by Yucheng Tang
posted Nov. 7
Nov. 8 UPDATE: The vote gap between Monica McDaniel and Dale Bennett narrowed to just seven votes as of 4:30 p.m. today, with Bennett receiving 3,009 votes and McDaniel 3,002. Updated vote counts will not be available until next week.
Whether challenger Monica McDaniel or incumbent Dale Bennett secures the District 3 seat has become the key question in the 2024 Chico City Council election.
The District 3 candidates are in a tight race; Bennett led McDaniel by only 40 votes Nov. 7, according to the Butte County Clerk-Recorder’s unofficial count that had been updated Nov. 6. The District 3 race will determine which slate will become a majority on the seven-member panel for the next two years.
“District 3 is a swing district and a lot pivots” on the race, said McDaniel, adding that if her opponent isn’t ousted “we’ll just have a lot more of the same. There will continue to be challenges for service providers who want to help the homeless.”
Progressives Katie Hawley and Bryce Goldstein have already achieved solid leads over their opponents. Hawley has earned almost 73% of the vote against Melissa Lopez-Mora’s 27% in District 5. Goldstein leads with a solid 60% over incumbent Deepika Tandon, who has received almost 40% in District 7.
On the conservative side, Michael O’Brien has claimed a lead with 55% of the vote over Mike Johnson, who has garnered 45% with a fraction of the campaign spending in District 1.
At a Meriam Park pizza shop on election night, a crowd of people supporting the progressive Green City Coalition burst into cheers and applause as the first results of the vote count were released. Hawley told ChicoSol at the Nov. 5 watch party that she hoped McDaniel wins so the Council has a progressive majority.
“If we don’t get a majority, then every single decision made will be a fight,” Hawley said. “We’ll have to target the conservative majority for every single decision and have to convince them one way or another. It’ll be tedious work, which I’m more than willing to do. That’s why I signed up to run for City Council, but I would certainly prefer a smoother ride.”
David Welch, chair of the Democratic Action Club of Chico, believes the District 3 seat winner will be clear by Nov. 8. (Councilmember Bennett hadn’t yet responded to a ChicoSol request for comment when this article was posted.)
“There’s still quite a few ballots to be counted,” Welch said. By Nov. 8, however, “there should only be a very small number left to count. If a race is very close after the Friday update, it might still change, but only if very close. Those left to count after that will be unusual cases like signature problems.”
District 1 candidate Johnson was awaiting more results from his own race and confident about the outcome in general.
“I still feel very confident we’re gonna have a majority to put on the Council,” said Johnson, who is part of the liberal/progressive slate. “Even if I don’t prevail myself, I think there’s a very good chance we’re gonna get at least three of us across the finish line.”
“This election is really big for this entire group of progressive people” — Cale Castro
Other political observers are enthused about the likelihood of a more youthful Council. Councilmember Addison Winslow is 29. Goldstein is also 29 and Hawley is 24.
“Having run for City Council when I was 23, I think it’s great that young people are involved,” said former Mayor Michael McGinnis. “What they can bring is new ideas. Obviously, I think the Council has been stuck, not getting things done, and the downtown has been slowly deteriorating. I think they can do some different things. And I think it brings in energy.”
Welch said in the late 1970s, a movement grew on the university campus and moved off the campus and into City government, and “some very young folks” were elected to the Council. “This (election) is a renewal of that kind of energy,” he said.
After learning of her strong lead in the vote count, Goldstein, wearing a purple dress that matched her hair color and a ribbon that declared “ELECTED” at the watch party earlier this week, gave a brief speech to supporters. “I think that really shows people in District 7 have decided that they are not just gonna vote for people who sent the biggest and lousiest mailers, whoever has the most money backing them, the District 7 voters want to vote for people who are actually going to represent the people.”
Goldstein’s mom Shirley Goldstein was sitting in the front row to support her daughter.
Cale Castro, a dental assistant who attended the watch party, said he was a bit nervous about District 3’s result: “If we only have three progressive people on the Council, we could make motions, and we can second motions, but we can’t necessarily pass items. It will still be progress, but there’s a time frame, like we can only have these people in their seats for so long. We want to make progress immediately.”
“This election is really big for this entire group of progressive people, because this is what we’ve been waiting for to actually start making reforms in Chico. There’s a lot of promising things to come, if we win,” Castro said.
Cameron Duquette, a substitute teacher, attended the watch party to support his friend Hawley. He said Hawley has integrity and is a hard worker for what she believes in. He hopes the new City Council can make streets safer for people to walk around and bike and develop more affordable housing “because rent is really expensive.”
As the only progressive councilmember during the past two years, Addison Winslow said he was glad that he will at least have two fellow liberals on the panel.
“I need a second on a motion in order to even have a vote on anything,” Winslow noted. But if progressives can set agenda items for discussion, “we can force those conservatives to take a stance on things. We could at least force them to vote on something, and they would have to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘abstain.’”
Winslow wants to make the process for putting things on the agenda more transparent and democratic, noting that the Council removed the ability councilmembers previously had to submit written requests for agenda items.
The biggest challenge for the newcomers, said McGinnis, will be learning all the ins and outs of how the government works. “The City has hundreds of employees, and I think it has a $150-million budget. So it’s a big organization. So you gotta learn all those things — they will; they seem to be bright young people.”
Welch said he was excited to see the next generation coming along.
“They all had teams of people around them who ran really good campaigns,” he said. “If we only have the three seats on the Council, there are going to be some areas where it’s probably harder to make progress and other areas where I think it will be easier to make progress.
“Development patterns and revitalizing our downtown may be one of those areas where they can work with some of the more conservative members in constructive ways and work to accomplish some important things.”
Yucheng Tang is a California Local News Fellow reporting for ChicoSol.
Fingers crossed for Monica
At the Saturday Chico Farmers Market, Addison and long time political activist Mike Hawkins both extrapolated that there were about 300 votes left to count in District 3 and the trend was in Monica’s favor.
Hoping for Monica. She is not in my district but I would have voted for her.