Shirlee Zane and Chris Coursey square off in heated race for Sonoma County supervisor seat

It is rare for incumbent supervisors in Sonoma County to face stiff election challenges. But the race between three-term incumbent Shirlee Zane and former Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey is something rarer still.

It is a contest between two former political allies and close friends who dated as recently as five years ago. Their politics both lean liberal, and their priorities for the county align on creation of housing, curbing homelessness and combating climate change and destructive wildfires.

Their intertwined past is now prologue for an increasingly rancorous race - on social media, debate stages and in voters' mailboxes - as big-money proxies have attempted to tip the scale of the most high-profile election for local office.

Zane, 60, is seeking to retain power and influence as the longest serving incumbent on the Board of Supervisors, representing central Santa Rosa and Rohnert Park. She has staked out broad support, hewing to the progressive politics that keyed her rise to public office more than a decade ago while cobbling together more centrist backing from the county's development, real estate and agricultural sectors. Zane says she is running to continue her work across a wide swath of local government, including appointed seats on influential boards overseeing regional transit, air quality and water supply.

“The things that are most important, such as housing, homelessness and mental illness - and a growing senior population - I have experience and expertise in all of those, and proven results as well because of my collaboration,” she said.

Coursey, 65, is a one-term councilman who led Santa Rosa city government as mayor through an unprecedented disaster, the 2017 wildfires, and the start of the region's prolonged recovery. He previously served as spokesman for Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, and before that was a journalist for 27 years at The Press Democrat, where he worked as a reporter and columnist. In taking on Zane, Coursey says he's offering voters a choice in leadership and a new path forward on the county's most pressing problems.

“We can and should do better,” Coursey said. “Shirlee's been there for 12 years, and I honestly think she's lost touch with her constituents.”

They differ sharply on key issues, including the county's approach to its homelessness crisis and its yearslong failure to offload the Chanate Road property in northeast Santa Rosa long eyed for housing development.

Their political personas offer more sharp contrast. Zane supporters cite her dogged, direct demeanor and ability to drive county action on a number of fronts. Coursey, long a close observer of local government, is credited with a more studious, process-driven approach and an ability to communicate that served Santa Rosa well in the wake of the fires, supporters said.

Her critics have called her brusque and self-centered, while his have said he can be temperamental and dismissive from the dais.

Coursey's bid to unseat Zane is the strongest election challenge she has faced since she first won office in 2008 - in a runoff against another former Santa Rosa mayor, Sharon Wright. At that time, Zane was the liberal outsider, endorsed by the local coalition of environmental and labor groups. While support from environmental groups has faded, she has retained allies in organized labor and added others in business, construction and the wine industry over her past two terms.

Coursey is attempting to chart a path mostly to Zane's left, touting his endorsements from the county's largest environmental groups and questioning her ties to entrenched interests - many of the same ones she assailed Wright for embracing 12 years ago.

Zane has endorsements from her fellow incumbents, along with nearly all state and federal elected officials for the area, but Coursey could be a more natural ally for supervisors Lynda Hopkins and Susan Gorin, who are poised to push county action on climate change in the next few years.

Zane is a “vulnerable incumbent,” said Sonoma State University political science professor David McCuan, because of her years in office and her record on contentious issues and the resulting political fallout. Coursey is still the clear underdog, enjoying less support from the political establishment - and slightly less campaign funding - but has unusually wide name recognition for a challenger and a shorter record in office that offers less ground for political attacks, he said.

“There are very few challengers that can defeat an incumbent supervisor in the history of Sonoma County,” McCuan said.

The last time it happened was 1984.

Coursey “comes from a place where he is the only person who can potentially defeat her,” McCuan said. “He's it.”

Proxy campaigns' sway

The 3rd District race is the marquee contest among three for the Board of Supervisors, and the only one that's expected to be close in the historically early March 3 election. Hopkins and Gorin, with massive fundraising advantages and political support, are expected to cruise to victory.

Mail ballots went out Monday to about 80% of the county's 276,931 registered voters. The outcome in the 3rd District hinges on who lands a majority among its 48,380 voters, who are concentrated in Santa Rosa.

The rival campaigns have shifted into high gear, flooding mailboxes and doorsteps with glossy advertisements and pushing messages onto cellphones and social media.

Two big-money political players jumped into the fold two weeks ago.

The National Association of Realtors dropped $156,000 in favor of Zane on polling and a ground campaign.

