Endorsements 2016: The race for 1st District Supervisor

Make no mistake. Whoever fills the 1st District seat on the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors for the next four years will have their plate full.

And we don’t mean one of those little wine-pairing plates of goat cheese, paella and a stuffed mushroom. We’re talking a 2-pound ribeye with the steak fries and creamed spinach from Saddles kind of plate.

Here’s just a snippet of the issues one of the three 1st District Supe candidates will face: community character vs. tourism economy; vacation rentals; exodus of the middle class; a workforce struggling to afford residency; continuing drought conditions; closure of the Sonoma Developmental Center; transitioning identity of the Highway 12 corridor; changes that will come with the possibility of recreational marijuana legalization; a rapidly greying demographic; and a continued rise in the Latino population.

Oh yeah, and those roads. Those godforsaken roads.

Let’s take a look at the only three people in the region willing to take on that consortium of complications.

Keith Rhinehart is a full-time substitute teacher from Santa Rosa with the swagger of Madden-era Oakland Raider, and a style to match. Rhinehart, 63, cites pension reform as the solution to a host of County budgetary conundrums. And at the I-T’s recent supervisor-candidates forum he was the sole panelist to suggest residential vacation rentals was essentially a right of property owners – a line of thinking we imagine is more prevalent in the Sonoma Valley than is reflected in letters-to-the-editor. Rhinehart is certainly the anti-establishment candidate in what will perhaps be remembered as the year of the anti-establishment candidate. With scant political experience on his resume and a limited campaign reach, he’s got a lot stacked against him with this not-so-anti-establishment 1st District electorate, but his candidacy certainly lends a jolt of energy to the race. While we don’t image we’ll be covering the budgetary maneuvers of a “Supervisor Rhinehart” this time next year, we sincerely wish more thought-provoking community members like Rhinehart would have the courage to seek public office.

Oakmont resident Susan Gorin is the district’s incumbent Supervisor, and she’s met with some successes and a few disappointments. First, and possibly foremost among the latter, is last year’s failed Measure A roads tax. When we met with her in early 2015 to talk about initiatives going into her year as the President of the BOS, she cited as her top three priorities: “roads, roads and roads.” When the post-election dust settled, her slate of priorities was rejected by 62 percent of the electorate. But instead of playing it safe thereafter, the plucky 64-year-old soldiered on with another hard-fought campaign for a vacation-rental-permit moratorium to be included in the County’s updated VR ordinance. It was never going to sway her less-tourism-beleaguered colleagues on the board, but Gorin went to bat passionately nonetheless.

That aside, Gorin has stayed busy. She’s continued the vision of the Highway 12-improvement project – started under her Supe predecessor Valerie Brown – with progress visibly underway, daily, for residents and commuters routed around orange cones as the work progresses. She notably supported grant funding to spruce up the Springs – via the at-times controversial design stratagems of artist Rico Martin, which are apparently bringing plenty of business to those shops newly pasteled by the Sebastopol designer. She’s supporting county funding of universal preschool; says she’s lobbying to keep some residents serviced into the future at SDC; and has been a vocal advocate for affordable housing, having helped shepherd the Fetters Apartments project through a lot of County red tape (residential applications expected to be available later this year).

Gina Cuclis, 57, is president of the Sonoma County Board of Education and has been a tireless advocate for the betterment of Sonoma Valley for much of her life. The Springs resident believes she would have more success than Gorin in fixing the roads (Cuclis is calling for a “set percentage” of the county budget to go to roads), wants to find middle ground between the burgeoning tourism industry and the frustrated neighborhoods which feel its impact, and says the County needs to stop the Sheriff’s department cutbacks that result in high deputy turnover.

Cuclis has served on a host of local community groups and is particularly proud of her efforts that resulted in more sidewalks in the Springs – “we wanted a pedestrian community,” she says, looking back on the 1990s – penning the ballot argument for the successful hospital bond, and championing the inclusion of the hospital’s birthing center.

When asked how voters should contrast her with her incumbent opponent, she describes the former Santa Rosa City Councilwoman as “a student of the issues.”

“I’ve lived the issues,” says Cuclis.

1st District voters should feel reassured they’ve got three thoughtful candidates to choose from on June 7. In all likelihood, this race will come down to the two candidates with the most experience, Gorin and Cuclis, and if neither receives a majority of votes, they’ll face each other in a runoff on the choc-a-block November ballot.

We have every confidence Cuclis would be a sharp and vigorous representative of the Valley on the BOS – and she may very well one day be just that. But we’re not convinced she’s made a case that Gorin should be replaced after a single term.

In her four years on the board, Gorin’s been a strong voice for the district, in the Valley and beyond. From what we’ve seen and heard, she works well with both constituents and colleagues and seems in touch with the needs and concerns of Valley residents. We also like her consistent environmental advocacy, which hasn’t been a major theme in the 2016 campaign but, quite frankly, should be.

If Gorin goes on to serve 1st District these next four years, we expect her to continue her advocacy for fixing roads, mitigation of tourism’s effects on residents, and a more inclusionary role in the community for people of differing ethnicities and income levels.

If not, this column four years from now may result in a different closing statement:

We recommend Susan Gorin for 1st District Supervisor.

– Jason Walsh, editor

– John Burns, publisher