Northern Sonoma County supervisor race seen as key to board's balance

In doing so, McGuire managed to get endorsements from a wider range of groups than both his predecessors and presumptive successors in the north county seat. Seen as "middle of the road and cautious," McCuan said, he has been the swing vote on several key board decisions in recent years.

Gore, McCuan said, appears closer to McGuire's political mold, though the county supervisor has not made an endorsement in the race and has declined to signal whether he will.

Gore, who lives outside Healdsburg, describes himself as a business leader who learned how to manage staff and budgets as assistant chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service under the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Raised in Cloverdale and Santa Rosa and a graduate of Montgomery High, Gore has had to fend off the perception he's a newcomer or an opportunist who moved back to Sonoma County to run for office.

He moved back to Sonoma County early last year and said he decided to run for supervisor around October, when he heard McGuire would not seek re-election.

"I've never been a person who doesn't jump when there's an opportunity to serve," he said.

Recently, Gore has done consulting work on environmental issues and has worked for the California Economic Summit, a conference that brings together leaders from throughout the state to tackle a range of issues.

Before his job in the Obama administration, Gore served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia and worked for wine trade associations before joining international trade services consulting and lobbying firm JBC International in 2006.

While at the National Resources Conservation Service, he said he led conservation efforts, including programs focused on the Russian River, securing more than $12 million to protect endangered and threatened fish on the North Coast.

Gore said other efforts focused on delivering resources to persistent poverty areas for programs dealing, for example, with water reliability and irrigation efficiency.

When it comes to others in the race, observers are downgrading Foppiano's chances after recent revelations that he has owed more than $1.5 million in income taxes to the Internal Revenue Service for years, according to liens filed against him by the federal government.

Foppiano, who has disputed the claims, said the matter stems from a disagreement over his income and deductions as a mortgage and real estate broker. He insisted he has always paid his taxes. But other liens filed against him by Sonoma County for long overdue business taxes, and some court judgments against him for money he owed, have clouded his political prospects.

"A lot of people look at a situation and give a pass to anyone who is audited," Sobel said. "What they see with Foppiano is a pattern. People look at patterns and are disturbed by them."

Churchill, a winery owner and entrepreneur, has made public pensions his main theme, pointing out what he says is a $1 billion unfunded pension liability for the county — the difference between what is owed, and what is available to pay for promised employee retirement benefits.

He said escalating county pension costs have siphoned money away from programs that pay for road repair, social programs and parks.

"It was done because of poor management decisions made a decade ago," Churchill said, hammering especially on a decision by supervisors and county officials at the time that retroactively boosted pensions for employees' past service.

Over the next decade, fueled by the enhanced benefits and massive investment losses that forced taxpayers to fill the shortfall, annual county pension costs jumped more than 300 percent, to more than $98.3 million a year currently.

But analysts say Churchill's single focus on pensions — after a round of state-mandated changes and other county moves to curb retirement costs — is unlikely to capture enough votes to get him elected.

Rhinehart, who briefly ran for 1st District supervisor in 2012 before withdrawing, also is seen as a long shot.

He acknowledged he got in the race to keep Fudge from winning.

"I'm afraid we're at a tipping point where special interests, especially extreme leftists — environmental special interests — will tip the Board of Supervisors," he said in a forum Monday.

Fudge, for her part, highlights her background in environmental planning and work to address the sprawl she saw unfolding in Windsor 20 years ago.

After a stint on the Windsor Planning Commission, she's been elected six times to the Town Council, where her colleagues have five times appointed her mayor.

She touts Windsor's relatively strong budget and healthy reserves and is proud of the role she played in helping to create a mixed-use downtown of residences and businesses centered around the Town Green.

"We were an exit on the highway. Now we're a town with a heart," she says in her stump speech.

Fudge points to her involvement in Russian River cleanups, her contribution in launching local water savings programs and her early support for Sonoma Clean Power, the new public venture seeking to provide a greener alternative to PG&E. Fudge is a retired PG&E environmental specialist and senior program manager.

The past chairwoman and current member of the board of Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit has touted her role in bringing the commuter train to Sonoma County. Fudge took over leadership of the train's board of directors during a time of turmoil as the agency struggled with declining tax revenue caused by the recession.

Despite the troubles, she has been a persistent champion of the train and touts the fact that the agency is expected to begin service from San Rafael to Santa Rosa in 2016, with train cars from Japan already in this country.

But she's also been subject to criticism that the sales tax measure to fund the commuter trains was oversold to voters.

Delays in establishing the train service have sparked other complaints, with 4th District residents unhappy the line won't run — at least initially — the full 70 miles from Larkspur to Cloverdale as originally intended.

SMART only has the funds to extend the line north to near the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport.

Officials continue to look for funding to extend the line farther, to Windsor, Healdsburg and Cloverdale.

As she walked a precinct in Cloverdale's Del Webb retirement community on Wednesday, she told residents the train is inching its way north.

"Are you going to bring the train to Cloverdale?" asked one octogenarian.

"You bet," she replied. "We aren't quitting until the trains roll into the station."

Both Fudge and Gore are going door-to-door with their volunteers, visiting thousands of homes occupied by people who vote in most elections.

They are scouring the most populated areas of the district for support, following the same energetic ground game that propelled McGuire to county office four years ago.

"When I'm exhausted, feeling tired, when I need to regenerate, I come out walking. It feels good," Fudge said while knocking on doors in Cloverdale. "I love that I can connect with people of all types. It's what it's about."

The same afternoon, Gore was going door-to-door in the working-class Presidential Circle neighborhood in Healdsburg.

"I like to talk to the person, engage, look a person in the eye," Gore said, adding that he wants to hear their concerns, whether it's about roads, water or traffic.

"We have great momentum now," he said. "We're doing good on fundraising. We have an active, focused, fresh volunteer base. Our signs are everywhere."

You can reach Staff Writer ClarkMason at 521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com.