Modesto voters get seven choices for next mayor to lead city in tough times
Modesto voters will pick among seven mayoral candidates in the Nov. 3 election, the largest number of office-seekers in at least four decades. And they range in experience from a church pastor to a community organizer.
Whoever is elected will lead a city that faces the familiar challenges of tight budgets, promoting economic development, the lack of affordable housing and homelessness. But this comes in the midst of the new coronavirus pandemic, which has clobbered the local economy and added more stress to the city budget.
And the seven-member City Council is fractured, with bickering, distrust and infighting among council members. But that could change with the November election. Because of incumbents not seeking re-election or running for other offices, the council will have three to five new members.
The mayoral candidates are Councilwoman Kristi Ah You, Mayor Ted Brandvold, co-Senior Pastor Rick Countryman with Big Valley Grace Community Church, community organizer Naramsen Goriel, Councilman Doug Ridenour, political newcomer Erin Sommer Tenorio, and former Modesto City Schools board member Sue Zwahlen.
Bert Lippert, the city’s building safety program coordinator, also will be on the ballot, but he has dropped out of the race.
A candidate needs a majority of the vote from the Nov. 3 election to become mayor. If no one reaches that threshold, then the top two finishers proceed to a Feb. 2 runoff election.
Three women are among the candidates. Modesto has had just four women run for mayor since 1979, when Peggy Mensinger was elected Modesto’s first female mayor since the city’s charter went into effect in 1911.
And Modesto is holding the election in an even year after decades of electing its mayor and other council members in odd years. The current mayor and council members are receiving an extra, fifth year in office as the city makes this transition.
Kristi Ah You
Ah You, 50, is managing partner for the Franklin & Downs funeral homes in Modesto and Ceres. She was elected to the City Council in November 2015 and in early March said she would not run for re-election.
But in July she announced she was running for mayor. Ah You said she changed her mind because of the new coronavirus. She said Modesto needs a mayor who from the very first day in office understands the complexities of city government to help lead the city through the pandemic and the economic pain it has brought.
Ah You has been one of Brandvold’s biggest supporters on the council but said she does not believe the mayor — who is soft-spoken and often says little at council meetings — will win a second term because he does not excel at public speaking. And she said she has concerns about two of his decisions.
The first was in April when Brandvold and several other Stanislaus County mayors sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom requesting he pursue “an aggressive strategy for reopening our county for business.”
Brandvold does not believe the city should enforce the state’s coronavirus restrictions and the economy and life should resume as it was before the pandemic but with precautions.
The second was Brandvold’s push to put an urban limit line — which would put a boundary around the city and direct where growth could occur — on the November ballot.
But he did not have the votes among council members to do that. And his proposal drew opposition from the county and others who said he skipped steps in developing it, including not getting full participation from the public, and even from council members and city staff.
“You need complete public engagement,” Ah You said. “This is not something you do behind closed doors in the middle of a pandemic.”
Ah You has participated in the bickering and infighting at council meetings. But she said that would end if she were mayor because she would have the authority to control meetings and make sure council members stay focused and treat one another with civility.
She has reported raising more than $112,000 for campaign in filings with the city. The campaign donations include $100,000 from one of the owners of Phenos, a Modesto cannabis dispensary. The contribution came after Ah You responded to the dispensary’s complaints of bad behavior by police officers.
Ted Brandvold
Brandvold, 61, is an architect and the owner of Commercial Architecture Inc. in downtown Modesto. He said in a Bee candidate questionnaire that he is running to continue the work from his first term, including bringing greater honesty and openness to city government, developing a financially sustainable budget and increasing the number of police officers.
But he can be at odds with his own government and fellow council members. He has expressed mistrust at times of top city officials. And Brandvold can find himself on losing council votes.
For instance, only Councilman Tony Madrigal voted with Brandvold at the June 30 meeting on the mayor’s proposal for police staffing in the city’s new budget. Brandvold opposed the recommendation, which the council approved, of reducing the number of police officer positions from 240 to 210.
These are budgeted positions. Police Chief Galen Carroll said over the summer he actually had about 216 officers then, and the practical effect of the reduction is he would have about 210 officers as he did not replace officers who retired. While the Police Department had been been budgeted 240 officers since 2016, Carroll has said the department never reached that number and typically had about 220 officers.
City officials, including the police chief, have said hiring more officers would come at the expense of city parks, recreation programs and other quality-of-life services. Officials say the city’s revenues have not grown as fast as the city’s expenses, including employee salaries and benefits.
