Elk Grove city council races: Analysis, projections and opinion, district five

Incumbent Sophia Scherman faces three opponents in hard-to-gauge-race


For incumbent Sophia Scherman her quest for a third term will take her down a familiar road. In her '04 reelection, Scherman beat five opponents by capturing just 34% of the popular vote.

This time around Scherman faces Bob Felts, Katherine Maestas and KT Tran.

Amongst all the candidates, Bob Felts appears to have the most even and steady hand based on his military, business and life experience. As Elk Grove maneuvers through what surely will be difficult financial times, a person like Felts would be a welcomed addition for the next four years.

The problem Felts faces is simple: money. Although Felts admirably said he was not interested in raising money from the usual suspects, his ability to get his message out ii limited.

The campaign that is the most mysterious to us is that of Katherine Maestas. After a quick jump out of the gate last winter, little has been heard from her campaign.

To the best of our knowledge, we have seen no Maestas signs, mailers or newspaper ads. This is somewhat surprising as she had Democrat heavyweights at her campaign kick-off, is in the political consulting business, received a major endorsement from the Sacramento Bee and had legitimate bona fides to make a serious run at Scherman.

Unless she is running a campaign based on getting the vote out via phone banking, precinct walking, etc., she has run a subrosa campaign that is almost non existent.

Katherine, where are you?

Which brings us to the most colorful candidate running city-wide, KT Tran. The self proclaimed "energy guy" has run on a platform of bringing green energy jobs to Elk grove.

On a certain level, one must admire Tran. His vision for bringing green energy jobs to Elk Grove, while very short on specifics, shows he is thinking in macro terms on the future of Elk Grove. Tran is right when he says we cannot simply develop more low-paying retail jobs.

Tran also made the most outrageous campaign promise when he said the city ought to provide senior citizens with a free gas fill up each month. Even though he might have made his statements in jest, it is a good thing he isn't running against John McCain lest he be called a Socialist.

From a very pragmatic view, for Tran's type of program to work it would require a ton of money, at a minimum a regional collaborative agency (which he does advocate for) and time. We credit Tran for bringing this issue into the campaign.

Tran's campaign tactics have proved to ham-handed though. Tran's proud announcement of coming robo-calls, plastering of campaign signs on public property and message exchanges on Elk Grove Online have not done anything to endear him to voters.

And then there is incumbent Sophia Scherman. In our view, the two-term incumbent has done at best an average job as a city council member.

A review of her mailer notes no outstanding personal accomplishment or major initiatives undertaken. Rather it list of generalities like "turning up the heat on gangs" to "working to eliminate graffiti."



Scherman likes to remind voters that she has lived in Elk Grove for 40 or so years. That might be part of Scherman's problem - her vision for Elk Grove continues to be a bedroom community for Sacramento filled with strip centers and low-paying retail jobs.

We need someone with a great vision for 21st century Elk Grove which Scherman lacks. As former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might say of Scherman, she has a "quaint" view of what Elk Grove should be based on remembrances of days gone by in old Elk Grove.

Alas, even though we would like to see a change of leadership in this district, we project that Scherman will prevail again with a minority-majority vote if for no other reason she has high name recognition bought with funds from real estate developers.