Chris Rogers brings his State Assembly campaign to Sebastopol
The former mayor of Santa Rosa is running for State Assembly. He's got some tough competition.
On Sunday, Jan. 28, former Santa Rosa mayor Chris Rogers brought his campaign for State Assembly to Sebastopol at a gathering of local activists and politicos at former Sebastopol Mayor Una Glass’s house.
A successful local politician seeks higher office
Rogers was elected to the Santa Rosa City Council in 2016 and 2020. He was chosen by his colleagues as mayor in 2020, becoming the youngest mayor of Santa Rosa at age 33.
He’s been endorsed by Sebastopol Mayor Diana Rich (and former Sebastopol mayors Una Glass and Sarah Gurney), as well as retired Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey and State Senator Mike McGuire, for whom Rogers worked as a staffer for several years before jumping into Santa Rosa politics. He’s also been endorsed by four Sonoma County supervisors, including Lynda Hopkins, James Gore, Chris Coursey and Susan Gorin. (See full list of endorsements here.)
The primary election is coming up on March 5, and Rogers faces stiff competition. Six Democrats and one Republican are running for the 2nd District seat of Assemblymember Jim Wood, who announced in early November that he wouldn’t be running for a final term. (District 2 stretches from central Sonoma County to the Oregon border.)
In what seems like a political hand-off, Woods almost immediately endorsed California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks to succeed him. Hicks, a Southern California labor leader, moved from the southland to Arcata in 2021, making him eligible to run for the District 2 Assembly seat. Predictably, given his background, Hicks has been sweeping up endorsements from statewide labor organizations, though he faces some opposition from within the Democratic party, from those who say it’s a conflict of interest for the party chair to run for office. See this week’s Bohemian story on this issue.
Wood’s last-minute retirement announcement and his endorsement gave Hicks’ potential opponents little time to organize, but what was supposed to be a waltz to the statehouse has turned into a last-minute battleground. There are six candidates on the ballot. In addition to Rogers (D) and Hicks (D), these include Healdsburg Mayor Ariel Kelley (D); Vice-chairman of the Yurok Tribe Frankie Myers (D); Mendocino County Supervisor Ted Williams (D); Cynthia Click, (D) a radio station music director; and Michael Greer (R), a Del Norte Unified School District trustee.
Rogers’ credentials and priorities
A graduate of UC Santa Barbara, Rogers also has a Masters in Public Administration (with a concentration in budgeting) from SSU and worked as staffer first for Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey and then Mike McGuire.
“I ended up working for Lynn and a number of other legislators for almost a decade,” he said. “I worked for the State Assembly, worked for the State Senate, finished up after three years as senior staff for Mike McGuire, our state senator soon to be Pro-Tem. And I spent every day going up and down the north coast with Mike in local communities, talking about local issues, meeting folks who needed help, and figuring out how to translate that over to the state to make sure that the laws that were being written reflected the individual needs of each of our communities. I'm a big believer that one-size-fits-all doesn't really work from a public policy perspective, especially in districts that are as big as this one…What works in Santa Rosa might not work in Sebastopol. It might not work in Ferndale or in Crescent City. And so having that close connection with the communities that you serve is really important.”
The Tubbs Fire happened in Rogers’ first year on the Santa Rosa City Council — the first of many disasters. They honed his priorities.
“One of the things that I'm the most proud of in my time in public service is the investments that we've made in people,’ he said, “putting people first particularly in times of tragedy has been really key for wildfires, a pandemic, a drought and a flood.”
“If you want to know what someone’s value set is, ask them what they led on when they got to help control the agenda,” Rogers said. “For me, it was kids; it was parents; it was low income folks; it was fire survivors. Those were the issues that I led on. We brought forward one of the largest poverty reduction programs in US history. We passed a guaranteed basic income pilot project for single parents. We've got 206 families right now that are benefiting from $500 a month, no questions asked. We're calculating the data, but the spoiler alert is so far they're spending it on shoes for their kids; they're spending it on preventative health care for their kids to make sure that they succeed. We created a first time homebuyer program for low income folks. It's a revolving fund, where you might have the income to be able to pay your mortgage but you're never catching up on your other bills and can't save for a down payment. So we help you with the downpayment now in the city. That's our way of getting particularly low income workers and young workers in our community. We created a baby bonds program where every low income baby in Santa Rosa that is born now has an education account started for them so that when they turn 18 they have access to money for a two year four year or technical training education. I'm a big believer that education is the silver bullet to get folks out of poverty and to move people into the middle class.”