A look at the budget illustrates that. For instance, the city’s 2006 budget allocated $50 million for the Police Department and 264 sworn officers and 108 civilian employees. The current budget allocates $70.7 million for the department, which includes 210 officers and 103.5 civilians.
“We need to look citywide for efficiencies and even within the Police Department,” Brandvold said. “It’s our No. 1 responsibility to our citizens, their safety. That’s police and fire.”
Brandvold also has faced criticism throughout his tenure that he does not involve other council members and city staff in his decisions. He said that is unwarranted because his proposals do come to the council and cannot move forward without its approval.
The mayor said at a recent Bee editorial board candidate forum that despite the City Council’s occasional struggles it has come together to accomplish “a considerable amount of very good things.”
He said that includes increasing reserves for the $140 million general fund, which primarily pays for public safety, from $3 million to $18.4 million. But nearly half of the increase came when the city was able to reallocate $7 million from restricted to unrestricted reserves.
Brandvold also led the effort for the council to hire an auditor to bring more accountability to City Hall and prevent some of the city’s problems in recent years. That includes hiring a firm for health insurance that offered a low cost that proved too good to be true, leaving the city with several million dollars in unpaid medical claims.
But the auditor left after less than eight months on the job after a divided council approved paying her a $225,000 settlement in 2018. The mayor says if he is re-elected he will work to hire another auditor.
When asked how much responsibility he bears for the council’s problems, Brandvold said: “I did work hard to bring them together. I brought in a (team-building ) consultant on three occasions to work with them.”
Brandvold has reported raising more than $94,000, including $35,000 he has lent his campaign.
Rick Countryman
Countryman, 59, is co-senior pastor of Big Valley Grace Community Church. He has been a pastor at the church for 35 years. He was senior pastor for about 13 years until earlier this year when he took on the role of co-senior pastor so he could step away from the church’s day-to-day operations.
He said in a July 2019 story that about 3,000 people attend Big Valley (that was before the pandemic), making it among the five largest churches in Modesto. The church also has a K-12 school with about 800 students.
He has said Big Valley and its school and other ministries have about 150 employees and an annual budget of about $12 million. Countryman said that experience overseeing a complex organization shows that he has the leadership skills to make the transition to mayor.
Countryman said as a leader he knows how to listen to people, build consensus and develop a vision for an organization. And he said once a decision has been made he knows how to get the word out. “It doesn’t do any good to make a decision if it’s not communicated to people,” Countryman said.
He said he would focus on homelessness as mayor. He said that was the top issue for residents before the pandemic, and it will be the top issue once we are past the pandemic. He said often the root cause for someone’s homelessness is addiction. “It’s the crisis within the crisis,” Countryman said.
He would advocate for a long-term strategy to get more help for those struggling with addiction, including treatment centers, transitional housing and other services.
Countryman said in the July 2019 story that he understands a mayor who also is a pastor could tweak some people’s minds. And he said while he “believes in the lord and has a biblical view of the world that shapes his thinking,” he is running to be the mayor of all of the residents of a very diverse city.
“People are not electing a pastor of the city,” he said. “They want someone to be a leader of the city.”
Countryman has reported raising more than $107,000 for his campaign. That includes $2,500 from Stanislaus County Supervisor Kristin Olsen’s campaign and $2,950 from PMZ Real Estate CEO Mike Zagaris.
Naramsen Goriel
Goriel, 36, is one of the founders of Indivisible Stanislaus, part of a nationwide effort to elect progressives, enact progressive policies and oppose the Trump administration, and is a longtime community organizer.
The first-generation Assyrian American also serves on the city’s Board of Zoning Adjustment and Landmark Preservation Commission.
Goriel said he has a unique point of view because he understands government through his service on the two city boards and understands the average person’s concerns because of his work as a community organizer.
“I can bring a different perspective to the council that focuses on the people of Modesto and not self-serving policy for developers and speculators,” he wrote in his Bee candidate questionnaire.
Goriel said as mayor he would focus on the basics, including affordable housing, building a resilient economy, and improving public safety.
He said his solutions to affordable housing include advocating for the City Council to pass a rent control ordinance, converting defunct motels and vacant commercial buildings into housing and promoting the building of tiny homes and other nontraditional housing.
Goriel said a resilient economy focuses on strengthening locally owned businesses and developing local supply chains to serve them.
He said Modesto needs to find the money to restore the firefighter positions it has lost to budget cuts over the years. And he wants to redirect some of the Police Department’s funding to provide resources to those neighborhoods that rely the most on the police.
He said if residents in those neighborhoods can get the help, skills and training they need, they will be less reliant on the police.
