Independent campaign favoring Lynda Hopkins formed in race for Sonoma County supervisor

A new independent expenditure campaign has been formed to support Lynda Hopkins and oppose Noreen Evans, the two candidates vying to succeed Sonoma County Supervisor Efren Carrillo representing the west county.

The independent campaign, launched by Occidental attorney and former county supervisor Eric Koenigshofer, is the third to wade into the 5th District race. The other two were formed by labor and environmental advocates supporting Evans and have spent a total of more than $98,000 to date, including on advertising critical of Hopkins.

The new group, formed last week, aims to help rebut those attacks and put Evans on the defensive, according to Koenigshofer, who held the 5th District seat in the late 1970s and is a close political ally of Carrillo’s. Both have endorsed Hopkins.

“People are growing weary about hearing all of this misrepresentation about Lynda,” Koenigshofer said. “We’re going to weigh in and tell the other side of the story.”

The move is likely to make the high-stakes race - for the only Board of Supervisors seat up for grabs this November - increasingly more combative, with the two campaigns and their independent surrogates trading attacks in campaign mailers, online and over radio waves.

Late last month, one of the two independent campaigns supporting Evans spent more than $7,000 on a radio ad seeking to draw connections between Hopkins and those donating to her campaign, including business and real estate organizations and a gravel mining company with operations in the Russian River. The outside campaign supporting Hopkins has yet to respond, but both sides are bracing for a negative blitz as the race enters the final five weeks before the election. Ballots for most Sonoma County voters go out Oct. 10.

“This is what big-money interests always do in county supervisor races, and this campaign looks like it’s going to be quite a nasty one, based on past experiences,” said Evans, an attorney, former state legislator and Santa Rosa councilwoman. She cited the dueling independent campaigns that have factored in recent county races, including the 2014 runoff between James Gore and Windsor Councilwoman Deb Fudge and the 2008 contest between Carrillo and Rue Furch, longtime west county planning commissioner.

Hopkins, an organic farmer making her first bid for elected office, continues to outpace Evans in campaign fundraising, according to the latest reports.

Hopkins raised $150,869 between July 1 and Sept. 24. Evans raised $103,025 over the same period.

Hopkins has brought in $392,537 since she launched her campaign last November, while Evans has raised $275,878 since she entered the race in January, campaign finance records show.

In the latest reporting period, Hopkins received maximum donations from the Sonoma County Alliance, real estate investor Larry Wassem, Silver Oak Cellars in Napa County, Williams Selyem Winery owner John Dyson, and the political fundraising arm of the Operating Engineers Local Union No. 3.

Evans received large donations from the California Nurses Association political action committee, 1st District Supervisor Susan Gorin, former 5th District Supervisor Ernie Carpenter, the Engineers and Scientists of California Local 20 and former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, who is married to Sonoma County Regional Parks Director Caryl Hart. She also received several donations from Lucy Kortum, wife of the late environmentalist Bill Kortum.

Election law prohibits the candidates and their campaigns from coordinating with the independent groups that are advertising on their behalf. The independent groups supporting Evans include a political arm of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which has spent more than $81,000, and the Coalition for a Better Sonoma County, which includes labor and environmental advocates and has spent more than $17,000 in the race.

Hopkins, for her part, has stressed throughout the campaign that she would discourage her supporters from attacking Evans.

“We always encourage our supporters to maintain a positive, policy-based dialogue, but I can’t control what other people do, at the end of the day,” Hopkins said in an interview last week.

“I would say that I have been the one who has been the subject of a negative independent expenditure campaign for the past six months,” she said.

Evans, a political veteran with two decades in elected office, has been less reticent in drawing broad, often critical distinctions with her rival. She has leveled accusations that Hopkins is overly tied to business interests backing her run and has painted herself as the candidate with stronger environmental credentials and a keener interest in sustaining the middle class in Sonoma County. She has endorsements from most major environmental and labor groups, the latter contributing heavily to her campaign. She has also brushed off any notion that the criticism from her side has pushed the envelope for a local, non-partisan race.

“Right now, there is a struggle between those who want to extract profit from Sonoma County and those who want to preserve the environment, and preserve Sonoma County as a place where everybody can live - these are the facts about who is funding her campaign, yet she considers it negative and somehow unfair.”

Hopkins touts her own interest in environmental issues, evinced by related undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University and her nine years running an organic farm with her husband. She offered her sharpest response to Evans and her supporters two weeks ago in a homemade video posted on Facebook in which she was shown kneeling in a pasture surrounded by cow manure and calling her rival’s claims “bullshit.”

The outside group working in her favor could add even more force to that rebuttal in the coming weeks.

“The whole characterization that you have two liberal Democrats running for the same seat and one of them is a demon, based on who supports her, is a lie,” said Koenigshofer, who considered running for his old seat this year before backing Hopkins.

“It’s a horrible way to way to frame local politics.”