County, said he assured her in that July phone call that it was possible.

“I think sometimes — you don’t see it so much today — with women candidates you have to make sure they know how good they are,” Bera said of their conversation. “I just wanted to make sure Bobbie knew that she could do this.”

Singh-Allen raised a little more than $250,000, including $50,000 she loaned her campaign committee, for a job that is part-time and pays only a small stipend. Now that Singh-Allen has won and was sworn into office this month, no doubt the question many will be wondering is what kind of leader is she?

‘There was a lot of negativity around the mayor’

As an Indian immigrant, Singh-Allen’s parents first landed in Lodi and later moved to Turlock where she was raised. She studied government at Sacramento State and graduated from Lincoln Law School in 2002 when she was eight months pregnant with her second son.

But Singh-Allen never planned to become a lawyer. She’d taken a class with Sacramento Mayor Joe Serna Jr. as an undergraduate. He invited her to work in his administration on a literacy program called the Mayor’s Summer Reading Camp. The experience, Singh-Allen said, showed her “what great leadership can look like.”

She has since channeled that lesson into her role on the school board, which she joined in 2012, after her son was being bullied in school. She wanted to bring a parent’s voice to the board.

Her appointment became a highlight this summer because she joined the school board shortly before Ly. It was then that Singh-Allen said Ly cast aspersions on her appointment, suggesting the decision be reversed. Singh-Allen suspected it was because she supported someone else for a school board appointment that Ly did not get.

She was one of about a half dozen women who said they’d had similar run-ins with Ly in recent years. The claims, which may be investigated by a grand jury, no doubt damaged his bid for another term as organizations pulled endorsements.

A month before election day, Singh-Allen also found help in unlikely places. The National Association of Realtors Fund ran an independent expenditure campaign to support her with more than $53,000 — most of which went to online ads. At the same time, the California Association of Realtors bankrolled a campaign against Ly, spending close to $192,800 to send mailers.

“There was a lot of negativity around the mayor. That’s basically what we used in the mail (pieces),” said Andrew Acosta, a political consultant who ran the opposition campaign for the group.

Moderate voice on the school board

Ly’s time on the school board was short-lived, though. After serving less than half of a four-year term, he left to run for the Elk Grove City Council. Singh-Allen stayed behind, even after she’d been asked about running for higher office.

“What I admired the most was she came on a school board with the intentions of doing a good job. She didn’t stay for two years or one term,” said Chet Madison, the longest-serving member on the board. “She stayed longer than that so she became very rounded and found out what the school board was all about. That’s why I think she’s going to become a good mayor.”

Singh-Allen was praised for her efforts in 2018 when the Elk Grove school district decided to tear down a school and rebuild At a public meeting, she stepped from behind a table to face an audience of about three dozen parents. Many of them seated in the cafeteria seemed unhappy.

Tainted water coming from a well was a longstanding issue at Franklin Elementary and it pushed the district to rebuild the school. Parents were worried about the safety of the water in the meantime.

Parents lobbed question after question to school district officials about mold tests and proper HVAC ventilation, and how often the district tests for lead. The meeting lasted close to two hours. After about 15 minutes, Singh-Allen chimed in and to serve as a conciliator.

Beth Albiani, a school district trustee since 2014, watched the meeting remotely and learned a lesson from Singh-Allen’s approach: listen to people even when they’re expressing strong opinions, she said.

“She (Bobbie) did not shy away from this uncomfortable situation but made sure she was there to help guide the conversation and meet the leaders in the room,” Albiani said. “She tactfully helped people express their strong feelings with respect and empathy.”

Lorreen Pryor, an education activist and president of the Black Youth Leadership Project, agreed. She recalled once when a child accused a campus monitor of assault. Even though the child’s mother was obviously upset, Singh-Allen was the only board member to step down from the dais to talk to her.

Pryor said that’s usually what parents want but she looks beyond the meeting for systemic change. The Elk Grove school district has dealt with a series of issues around race and how black students are treated, Pryor said.

“She’s definitely middle of the road but there are some instances where she will speak up but she’s pretty much the lone wolf on the school board,” Pryor said. “I’m interested to see how she’s going to pivot into the mayor role and the types of things she’s going to push.”

Traffic, a new hospital, and a ‘ghost mall’

In her first term, Singh-Allen faces a test of whether Elk Grove can evolve from an overgrown suburb to a major city. Some City Council members are eager for the region’s second-largest city to shed its sleepy image.

“The last several years we haven’t had a mayor that’s wanted to work as a team,” Councilman Darren Suen, who lost to Ly in the 2018 mayoral election. “I’m really hoping she’ll be more willing to approach governing with a team-like philosophy. With that, I think we can go very far as a city.”

Singh-Allen will inherit the enduring transportation issues — Elk Grove has one of the longest commutes in the county — and economic development challenges. Easing traffic congestion was a pillar of her campaign. She vowed to crack down on speeding and reduce cut-through traffic in residential neighborhoods, offer free public transit to school-age children and extend light rail into Elk Grove.

The city recently announced that an abandoned construction site, known as the “ghost mall,” was sold to a Las Vegas casino developer. The Wilton Rancheria, a federally recognized American Indian tribe, now plans to build a casino on the site.

The project was supposed to be an upscale outlet mall until the Great Recession snuffed out those plans. Instead, it became an embarrassing reminder of the city’s setback as the half-finished project languished off Highway 99 and Kammerer Road.

Dignity Health plans to build the city’s first hospital and California Northstate University wants to build another, much larger, medical facility on the city’s westside. The CNU project has been intensely debated and rejected by some residents who say it would be out-of-place near a preserve and dense subdivisions.

Ly was a supporter of the hospital project which cost him support in west Elk Grove. As a result, Singh-Allen often carried more than 50% of the votes cast in those precincts, while winning the election overall with 45% of the vote.

Even so, residents like Staci Anderson are waiting. As one of the organizers behind Neighbors Ensuring Stonelake Transparency, a community group created to oppose the hospital project, Anderson said a meeting with Singh-Allen before the election was encouraging.

Singh-Allen has vowed to be impartial when evaluating the project, Anderson said. A land-use application is expected to come before the City Council.

“The hospital proposal is a major issue for residents in West Elk Grove and beyond,” Anderson said in an email. “Though Sing-Allen’s election win does not guarantee a ‘no’ vote on the hospital project, it was clear that Ly’s reelection would be a guaranteed ‘yes’ vote on the project.”