Mitchell, Herrod win Healdsburg city council seats, 3rd race a toss-up

Fifteen seconds after the numbers came in from the Sonoma County elections office, Tom O’Hair stood behind the bar at Cartographer Wines in Healdsburg, peering at a computer terminal.

The news was good for his wife, Evelyn Mitchell, who led the four person at-large field with 35.4% of the vote, all but assuring her of winning one of the two open four-year seats on the Healdsburg City Council.

Nailing down the second seat was Chris Herrod, a first-time candidate who is now chair of the city’s Parks and Rec commission. He had 34.2% of the vote in early returns.

The race for a third seat, a 2-year term to fill the vacancy left open by the abrupt resignation in May of Skylaer Palacios, was still too close to call Wednesday with only 33 votes separating candidates Ron Edwards and Brigette Mansell.

Edwards, who ran a catering business in Healdsburg for 25 years, while also operating a cannabis nursery in Mendocino County, led with 45.8% of the vote. Trailing with 44.4% was Brigette Mansell, a retired high school teacher who served on the city council from 2014 to 2018. Mansell was mayor her final year on the council.

A first-time candidate who was something of an x-factor in the race, Edwards attributed his strong showing to his ground game. He walked “every street” of the city, he said, a total of 125 miles since early September.

“I knocked on doors that hadn’t been knocked on,” he said. “I didn’t let that very steep driveway stop me.”

But Mansell wasn’t conceding anything. She’s been in this spot before. The last time she ran for city council, 8 years ago, she trailed by 10 votes on election night. “It took 3 weeks,” she recalled with a laugh, but she came back and won by 40 votes.

She wants to return to the council because she sees a city that has been pushed “out of balance” by a continued “influx of money,” the rise of “ultra-luxury” developments north and south of town, and the exodus of “local-serving businesses.”

Mitchell served as the city’s mayor in 2020 and 2021.

She’s eager to put her experience to work. Mitchell likened her first term on the council to “drinking from a firehose,” adding, “You don’t know what you’re doing, but you try to pretend that you do.”

Her broad base of support included endorsements from the Sonoma County Democratic Party, Sonoma County Alliance, Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce, all three of her current City Council colleagues and many notable local elected officials.

A musician and former Mr. Healdsburg, the politically progressive Herrod also had wide support, securing endorsements from the Sonoma County Democratic Party, outgoing Mayor Jimenez, Vice Mayor Ariel Kelley, the Sonoma County Conservation Action and North Bay Labor Council.

He and Mitchell easily outpaced boutique owner Susan Graf and Linda Cade, a “nutrition/life coach” and retired financial analyst whose family goes back four generations in Healdsburg.

Trailing both Mansell and Edwards in the race for the two-year seat was Matthew Lopez Jr., 23, and a member of Healdsburg High School’s Class of 2017. He is now a PhD candidate in physics, taking a break from his studies. Like Mansell, he cites water availability as perhaps the most important issue facing the city.

Lopez entered the race, he told the Press Democrat last week, because “I had some savings and a lot of free time, and if I didn’t do it, no one else would.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.