Three women have served as mayor of Sacramento in the city’s history
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(FOX40.COM) — It’s been nearly 200 years since the first-ever mayor of Sacramento, William Stout, conducted the city’s first city council meeting on August 1, 1849.
Since then, there have been 56 people to fill the position that represents Sacramento on a state, national, and international level. Of those 56, only three of Sacramento’s previous mayors have been women, according to the Center for Sacramento History.
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The organization, founded in 1953, is a division of Sacramento and is funded by the city and Sacramento County, the organization’s website reads. It aims to “educate and enrich the public by collecting, preserving, and making accessible the [Sacramento] region’s vast cultural heritage.”
These are the women who have served as mayor of Sacramento in the city’s history.
Belle Cooledge
The first woman to serve as mayor of Sacramento was Belle Cooledge. Cooledge, born in 1884, was appointed by the city council in 1948 to hold the position, and according to the Sacramento History Museum, was the only woman mayor of a city in the United States with a population of more than 30,000 people.
Cooledge graduated from Sacramento High School (18th and K Streets) in 1900, received her master’s degree in education from UC Berkeley, and was the first de facto president of Sacramento Junior College, which later became Sacramento City College.
After being appointed mayor, Cooledge served for two years before losing her reelection to the city council in 1951. She would pass away four years later.
The Land Park branch of the Sacramento Public Library and a community center in Sacramento were both named in her honor.
Anne Rudin
The first woman to be elected as mayor of Sacramento was Anne Rudin. According to local media outlets, Rudin moved to Sacramento in the late 1950s before she was elected to the city council in 1971.
Before becoming Sacramento’s 51st mayor, Rudin was the president of the League of Women Voters of California. The nonprofit political organization says its mission is to “build a more equitable California” for the state’s residents.
The organization also has a scholarship, the Anne Rudin Scholarship Fund, to “commemorate the accomplishments” of the former mayor and “enable other women to pursue higher education in the fields of public administration and public policy.”
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According to the Sacramento Bee, Rudin worked to pass a ban on assault weapons in Sacramento during her time as mayor, which was later taken up by the state.
Rudin passed away at the age of 97 in 2021.
Heather Fargo
The second and most recent woman to be elected mayor in Sacramento was Heather Fargo. Fargo served as the 54th mayor of Sacramento from 2000 to 2008 before she was defeated by former NBA player Kevin Johnson, Sacramento’s first Black mayor.
According to information provided by Fargo to an election information website funded by the League of Women Voters Education Fund, she received her degree from U.C. Davis before working at the California Department of Parks and Recreation as manager of the State Parks Volunteer Program.
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“First elected to the City Council in 1989, representing District 1, [Fargo] was re-elected to a second term in 1994, and a third in 1998,” the website reads. “[Fargo] was elected to a four-year term as mayor in November 2000 and was re-elected to a second term in March 2004 beginning in November 2004.”
It continues to say that Fargo was a founding member and first secretary of the Sacramento Tree Foundation.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Fargo is a community consultant who works with the Environmental Council of Sacramento, a nonprofit that, “gives Sacramento environmental leaders a place to come together to create a visionary forum and an action-oriented coalition for the region.”
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