By admin 
When Sacramento County supervisors rubber-stamped a controversial Natomas housing development on Tuesday, county staff and project supporters got nearly three hours to make their case. Supervisors gave Flojaune Cofer one minute to express her opposition, even though Cofer is the favorite to join the board of supervisors next year as new 1st District representative.
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Cofer used the insultingly brief moment wisely by calling out the lopsided staging of Tuesday’s meeting, a carbon copy of countless other approved development proposals by county supervisors over many decades.
“The short-term benefits of this project do not outweigh the costs and risks to our community,” Cofer said. “And it’s really concerning that we’re not able to actually have this meeting in a way that allows those concerns to be addressed and heard.”
The board ignored Cofer and unanimously approved the so-called Upper Westside project.
Cofer’s exchange with an unresponsive board exemplifies a generational shift in local politics voiced by emerging leaders who are challenging old and tired political norms in Sacramento.
In a sense, the 43-year-old Cofer represents tomorrow’s political power while supervisors carry on with staged versions of public meetings that hopefully will become outdated.
The pace of change in Sacramento will depend on who wins or loses in any given race. But it’s happening.
How Matsui lost Sacramento
The Matsui family, first led by husband Robert, then wife Doris after his passing in 2005, has prevailed in every congressional election they’ve entered in Sacramento County for 48 years. That ended on June 2, when Doris Matsui was beaten in Sacramento County by a leading local voice of the next generation, Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang. Matsui got about 31% of the county vote, Vang 39%.
Vang doesn’t have enough money to pay off her student loans while Matsui remarried a multi-millionaire, borrowed $1.4 million of her own money in this race, only to place second to Vang. They will meet again to decide their race for the 7th Congressional District in November.
Vang’s support base is hardly confined to the left of the Democratic Party. Supporting her in a late endorsement was Sacramento’s state senator, Angelique Ashby. After starting her political career in Natomas and on the Sacramento City Council, Ashby is now the majority leader in the state Senate.
Sacramento’s new emerging political center
Ashby’s is the most prominent local political leader to endorse Vang over Matsui. Her endorsement bucks the trend of establishment candidates endorsing each other while emerging leaders are pressured to wait their turn. Ashby felt this scorn when she challenged former California Senate leader Darrell Steinberg in Sacramento’s 2016 mayoral election.
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She lost that election, felt ostracized by political insiders but raised her political profile nonetheless. Ashby jumped to Vang’s defense when local politicos questioned Vang’s patriotism in conservative press stories condemning Vang because she prays instead of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance during council meetings.
“In the face of right-wing hatred which she’s been getting, I cannot in good conscience, stay on the bench,” Ashby said.
It was a seismic shift in local politics. With Matsui’s core support waning, Ashby may be creating a new political center in Sacramento politics.
She played a role in lifting a new generation of council members including Vang, Karina Talamantes and Caity Maple. Both were recently re-elected to second terms and are leaders with potential.
And then there is Cofer, the public health activist who nearly became Sacramento mayor in 2024 and then nearly won the 1st District seat of the country supervisors outright in the June election.
Cofer is not financially beholden to financial interests who have run county politics forever, the builders and the realtors and the lawyers who make money from rezoning farmland for subdivisions and basically run today’s board.
They have been too successful. Sacramento County has reached a point where supervisors have already approved tens of thousands of unbuilt lots. Approving even more, as supervisors did Tuesday, doesn’t produce any more housing that the market will build from the glut of opportunities. It just makes some landowners and their various agents rich.
Cofer, in more elegant terms, called this system a charade on Tuesday. Not a single supervisor supports Cofer in her campaign, which may prove to be the most persuasive endorsement of all.
It’s telling that these agents of change happen to all be smart and strong women. It’s not a coincidence.
The status quo is rarely on the side of emerging women in politics. And in moments like this when change is in the wind, the next generation decides to take some risks, reject outdated ways and suggest a new approach to leading. It’s how a healthy local democracy is supposed to work. It’s how greater Sacramento can make itself better.
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