Goriel said he would work with the Police Department, neighborhoods and community groups, such as the local NAACP chapter and Black Lives Matter, in developing this proposal. And he said it would not come at the expense of the department’s core mission.
Goriel has reported raising more than $97,000 for his campaign.
Doug Ridenour
Ridenour, 69, is a retired Modesto police sergeant and was elected to the City Council in 2015. His brother Jim served as mayor from 2003 to 2011. Ridenour said in his candidate questionnaire he wants to lead Modesto through these unprecedented times and ensure the city is positioned to thrive in a post-pandemic world.
He said that includes helping local businesses and healing the social rifts that have divided people. Ridenour also wants the city to work more closely with the county and others and look to regional partnerships to solve such problems as homelessness, addiction and growing the economy.
Ridenour said in an interview that as mayor he is just one vote on the City Council. “That is the difference between me and the current leadership,” he said. “I know I that I cannot do this by myself. ... This is not a strong mayor position. I have to work with six other individuals.”
He said everyone on the council respects the mayor, but “we don’t agree with the mayor’s inability or refusal to accept the council members as part of the leadership.”
As far as the problems Modesto has experienced, Ridenour said that can come from budget reductions that cut critical staffing. He said the city has to live within its means but has to be smart about it.
He said that is why it was a good decision for City Manager Joe Lopez to hire Caluha Barnes and Scotty Douglass as deputy city managers. “I guarantee you we are running a better city today (and avoiding potential problems) because of them.”
Ridenour also is caught up in some of the trouble at City Hall. Modesto last year investigated the city clerk’s claims that Ridenour, the city manager and the city attorney at the time had mistreated her. The investigation did not substantiate the claims except that Ridenour has called the clerk and two other female employees the “mayor’s girls.”
Ridenour has reported raising more than $41,000 for his campaign. That includes $500 each from county Supervisors Jim DeMartini and Vito Chiesa. Ridenour also has received $2,000 from the Modesto-based tech firm Datapath.
Erin Sommer Tenorio
Tenorio, 27, has said she works in marketing, merchandising and as a brand representative for sustainable natural products including beauty, food and nutrition, and herbal supplements. This is her first attempt at elected office.
She wrote in her candidate questionnaire and said in an interview that her top priorities include public safety, mental health services and revitalizing the city. Tenorio said revitalization means improving all aspects of the city, from its neighborhoods and economy and taking on the addiction and trafficking crises.
Tenorio said she wants more money spent on training police officers to ensure they are better equipped to handle all situations. She said she has not pandered to or endorsed Antifa or Black Lives Matter, which she called terrorist organizations.
She also wrote that what sets her apart is she understands how the city’s decisions “affect the true, or ‘average’ Modestan (someone who works full-time to support their family, as well as themselves.)“
Tenorio said she supports Branvold’s position of reopening the economy and returning to normal life but would have done it sooner if she had been mayor. She said she is not taking financial contributions.
Sue Zwahlen
Zwahlen, 66, is a retired emergency room registered nurse and former Modesto City Schools board member, serving from 2009 to 2017. She ran for Congress in 2018 but did not advance from the primary.
Zwahlen wrote in her candidate questionnaire that her experience as a nurse and elected official makes her the candidate to lead Modesto now. She wrote she was first elected to the school board during the Great Recession, and the board worked with parents, teachers, students, staff and the community to make difficult budget cuts but still significantly improved graduation rates.
Her top priority, according to her questionnaire, is restoring public confidence in City Hall. “We will operate openly and honestly,” she wrote. “... I will conduct meetings where the members, the staff, and the public are treated respectfully.”
She has said city leaders have not set a good example during the pandemic. She said this is a public health crisis, and the sooner everyone follows the guidelines, the sooner we can get past the pandemic.
Zwahlen said her priorities for the city include public safety, homelessness and updating the general plan so the city can pursue thoughtful economic development.
“We need a fresh start,” Zwahlen said at a Bee editorial board forum. “The problems that we are facing due to the pandemic are real and will take a long time to move past. ... I pride myself on being a bridge builder and on working collaboratively with others to achieve common goals. I would do that as mayor. It feels like Modesto has been in a holding pattern for a very long time, and I want to see us move forward.”
She has raised more than $41,000 for her campaign since entering the race in July. That includes $1,000 each from the campaigns of U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock, and former Modesto Mayor Garrad Marsh. She also has received $2,500 each from Mapes Ranch Investments LLC and Lyons BB Sisk LLC; both companies list Bill Lyons Jr. as CEO.
This story was originally published October 10, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
