Pluckebaum’s lead doesn’t reveal what District 4’s throng of non-voters really think | Opinion
In the Sacramento City Council’s most bruising campaign, the race for downtown’s District 4, incumbent Katie Valenzuela trails challenger Phil Pluckebaum. But this race didn’t live up to its billing of providing deep new insights into how Sacramentans feel about the city’s handling of homelessness, crime or growth.
Most Sacramento voters chose to sit out this election cycle..
Opinion
Valenzuela received 11,570 votes in 2020. She is on a trajectory to coming nowhere close to that tally. It’s possible that the entire vote count for the three District 4 candidates may not reach Valenzuela’s 2020 vote tally when all is said and done.
District 4, however, is on a path to being the most active city council campaign in this election cycle. It may be three times the turnout for the District 2 vacancy in North Sacramento left by the early departure of its indicted councilman, Sean Loloee.
The District 4 swath of Sacramento, from downtown to midtown through East Sacramento to River Park, remains an important barometer of the public mood. It’s simply a hard barometer to read when the signal is so faint.
The only discernible measurement of any election is by analyzing those who voted. The first, second and third issue in this race was homelessness. Pluckebaum as challenger could assume the mantle of change agent fed up with homeless encampments on the streets. Valenzuela was left to defend her record, pointing to her success in establishing the first city-managed encampment site at Miller Park.
Valenzuela opposed District Attorney Thien Ho’s lawsuit against the city. Pluckebaum seemingly neither outright opposed or supported it, saying that the DA wouldn’t file a case he thought he couldn’t win.
The candidates’ support bases could not have been more different. Valenzuela’s camp is firmly in the city’s progressive political movement, with some union and neighborhood support. Pluckebaum collected just about every endorsement from the establishment save for Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who supported Valenzuela. Police, fire, business, realtors, apartment owners, they all funded Pluckebaum, some with independent expenditure campaigns with nasty mailers that felt inappropriately personal more than political. Some of the attacks against Valenzuela were downright mean.
For all the effort by the candidates and the intrigue over the outcome, we are left with a mystery of what the totality of District 4 thinks about what’s going on. They didn’t express it through voting.
If there is one tea leaf to decipher in this turnout about Valenzuela and Pluckebaum, it is about our youngest of voters. Few showed up in early ballot returns while seniors 65 and over were initially outvoting the youngsters at rates of seven to one.
Sacramento is still waiting for a progressive movement to turn into action at the ballot box in city elections.
Some undoubtedly don’t like the choices for president. Some may not like what they see in the Middle East. Some may be turned off by a City Hall obsessed with its pay increases. There are valid reasons to be frustrated with all these issues but movements don’t happen by staying away from the polls.
It may be that when we look back on the March 2024 election in the city of Sacramento, we’ll remember more than anything how the next generation of city leaders stayed home on election day.
