The Bee recommends this candidate for Modesto mayor

Sue Zwahlen represents Modesto’s best chance for the change that is needed at City Hall.

People this week began marking ballots for only one race — the runoff for Modesto mayor, between Zwahlen and Doug Ridenour. Ballots must be returned no later than Feb. 2.

It’s encouraging that voters sifted through eight mayoral candidates on the November ballot and advanced the best two to the current run-off, giving Zwahlen 23.8% in the first round and 19.4% to Ridenour, a city councilman whose term ended in November.

The Modesto Bee had endorsed Zwahlen, 66, the first go-’round, because “she’s steady, she’s strong and she knows how to craft unity despite disparate opinions. ” The Bee stands behind that recommendation for the run-off.

Zwahlen’s credentials are impressive: mother of six, four decades as an emergency room nurse here in Modesto, eight years on the Modesto City Schools board, long-time community service with local nonprofits. Experience will help her referee disputes, build consensus and heal political gashes inflicted by the former council.

“Hers is not the loudest voice in the room. She is not the flashiest candidate. She never will command the most attention. But we will take substance over style every time,” The Bee wrote before the November election. It bears repeating.

Ridenour, 69, isn’t the most charismatic politician, either. But he knows the ins and outs of city government, his former service on the Modesto Police force deserves our gratitude, and his name recognition — Jim Ridenour, his brother, ably served two terms as Modesto mayor, before Garrad Marsh and Ted Brandvold — is an undefined advantage.

Modesto’s future looks bright under either candidate, because the winner will take the helm of a reconstituted council; three new members were just sworn in, and a Zwahlen win would put four fresh faces on the seven-person council. That gives the panel a fighting chance to overcome the acrimony and dysfunction that Brandvold was powerless to reverse.

Ridenour bears some responsibility for that rift, leading a faction that openly distrusted Brandvold and destroyed momentum for some of his goals. Ridenour’s involvement as the target of an expensive internal investigation is unsettling; worse was his decision not to sit out the council’s decision to discipline the city clerk — the very woman who had accused him of crude sexual gestures, although investigators largely cleared him of wrongdoing.

He also was photographed without a mask and close to others at the June wedding of former Police Chief Galen Carroll, the very type of event public health officials say should not occur in the COVID-19 pandemic — sending a bad message rightly criticized by Zwahlen. Ridenour has accepted responsibility for “mess(ing) up” and vowed to do better.

Modesto needs a fresh start

What Modesto needs is a break with the past, and a fresh start. Zwahlen is best suited to provide that.

During Wednesday’s noontime debate between Zwahlen and Ridenour, conducted by The Bee, only one person among the candidates and moderators made fleeting mention of the mob chaos developing at that very moment at the nation’s Capitol in Washington, D.C. — Zwahlen. She sees nuance and fine details, and she knows what Modesto needs to move to the next level.

It’s been 30 years since Carol Whiteside left the mayor’s post and joined Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration in Sacramento. Since then, Modesto has been led exclusively by white men, five in a row.

It’s time for a change.

The Bee recommends Sue Zwahlen for Modesto mayor.