“Chris Coursey celebrates historic win”
— The Press Democrat
It hasn’t happened since 1984.
For the first time in 36 years, a challenger defeated an incumbent Sonoma County Supervisor. At the beginning of the race, her chief strategist told the local newspaper it was “impossible” for her to lose. Last week, she conceded after 11 years in office.
This was a campaign of grit and urgency. Including her war chest, the incumbent outspent us by $100,000. We also had to battle $230K+ in independent expenditures (IE) from national realtors and local business interests, including four hit pieces from one of the biggest mail firms in the country. Simultaneously, we had to distance our candidate from an IE made up of toxic oil companies that wanted to defeat the incumbent for her votes on a regional board which few voters knew about. We described the race publicly as “David vs. Goliath vs. Goliath.”
We built a strong ground campaign, recruiting 300+ volunteers (including some of the best volunteer leaders we’ve ever had, wow!). Together, we worked nonstop for ten months to contact 30,000 voters on the ground and on phones. We cut every corner in the budget to squirrel away donations from 600+ people, the vast majority of which were online small dollar donors, to pay for five mailers and dozens of Facebook and online ads. We worked every day through the holidays and rainy season as we sought to oust a powerful incumbent.
Our candidate, Chris Coursey, was Mayor of Santa Rosa during the devastating fires of 2017 that burned more than 5,000 homes. He was also an award-winning columnist and reporter for the local newspaper for 27 years. Over decades, and recently under the toughest of conditions, he had earned the trust of his community.
It all paid off. There were moments of heart palpitations but our resolute candidate, shrewd planning and hard work were strong enough to overcome all of the outside interference and an entrenched incumbent. After he’s sworn in, Sonoma County residents will have Chris Coursey working on their very real challenges of affordable housing, homelessness, emergency preparedness and climate change.
Congratulations, Chris, on your hard-fought win!
(Christopher Chung/ The Press Democrat)
(Kent Porter/The Press Democrat)
(Photo by John Burgess/The Press Democrat)
