A Monday night candidates' forum in Santa Rosa turned into a referendum on jobs and big-box stores as six of the seven candidates seeking City Council seats jockeyed to differentiate themselves.
The wide ranging discussion touched on hot topics that included public employees' pensions, bicycle friendly improvements to Humboldt Street, the reunification of Old Courthouse Square and planning for SMART commuter rail stations.
But the topic they returned to again and again was jobs, revealing fundamental differences among the candidates about the types of jobs Santa Rosa needs to attract and the best way to attract them.
Mayor Susan Gorin summed up the position of the three pro-business challengers, Jake Ours, Scott Bartley and Juan Hernandez, by dubbing them the "big box slate" because of their apparent interest in "bringing Lowe's back."
"That may be the defining issue of this election. Do you want a big-box store back here in Santa Rosa, with low paying jobs, or do you want something better here in our community?"
The City Council rejected the Lowe's project in September of 2009 on a 5-2 vote. Project opponents cited traffic problems on Santa Rosa Avenue and concern about the negative impact the store would have on local retailers. Supporters of the project cited the city's need for sales tax revenue, free market competition and the jobs it would create.
Ours and Bartley said they thought the city had an obligation to help generate not just high paying jobs, but all types of jobs for all the city's residents.
"We've just seen 600 people trying get 60 jobs," Ours said, noting a story about the arrival of a new In-N-Out Burger.
The debate is likely to be one of the campaign's most influential. It was sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Sonoma County, whose non-partisan forums are widely respected for their impartiality and focus on issues important to voters, and the Neighborhood Alliance, a group focusing on a variety of quality of life issue.
In addition to being broadcast live on Channel 26, the debate will be rebroadcast 15 times on public access channels between now and the election.
Control of the county's largest city is at stake in the election. After decades in power, the pro-growth majorities lost their grip on power for the first time in 2008, when progressive won a 4-3 majority.
A slate of three pro-growth candidates is seeking to regain power by attacking the record of the two incumbents up for election, Gorin and Coucilwoman Veronica Jacobi.
Joanna Schaefer, 27, a recent law school graduate, and veteran Santa Rosa School Board member Larry Haenel, 69, also participated in the forum. Juan Hernandez, president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Sonoma County and owner of a computer repair business, was ill and did not attend the event.
Competing visions of Santa Rosa's business climate were a focal point of the evening, with Bartley and Ours claiming the city has a reputation as toxic, which Haenel and other sharply refuting the notion.
"It just isn't true," Haenel said.
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