Oil and gas companies, meanwhile, have formed their own independent expenditure committee in a nascent effort to knock off Zane. The group has received $49,000 from Chevron and has spent $9,000 on a mailer touting Coursey's leadership in the wake of the fires. But Coursey has sought to distance himself from what he called “Big Oil,” going so far as to file a complaint with election regulators.

“Butt out,” Coursey said in an interview, echoing a campaign statement he made in late January before the group had spent any money.

Zane, on the other hand, has embraced the support from real estate interests, while voicing concern that oil and gas groups were working to oust her from the influential board seat she holds on the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

The outside campaigns are barred from coordinating with candidates and aren't restrained by contribution limits. Their influence over local elections can be a wild card, often dishing up attack ads while candidates focus on more positive messages.

California's housing crisis has given Zane broader cover to embrace builders and real estate interests, which have long served as foils among liberal politicians. Zane has praised those groups as “building the American Dream,” and her rallying cry for the past four years has been “Build, baby, build!”

Big oil, on the other hand, remains in Sonoma County what McCuan called one of the “big, bad bogeymen in politics.”

“If you're saddled with those, it gives undecided voters pause,” McCuan said.

Sparring at debates

The race has been punctuated of late by a series of public forums, including a one-on-one debate that exposed the underlying tension present since Coursey in April announced his candidacy, seeking to unseat his former girlfriend. Zane at the time called the decision “really painful,” saying Coursey had told her he would not run against her.

The two have been linked for the better part of a quarter century. Coursey, as a Press Democrat reporter, chronicled Zane's emergence as a public figure in a 1996 story touting her work as CEO of Sonoma County's now-defunct Hospital Chaplaincy Services.

They worked together during Coursey's tenure with SMART, where he was spokesman from 2008 to 2011 and she was a board member starting in 2010.

They each have endured the death of a spouse in the past decade, a factor that helped bring them together as a couple starting in 2011. They dated off and on for about three years.

When Coursey won election to the Santa Rosa City Council in 2014 - a seat Zane helped him win, endorsing him and sharing her donor list - the two again worked together on local issues. He served as mayor in 2017 and 2018.

But on the campaign trail, their shared past and prior collaboration has fueled some of the bad blood.

Zane has accused Coursey of abandoning fire victims to go skiing, a reference to his decision to not seek reelection to Santa Rosa City Council in 2018. Coursey said Zane is an egotistical leader who would rather blame county staff than take responsibility for mistakes.

At a Santa Rosa Democratic Club debate Jan. 22, Coursey called out one of Zane's most prominent failures in office and political vulnerabilities - her lead role in pushing the county's ill-fated sale of its Chanate Road health care campus to one of her longtime political benefactors, local developer Bill Gallaher.

Coursey called Zane's leadership and bungled public outreach on the defunct deal a “matter of political malfeasance.”

Zane threw jabs of her own, pointing to the endorsements she has landed from Coursey's former colleagues on the City Council, including Santa Rosa Mayor Tom Schwedhelm.

“I'm happy to have the support of my colleagues,” Zane said to open the fiery debate. “In fact, the majority of people who worked with you have endorsed me.”

Records on 2 key issues

Differences exist between the two on some of the county's key issues, including housing and homelessness, and are fodder for continuous wrangling between the two camps.

Each have records on housing creation and the county's homelessness crisis that they are seeking to defend with voters. Zane's is longer, and is highlighted by aspirational promises that have yet to be borne out.

She was chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors in 2017 when the county embarked on a major effort to expand the tight local housing market by allowing development on some of its vacant or abandoned Santa Rosa properties.

So far, just one project has made any appreciable headway - the Roseland Village development, which promises up to 175 apartments and retail space off Sebastopol Road.

The Chanate Road project and the county's bid to unload the former Water Agency headquarters on West College Avenue remain bogged down, meaning none of the roughly 1,200 units touted by Zane three years ago are even on the drawing board.

The breakdown of the Chanate deal - sunk in 2018 by a court challenge launched by her constituents and former state Sen. Noreen Evans, once a close friend - proved an especially bruising episode for Zane, who championed the property's redevelopment. Zane called opponents, including neighbors of the site in her district, “NIMBYs” and “elite segregationists.”

They placed large signs in her McDonald Avenue neighborhood and along her route to work assailing the deal.

“I think maybe we wanted too much,” Zane said recently of Gallaher's proposal, which envisioned more than 800 units of housing on the 72-acre property. “It was too much housing. It was too dense. The neighbors sued. I don't think we did enough outreach.”