He also touted his environmental credentials.
“I've been the chair of the Sonoma County Transportation Authority for two years and the chair of the Regional Climate Protection Authority. We switched all Santa Rosa buildings over to 100% renewable energy. We do it off of poop power—it's my favorite joke to tell third graders—we take our wastewater, ship it out to the geysers, inject it, turns a turbine, and we run our buildings off of that…I served for three years on the California League of Cities Environmental Quality Committee, including a year as the vice chair and a year as the chair, and now I'm on the National League of Cities Energy Environment Natural Resources Committee and on the boards of directors for Sonoma Clean Power and the SMART Train.”
Rogers sizes up the competition
In this election, Rogers most formidable opponents are candidates Rusty Hicks and Healdsburg’s Ariel Kelley.
“So Rusty has raised $540,000 in two months,” Rogers said. (It’s now up to $590,757.) “It's all LA, it’s all Sacramento, it’s all super PACs. Out of this 540, I think the number was $14,000 total raised from in the district.” That’s just 2.6% raised in District 2. If you subtract the $11,000 donated by his wife, it’s less than 1% raised from the district he hopes to represent.
“The dynamics of this race have been very interesting because you've got this local-versus-state power dynamic that’s played out,” Rogers said. “Even something as simple as I mentioned—my leadership around wildfires—I have our firefighters that are supporting me, while CAL FIRE is supporting him. For our unions, as you heard, locals are supporting me, state-wide unions are supporting him…It's this dynamic that's played out over and over again because he's got a lot of power. He's not a bad guy. He just has zero roots or attachment to our district or understanding.”
Fifty percent of Hicks’ donations have been over $1,000. Almost 30% of his donations have been over $5,000. Only 2.5% of his total haul is made up of donations of $250 or less.
(These figures and those below come from the California Secretary of State campaign contribution website, 2/3/24.)
Rogers said he likes Ariel Kelley, but that her personal and family wealth—she has personally poured $150,000 of her own money into her campaign thus far—puts her out of touch with the average voter. Kelley has raised $466,166 (counting her own $150,000). 12% of that $466,166 consists of donations of $250 or less. (On the other hand, in terms of the number of donations she’s received, 77% of those have been for $250 or less, and 70% have been from within District 2.)
“I really like her,” Rogers said of Kelley. “I enjoyed working with her, but she does not live the same lifestyle that I've lived, coming from immense wealth. Immense wealth is different, and she has not competed for those same endorsements quite as well,” he said.
Rogers said he’s depending on small donors, word of mouth, local endorsements, and door-to-door canvassing—the latter is limited however by the dwindling amount of time before the election. As of today, Rogers has raised $222,080. Like Kelley, 12% of this amount is made up of donations of $250 or less.
Rogers knows it’s going to be a steep climb to win this election, but he thinks he can do it.
“A couple of months ago, when Jim Wood announced that he wasn't running for reelection, I took a look at the district,” Rogers said. “Again, it's enormous, but it's a place that I love and a place that I've served for 15 years at this point as a staff member and as an elected official. I had a conversation with my wife about how nuts we would be to do this. But I felt really strongly when I looked at the other potential candidates that not one of them represented our voice; not one of them had gone through the experiences that we have gone through; and that our communities deserved to have a voice in Sacramento who could reflect that.”
Learn more about Chris Rogers here.
The Sebastopol Times will do profiles of all the candidates in this Assembly race.
I read this and thought favorably of Mr. Rogers, but for some reason his competitors have provided information about why we should vote for them, but not him, on the League of Women Voters website, Vote411. That is an unfortunate omission and makes me wonder about his planning.