Sacramento Mayor's Race: Dr. Flo and Assemblymember McCarty campaign for Capital votes
- Malik Shim
- Oct 23, 2024
- 5 min read
By Malik Shim, Clarion Managing Editor
The City of Trees, otherwise known as Sacramento, is having a race for a new city mayor because current incumbent mayor since 2016, Darrell Steinberg, is not seeking re-election.
Mayor Steinberg, a Democrat, stated, “I’m confident that I could win a third term. But I have to ask myself, with my wife and family: How will I spend the rest of my life?”
He has also had plans to elevate his political career in hopes of becoming the Attorney General of California in 2026 if Rob Bonta runs for governor.
This left the job up for grabs by California State Assemblymember Kevin McCarty and Dr. Flojaurene “Flo” Cofer, running as an independent.
"Dr. Flo"
Dr. Cofer, or known simply as "Dr. Flo", who is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, raised by parents who were middle school teachers. She developed an interest in literature, arts, sports, and community service.
At age 11, she witnessed the death of her father, a cigarette smoker, from heart failure. Around that time, tobacco companies targeted their advertising towards black communities, making false claims about health damages from smoking. This sparked resistance movements -- like “We Are Not Profit” -- which influenced Dr. Flo to help take administrative positions to ensure a safe environment U.S.
She graduated from Spelman College in Atlanta, where she majored in Chemistry, and moved to the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health to earn her Masters and PhD in Epidemiology.
She moved to California and began her career at the California Department of Public Health, where she developed a coalition to decrease infant mortality rates, expand women’s health coverage under Obamacare, and advocated for preventive services for women. Those services gave women access to free wellness visits, maternity care coverage, breast pumps, and birth control. She then transitioned into Senior Policy Director at Public Health Advocates to make a bigger impact for people accross California.
In six years, she has successfully passed local policies legalizing marijuana, community safety, nutrition, diabetes prevention, and racial equity.
As mayor, she has vowed to decrease homelessness in California, to improve public transportation, to make housing affordable, and to have City Hall serve the people. This makes her the most progressive mayoral candidate of Sacramento in history.
She is endorsed by District 8 Councilmember Mai Vang, District 1 Councilmember Lisa Kaplan, the Sacramento Bee, the Sacramento City Teachers Association, Democratic Socialists of America, the Green Party of Sacramento County, among others.
Representative Kevin McCarty
California's House of Representatives’ Kevin McCarty -- a Democrat, and not the Republican former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy -- was born and raised in Sacramento by a single mother. They moved from place to place for the first thirteen years of his life. He stayed in afterschool programs to be kept out of trouble, which has had an influence on his mayoral platform. He is also a Christian, and raised Catholic.
He graduated from both California State University, Long Beach, and California State University, Sacramento, where he got degrees in both Political Science and Public Policy and Administration respectively.
McCarty served as a policy director to former California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamente, and as an Assembly Budget Committee consultant to Assemblywoman Denis Ducheny, who was in the State Assembly. While in the City Council, McCarty worked as a legislative advocate for Preschool California.
He eventually moved up his positioning. From 2004-2014, he served as Council Member of the 6th District of Sacramento. McCarty advocated for safer housing, inspections of Sacramento’s numerous renting units, gun control, and creation of after-school programs. He voted against a $257 million subsidy to develop a downtown entertainment and sports complex for the Sacramento Kings.
As an Assemblymember, he distributed over 700 backpacks during the Annual Backpack Giveaway, made laws requiring high school students to take a financial literacy class, passed legislation to Hold Repeat Retail Theft and Substance Abuse Offenders Accountable, made budget allocations for local Sacramento projects, wrote several significant common sense gun safety laws, requiring backgronund checks for ammunition purchases, authored adaptive reuse law that is made to support affordable housing, and also invested in youth programs including creating a law to have univerisal preschool for all Californians.
Kevin McCarty is endorsed by the Sacramento Fire Department, Planned Parenthood Advocates, California Association of Professional Scientists, and public officials such as Dr. Ami Bera, former Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, Stephanie Nguyen, and others. Darrell Steinberg has also made quiet donations to McCarty’s campaign, but has not endorsed him openly.
Candidates on Issues in Sacramento
People experiencing homelessness
People experiencing homelessness have been a thorn in the backside of Sacramento and on the city's main agenda since 2016.
Dr. Flo proposes to provide housing for the unhoused children of Sacramento, coordinate mental health and substance abuse care for those suffering from drug addictions, and create Safe Rest Villages in which people could access basic services like electricity, water, and safe places to sleep.
McCarty wants to continue working with District Attorneys to provide drug treatment program oppurtunities for the incarcerated, end urban camping in neighborhoods and redirect them to safer camping sites without creating more problems for neighbors. He is also proposing legislation to create a joint powers authority that brings Sacramento County and city governments together to find common ground and work together to secure funding from the state and federal government.
Affordable Housing
McCarty already has a record of enacting reforms to increase housing stock and affordability. He has addressed that the cost of living in Sacramento has been increasing too much. He has stated he will work more to enact other innovative solutions to solve the housing shortage.
Dr. Flo has stated she will build more affordable housing, support homeowners and first time buyers, and give tenant protections to homeowners.
Community Safety
Dr. Flo has blames the homicide rates on cutting funding for youth programs. She plans to reinvest into youth violence prevention programs to prevent violence and poverty. She also has acknowledged that traffic incidents have been a problem in terms of safer communities and will invest more into public transit.
McCarty on the other hand plans to remove firearms from homes of domestic abusers and give more funding to police. He has also cracked down on illegal gun traffickers, gun show loopholes, and background checks for gun owners.
Environment
McCarty has vowed to continue to prioritize environmental stewardship by reducing dependence on fossil fuels, expanding bike lines and public transit, protecting rivers and open spaces, and investing in a tree canopy for all neighborhoods. He has also helped create the American River Parkway Conservancy, ensuring the preservation and protection of one of Sacramento’s defining natural resources.
Dr. Flo plans to implement the Green New Deal. She will implement the Urban Tree Plan, Home and Business Resilience, Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, Production AND storage infrastructure, Green Jobs Incubator, Safer Streets Initiative, Expand Free Transit, and Standing Climate Committee.
Miscellaneous
McCarty said, “Our Youth is 50% of the present and 100% of the future.” After-school programs helped him as a child grow up. He plans to make youth a priority and to invest in them as much as possible. He will also help expand the scholarship fund to help women like his single mother and help them get into college.
Dr. Flo has vowed to give economic prosperity for all and transparency and fairness. She has vowed to create the Green Jobs Hub, address climate change, evaluate the city’s long term revenue streams, support the public bank, allocate the cannibis tax revenue, and partner with local unions and the Sacramento Employment Training Agency.
The Kennedy Clarion urges people to show up and vote -- not just for the mayoral election, but for all elected offices, up and down the ballot.
Students who are 18 years of age can register to vote, and 16-17 years of age can pre-register to vote in the future. Voters may drop off mail-in ballots (CA) or vote in-person at one of the polling places on November 5.
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