Year in Review: Lynda Hopkins’ win marks new era for western Sonoma County supervisor seat

Lynda Hopkins is set to be sworn into office early next month as the first woman elected to represent western Sonoma County on the Board of Supervisors.

Hopkins, a Stanford-educated organic farmer and political newcomer, achieved that feat by prevailing in a hard-fought race against a more experienced rival, former state Sen. Noreen Evans, who began her political career 20 years ago as a Santa Rosa councilwoman.

“We knocked on more than 45,000 doors, we made over 28,000 phone calls, we had 45 meet-and-greets and we held six town halls,” Hopkins, 33, said of the campaign that propelled her to victory. “It was really the relentless personal engagement with voters and getting out there into the community.”

The strength of Hopkins’ win - she claimed 54 percent of the vote to Evans’ 46 percent - and the way in which she achieved it, outperforming Evans even in the Santa Rosa precincts where she was expected to trail, surprised veteran political observers.

In a year when Donald Trump upended the presidential race with a surprise victory, some local pundits saw Hopkins’ win as the triumph of a political outsider. Both Hopkins and Evans are liberal Democrats, and each sought to appeal to the 5th District’s left-leaning voters, with platforms heavy on environmental protection and safeguarding social services.

“Voters looked at both candidates and didn’t perceive that much of a difference, then they went with Hopkins because she broadened her appeal and presented herself as the more likable and agreeable candidate,” said Bleys Rose, chairman of the Sonoma County Democratic Party, which endorsed Evans in the race.

A post-election analysis by the party showed Hopkins biggest electoral gains from the primary to the November runoff were in the 5th District’s Santa Rosa precincts. In the primary, Evans trailed Hopkins there by just 100 votes. In the runoff, Hopkins outpaced her by about 2,300 votes, or 10 percent of her final tally, the party found.

Evans “biggest failing was not turning over those Santa Rosa precincts, which should have been her strong point because they knew her there and that’s where she based her campaign,” Rose said.

The race to succeed Supervisor Efren Carrillo was the only runoff this year for a seat on the Board of Supervisors. It became the biggest local political story partly because its outcome is set to shape future decisions on high-profile land-use issues, such as cannabis cultivation, and housing and winery development. The board next year is also expected to tackle broader county goals, including a proposal to fund universal access to preschool, address still-rising employee pension costs and allocate additional funding for road repairs.

Hopkins’ win came after a last-minute torrent of campaign spending by her allies, who bankrolled a string of political attacks on Evans, including full-page advertisements in The Press Democrat. Lackluster turnout among staunch progressives, and Hopkins’ appeal to a larger bloc of centrist voters were other key factors, said David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political scientist.

“What we saw is a young candidate of a farming family who provided the possibility of a fresh start running against a seasoned politician in an anti-establishment year,” McCuan said. “Lynda provided an identity, while Noreen provided an identity crisis.”

Hopkins secured endorsements from the Sonoma County Alliance, the largest local business coalition, the Sonoma County Farm Bureau and the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce. She received a large share of financial support from business and development interests, including John Dyson, proprietor of Williams Selyem Winery in Healdsburg who runs the New York-based private investment company Milbrook Capital Management.

“I talked to all voters, it didn’t matter if they were Republicans or Democrats or independents,” Hopkins said. “I never said no if someone wanted to sit down for a meeting. I think it’s really important to be accessible and available.”

Evans, 61, performed best in Sebastopol through the primary and general election, and was favored by progressive groups. She raised hefty amounts of campaign cash from major environmental and labor groups and secured endorsements from the Sierra Club, Sonoma County Conservation Action and the Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents the largest group of unionized county employees.

She declined to be interviewed for this story, but representatives from her campaign argued that she was defeated by the rush of attack ads in the final weeks of the campaign. Evans’s supporters cited internal polling data they said showed Evans held a 12-point edge over Hopkins in late September, before the heaviest barrage of jabs came between the two camps.

“There is no question we would have won if there was no independent expenditure campaign,” said Dan Mullen, a San Rafael-based political consultant who took over as Evans’ campaign manager after the primary. “We did not expect all the full-page ads. We did not expect to be hit with negative mailers every few days right up to the election.”

Rob Muelrath, Hopkins’ campaign consultant, said his polling data indicated Hopkins, the top vote-getter in the primary, was ahead all along in the runoff.

The support for the anti-Evans ads - and the largest influx of outside spending in the race - came from a nearly $200,000 independent campaign launched by Eric Koenigshofer, a former county supervisor and prominent Hopkins backer who is also a close ally of Carrillo. Koenigshofer’s group received significant donations from real estate, business and winery interests, including the political fundraising arms of the California Apartment Association and the National Association of Realtors, the Sonoma County Alliance, Dyson of Williams Selyem and William Gallaher, founder of Oakmont Senior Living and a developer of the Bell Village housing project in Windsor.

An independent campaign formed by Service Employees International Union on Evans’ behalf spent more than $81,000 before the primary. An additional independent campaign favoring Evans - run in part by Maddy Hirschfield, political director of the North Bay Labor Council - spent nearly $57,000 in radio and print attack ads leading up to the general election.

Muelrath, a longtime local political consultant, said it was clear to him that the political winds favored Hopkins because she was new on the political scene.

“People were tired of the old-time, good-old-boy politicians and they wanted somebody new,” Muelrath said. “Noreen was not the right candidate for the environmental community and she was not the right candidate for the 5th District. Lynda was a fresh new face and a young organic farmer, and people like that. She inspired people.”

You can reach Staff Writer Angela Hart at 707-526-8503 or angela.hart@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@ahartreports.