Mattson and LeFever: Who are the men behind the sweeping series of Sonoma real estate transactions?

Ken Mattson was firmly on the Sonoma Valley radar by April 2019 after purchasing more than two dozen properties in a four-year span there.

But public perception of the real estate investor took a turn that month when a local food writer, wildfire journalist and gadfly, Sarah Stierch, revealed Facebook posts by Mattson’s wife, Stacy, that expressed disgust over same-sex marriage.

Sonoma has a thriving LGBTQ+ community, and many residents were outraged. One of them was Marcelo DeFreitas, who had lived in Sonoma since 1998 and held the title of alcalde — an honorary title that recognizes unselfish contributions to the community’s welfare — in 2018.

DeFreitas wrote a letter to the editor of the Sonoma Index-Tribune, a Press Democrat sister publication, expressing his opposition to Stacy Mattson’s views. Within 24 hours of publication, Ken Mattson called him to request a meeting.

DeFreitas had met Mattson once before, and thought he seemed like a nice guy. He figured it couldn’t hurt to hash things out.

“I said, fine, come to my house,” DeFreitas recalled. “We had about a half-hour conversation. It didn’t help anything. The only thing I really remember is he told me clearly that his God didn’t accept people like me being gay. That’s when I invited him to go away.”

Four years later, more and more Sonoma residents are inviting Ken Mattson to go away.

Mattson, 61, and his longtime business partner, Tim LeFever, 62, now own at least 116 properties in and around Sonoma, having paid more than $240 million for them. And their antagonists are growing more vocal. People like the grassroots organizers of the group Wake Up Sonoma believe Mattson and LeFever are irresponsible property owners and uncaring neighbors.

Mattson and LeFever declined interview requests through their PR agency, Glodow Nead Communications.

“Due to repeatedly being misrepresented in local media, they have no interest in participating in this story,” agency principal Jeff Nead said in an email, without elaborating on those misrepresentations.

Mattson and LeFever have been friends since before high school, according to old acquaintances who spoke to The Press Democrat but requested anonymity. They were classmates together at Cordova High School in Rancho Cordova, and again at UC Berkeley.

“Ken told me that when they went to Cal together, they did it on purpose, to prove a point,” said David Daniel, who worked for them as general manager at Ramekins Culinary School, the General’s Daughter wedding venue and parts of Cornerstone Marketplace for 10 months in 2019.

“Like, they’re so conservative and Berkeley is so liberal.”

They have their defenders.

“Ken Mattson has volunteered as a track coach at a Christian high school for many years,” said Kathleen Haley, who helped sell her father’s house on East Napa Street to one of Mattson’s companies in 2021, and who has lived in Sonoma Valley for 42 years.

“They make the man out to be an evil person because he’s a Christian. He’s not an evil man.”

Ken and Stacy Mattson attend The Father’s House church in Napa. It’s affiliated with a larger church in Vacaville of the same name, with sister sites in Concord and Roseville.

In college, Mattson majored in economics and LeFever in political science. They hewed to those fields of expertise as professionals, and have teamed up to build a real estate empire, with at least 75 California properties outside of Sonoma. Many of those are apartment complexes. Their portfolio also includes two office parks purchased for a total of $58 million.

LeFever, a licensed attorney, has served as the registered agent for virtually all of their 100-plus limited liability corporations and limited partnerships.

They have never strayed far from the Interstate 80 corridor. LeFever currently lives in Dixon. The primary LeFever Mattson business address is in Citrus Heights.

And the two men stay true to their conservative beliefs.

LeFever ran as a Republican and challenged Democratic incumbent Vic Fazio for California’s 3rd Congressional District, centered in Sacramento, in both 1994 and 1996. LeFever lost both races, but the difference in 1994 was only about 7,000 votes.

Ken Mattson keeps a lower profile. Stacy Mattson donated $3,000 to Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, public records show, and Ken and Stacy attended Trump’s inauguration in January 2017.

That last tidbit was sourced from a post on Stacy Mattson’s Facebook account — just before she made the account private in 2019, following local backlash over her anti-same-sex marriage posts.

In one of those posts, she said she was “disgusted” by the 2013 Rose Parade being “high-jacked by the gay agenda,” adding that “the last thing I want to see in the parade is promotion of sin by being forced to watch a same-sex marriage ceremony,” as the Index-Tribune reported in 2019.

Those viewpoints disturbed Daniel greatly. He scheduled a meeting with the Mattsons, Ramekins executive chef Kyle Kuklewski and Gary Saperstein, owner and organizer of the popular, gay-themed Out in the Vineyard annual event in Sonoma Valley.

“While Ken thought the meetings went well, Gary Saperstein left the meeting disgusted, noting that he would never do business with the Mattsons again,” Daniel said.

Saperstein confirmed Daniel’s characterization of his feelings about the meeting and the Mattsons.

Daniel stuck it out for several more months, then quit. Mattson responded by casting the blame on the employees, Daniel said. “He was so convincing, I doubted myself walking out of the room,” he added, despite his thoroughly cataloged complaints.

Because the Mattsons keep such a low public profile, the hard feelings they generated within Sonoma’s LGBTQ+ community four years ago have not subsided. In fact, they have grown along with LeFever Mattson’s burgeoning real estate portfolio.

“I’m really afraid that we’re going to become invisible again,” Sonoma resident Lisa Storment said at a Feb. 23 town hall meeting hosted by Wake Up Sonoma, after acknowledging her wife in the audience and describing their struggle for acceptance.

“I’m alarmed at the possibility of history repeating itself. LeFever Mattson’s clear ties to the (Council for National Policy) and alt-right conservative organizations, who promote hate speech, hate policies and incite hate actions — it’s coming here. It’s coming to our town.”

The intensely secretive Council for National Policy is, in the words of The New York Times, “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country.” According to records acquired by the Center for Media and Democracy, the organization’s leaders engaged in extensive plans to discredit the 2020 presidential election results and incite the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

LeFever was on the center’s board of directors as recently as 2019, according to the organization’s Form 990 tax filings. He was also a member of the council’s executive board and its “gold circle” in 2020, according to a copy of the organization’s directory posted at Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project.

LeFever was also secretary of the Pacific Justice Institute as recently as 2018 and chairman of the Capitol Resource Institute in 2017, according to Form 990 filings. That’s the most recent form publicly available for the latter group.

The Pacific Justice Institute refers to itself as a “legal organization specializing in the defense of religious freedom, parental rights, and other civil liberties.” Its leadership advocated in 2008 for California Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage and fought a California law protecting the rights of trans students.

The Capitol Resource Institute, according to its website, exists to fight comprehensive sex education and critical race theory in schools.

Its executive director, Karen England, last year spearheaded the campaign against California Prop 1, which enshrined reproductive rights in the state.

To many of Mattson’s and LeFever’s critics, these values run counter to Sonoma’s inclusive, laid-back atmosphere. Taken as a whole, they present a looming presence that can no longer be ignored.

“I feel like we’re fighting to keep the soul of Sonoma,” Wake Up Sonoma’s Lisa Storment said. “It’s a fight for keeping us intact.”

You can reach Staff Writer Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.