Coursey was mayor in 2018 when Santa Rosa and Sonoma County were sued by homeless advocates to stave off sweeps of unsanctioned camps, and he was forced to answer for the city's slow response amid the burgeoning crisis. In his first year as mayor, the city rousted people from the Highway 101 underpasses, from the Santa Rosa Creek Trail and the so-called Homeless Hill encampment off Bennett Valley Road.

In the aftermath, the Joe Rodota Trail in west Santa Rosa became more of a destination for the displaced homeless community, growing after he left office in 2019 to become the county's largest unsanctioned encampment. The camp on county parkland sparked a feud among county and city officials over who had responsibility for dealing with what authorities described as a public health and safety crisis.

The county took ownership, with Zane and Hopkins spearheading a push to relocate dozens of trail residents to a sanctioned camp on the other side of the city, at the county's Los Guilicos Juvenile Justice Center campus.

“The homeless issue is far from resolved in this city, in this county, in this state, in this nation,” Coursey said as mayor in 2018. “But I don't think anybody should expect to see this issue resolved in the short term. We're in this for the long term, and it's going to take a lot to make a big difference here.”

Coursey has since taken issue with the county's approach to the Rodota Trail crisis, saying county leaders should establish multiple sanctioned camps and other shelters in all supervisorial districts.

Zane managed to squash proposals that would have situated camps in her district, including at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds and the county's government headquarters.

“Putting this shelter at Los Guilicos was the wrong decision,” Coursey said. “Treating it like something bad was the wrong message. We need to act as leaders and let people know these are our neighbors.”

Coursey's solution: Put a temporary shelter or establish safe overnight parking at the county headquarters off Mendocino Avenue and at City Hall in downtown. Make government truly own the problem, he said.

“Leadership is embracing challenges, not avoiding them,” Coursey said.

But Zane has pointed to her long record of championing county spending on homeless initiatives and a broad array of mental health and public health services. Examples include two Santa Rosa projects: the 104-room converted former Palms Inn, as well as the 14 tiny homes for veterans at the John Zane-Michael Wolff Veterans Village, named for Zane's late father, a Marine Corps veteran.

“Shirlee doesn't just talk about homelessness, she's taking action to help our most vulnerable get the help they need,” Ross Liscum, a Santa Rosa real estate agent and Zane's appointee on the Sonoma County Fair board, said in a campaign statement.

Endorsement tug-of-war

By the time Coursey jumped into the race last spring, Zane had already secured most of the high-profile endorsements. Of those that remained, most have come her way.

Her supporters include both of Sonoma County's congressmen, three of its four state legislators, Sheriff Mark Essick and District Attorney Jill Ravitch, as well as her four board colleagues and a majority of the Santa Rosa City Council.

“Shirlee Zane has been an excellent colleague to work with on coordinated city-county issues, including wildfire recovery, homelessness, mental health services and improving the condition of our roads,” Schwedhelm, the Santa Rosa mayor, said in a prepared campaign statement.

But Schwedhelm, along with veteran Santa Rosa Councilman John Sawyer and all of Zane's fellow supervisors, said Coursey would be a competent leader on county issues.

“I've got nothing bad to say about Chris Coursey,” said Supervisor James Gore, who was chairman of the board in 2018 following the 2017 firestorm. “I've worked well with him over the years.”

Zane's biggest donors in this election include a cross section of the county's political and business elite, including the Jackson wine family, longtime Democratic Party bundlers Tony Crabb and Barbara Grasseschi and the Sonoma County Alliance, the county's dominant business group.

They've helped Zane amass more than $140,000 as of the latest reporting period, outpacing Coursey by about $9,000.

Coursey's major supporters include the local Sierra Club chapter, Sonoma County Conservation Action and a collection of current and former elected officials across the county. Among the incumbents supporting him are Santa Rosa Vice Mayor Victoria Fleming and Councilman Chris Rogers, as well as longtime Rohnert Park Councilman Jake Mackenzie and former Zane rival Sharon Wright.

Coursey has staked out support especially from environmental interests who have warily watched Zane court support from developers and builders.

“What the future may bring with wineries, water, pesticide use,” said Sonoma County Conservation Action President Neal Fishman. “You look at where people get their support, what the future may bring, the board made its decision based on those sorts of concerns.”

Zane said it's a good thing that people and interests who once opposed her now support her candidacy.

“That means I've been successful!” Zane said. “I have such broad support. I can work with all of those different factions and bring them together.”

The county's Democratic Party deadlocked on an endorsement after favoring Coursey in early rounds. It supported Zane in all of her past elections, including 2016 when she was unopposed.

