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At least two Sacramento City Council incumbents could win outright in the June primary, allowing them to avoid a November runoff election.
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It remains to be seen if District 1 Councilmember Lisa Kaplan will be as fortunate. Despite early returns showing that Kaplan holds a majority of votes, she faces a formidable challenger in the progressive Jenn Chawla and a third candidate who could corner enough of the ballot to prevent Kaplan from winning outright.
Kaplan was leading with 53% of the vote as of 8:15 p.m., Chawla followed with 42% and third candidate Venkat Mechineni has 4.7%.
Kaplan said that the early returns were encouraging but her campaign doesn’t expect to be confident in the results until next week.
“I am hopeful that we can end this is June, but I just want to thank everybody for exercising their democratic process to vote,” Kaplan said.
In Sacramento, around 75% of City Council races in the last 20 years were determined in the June primary election, and the numbers could be roughly similar this year. This election cycle may match that statistic exactly — besides the contentious District 1 race, another two seem likely to end in victories for sitting council members, while the fourth has District 3’s Karina Talamantes winning automatically as she ran unopposed.
District 5 incumbent Caity Maple, representing Oak Park, Hollywood Park and Parkway, leads with 64.5% in early returns. She is likely to forgo the campaign trail this fall — a blessing considering the pregnant politician is due in early September.
Her opponents, Henry Harry and Santiago Mario Morales Jr., have 20% and 15.5% of the vote, respectively.
Longtime Councilmember Rick Jennings, now representing District 7 which covers the Pocket, Meadowview and Greenhaven, held 56% of the vote as of 8:15 p.m., a result which would free him of the obligation to campaign in the fall. Jennings has never had to run in the general election, including when he was first elected in 2014.
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His opponents, Scott Lau and Mark Velasquez, hold 26% and 17% of the vote, respectively.
District 1
Conversations surrounding public safety and homelessness have defined the bitter race In District 1, which covers North Natomas, Robla and Regency Park.
Kaplan is well-supported by local law enforcement and business groups, while Chawla, a former Federal Bureau of Investigations investigative specialist, has earned the endorsements of labor groups, several sitting council members and Mayor Kevin McCarty.
The endorsements for her opponent from fellow council members is unusual, but not surprising for close observers of council dynamics — Kaplan frequently butts heads with McCarty, particularly when it comes to a micro-community of tiny homes he proposed to build on city-owned land in her district. Tensions between the two flared again recently when the mayor shut down her suggestion to freeze, rather than cut, 17 vacant firefighting positions. No other council members opted to weigh in and Kaplan later said that the “lack of leadership failed Sacramento residents.”
Despite being a first-time candidate for public office, Chawla has gained steady support since announcing her campaign last summer and has raised about $150,000 since then. The Sacramento Central Labor Council has also spent around $32,000 on mailers opposing Kaplan.
Kaplan has raised around $140,000 this year alone. The California Apartment Association PAC has spent $53,000 on mailers supporting Kaplan and $20,000 on mailers opposing Chawla.
Kaplan’s PAC supporters have heavily criticized Chawla’s plan for public safety, claiming on mailers that the progressive has proposed defunding fire and police departments. Chawla said that this is a mischaracterization.
In an email to the California Apartment Association, Chawla suggested reducing the fire and police budgets by 10% each, generating about $43 million. She specified in the email that she wanted those savings to come from eliminating vacancies, reforming overtime and structural changes “rather than frontline staffing reductions.”
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