Paths to politics

In addition to their shared past, the two candidates have some similar storylines. Both were raised in military families - Coursey's father was an Air Force officer. Both moved around quite a bit before settling in Sonoma County. Both are parents.

Coursey was born in California, but spent most of his youth in Colorado, attending the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley to study journalism - at a time, he noted, when journalists were stars in the wake of the Watergate scandal that took down President Richard Nixon.

Coursey landed at The Press Democrat as a reporter in 1980, and worked at the paper until 2007, serving as a columnist during his last eight years.

“That helped get me more interested in putting myself out there,” he said.

Coursey says he didn't actually think about seeking public office until 2013, two years after his stint as spokesman for SMART.

Zane grew up in Southern California before moving north to pursue higher education, earning an undergraduate degree from Chico State and a master's in counseling from Sonoma State. She earned a second master's degree, in theology, from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School outside of Chicago.

She became ordained as a minister in the conservative Evangelical Free Church of America, and served for a time as a missionary in Venezuela and then south central Los Angeles. She headed up the chaplaincy service in Sonoma County, then served as executive director of the nonprofit Council on Aging until becoming a county supervisor.

Carroll Estes worked with Zane when she was the CEO of the Council on Aging and called Zane “a bulldog,” crediting her for being deeply engaged and educated on issues and making things happen.

“I really appreciate her courage to speak out about what she thinks about things,” Estes said.

Coursey's supporters, meanwhile, say his eloquence and congeniality give him a unique ability to work across the community.

Mackenzie, the Rohnert Park councilman and former mayor, said he has “great confidence” Coursey would make a fine supervisor.

“I believe he'll bring an energetic, lively and communicative approach to the office,” Mackenzie said.

Board's makeup at stake

A win by Coursey would splinter the board's historic female majority, a fact that Zane has highlighted on the campaign trail.

She has used the hashtag #KeepTheFemaleMajority in social media posts about the election.

That majority was reached in 2016, when Hopkins joined Zane and Gorin, a former Santa Rosa mayor who has sparred of late with Zane over homelessness and recently considered endorsing Coursey.

In a year when the country is celebrating the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage, Coursey acknowledged the potential minefield gender politics could play in the race. He addressed it head-on in the Santa Rosa Democratic Club debate last month.

“In case you hadn't noticed I'm a white man, of a certain age,” Coursey said. “But in this election, I represent change and I represent innovation.”

Coursey said his election to the Board of Supervisors would change the tenor and tone of work with colleagues, constituents and county staff, who have all endured sometimes withering criticism from Zane.

She recently sent an email to top administrators berating them for poor communication, including not keeping her abreast of key developments related to the county's efforts on homelessness. She forwarded the email to The Press Democrat.

“I think it's our job as county supervisors to hold staff accountable,” Zane said, describing her treatment of staff as good leadership. “I think that's what we try to do.”

“Confidence in women is often called ego,” Zane said.

She has pulled the levers of incumbency, soliciting from county communications personnel photos and short summaries of agency accomplishments that she then posts on her personal Facebook page. She uses campaign funds to sponsor those posts, which public employees helped create while on the clock.

“They didn't have to take time to put it together; they sent an email,” Zane said, defending the practice. “I could do it for them. I could do it for them. But I'd rather hear it from them. And you know what they say? They really love those posts.”

Coursey has called Zane's use of taxpayer resources wrong and potentially illegal.

“I wouldn't do that,” he said. “But if anyone suggested that I should, the first thing I would do is check with my attorneys and campaign consultants. …. Using county resources in your own campaign flies against all campaign finance laws that I know of.”

McCuan said the line between campaign activity and simply informing the public of the work of its government have long been blurred.

“Incumbents are advantaged and can push the envelope,” he said.

In Coursey's 1996 story about Zane's leadership at the top of Santa Rosa-based Hospital Chaplaincy Services, she was portrayed as an executive who got things done. A board member described her as “dynamic and creative, with incredible energy and marvelous ideas.”

Her supporters say that's still the case.

“I'm going to continue to be the voice for the voiceless,” Zane said. “That's my calling, and that's why I'm still here.”

But Coursey stressed that the 3rd District and county would benefit under his leadership, pointing to his close relationship with cities and his eagerness to engage with residents.

“Collaboration and cooperation are exactly what we need in local government,” he said, “and I think Shirlee fails the first test of Politics 101 - that's collaborating with your constituents.”

You can reach Staff Writer Tyler Silvy at 707-526-8667 or at tyler.silvy@pressdemocrat.com.