Advertisement

California Journal: Neutrality will only take GOP controller candidate Swearengin so far

Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, the Republican nominee for California state controller.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Share

The mayor of this town is young, telegenic and smart. And she has — please forgive me for using this phrase — gone a little bit rogue. Republican Ashley Swearengin has bucked her party on California’s high-speed rail (she supports it). She has refused to say whether she would vote for the GOP’s beleaguered gubernatorial candidate. She is an evangelical Christian who was for gay marriage, then against it, then for it again.

Now she’s running against Democrat Betty Yee, 57, for the obscure job of controller, the state’s accountant, auditor and bookkeeper. Yee, a member of the state Board of Equalization, has out-raised Swearengin and benefits from the state’s lopsided registration, which favors Democrats.

To win, Swearengin, 42, must appeal to the huge swath of “decline-to-state” voters as well as disaffected Democrats. Even minor displays of GOP partisanship, in other words, are not helpful.

Advertisement

If Swearengin pulls off a win on Tuesday, she becomes the California GOP’s hottest property. But even if she doesn’t, she will have gained something important — a bit of name recognition, plus experience raising money from Silicon Valley to San Diego, prerequisites for higher office.

And higher office, most political observers say, is her quest. But how bright is her political future, really, in a deep-blue state that chews up Republican candidates? Where, for instance, does she stand on issues dear to the heart of socially liberal Californians? Does she really support same-sex marriage? What about abortion rights? Does she believe in a living wage?

On Sunday, I drove up to Fresno to try to find out.

When I walked into Fresno First Baptist Church for the “Mayor’s Night of Prayer,” Swearengin was in front with her husband, Paul, a former sports radio host who is senior pastor of the River, an evangelical Christian church in Fresno.

A band played Christian soft rock. “We want this whole city to come to know Jesus,” said the church’s spiky-haired, tattooed minister, Joe Basile. “And that starts with godly leaders.”

As Swearengin stood to speak, I was primed for something passionate. Instead, she sounded like a chief financial officer delivering a quarterly report — or perhaps a candidate for controller.

Fresno’s unemployment rate has dropped below 8% for the first time in years, she announced. Exports are up 17%. The city is creating jobs at a healthy rate. Fresno County’s gross domestic product is more than twice the national average.

Advertisement

Even when the mayor is praying, she hews to her campaign message.

::

The newspaper editorial boards that have endorsed her (including the Los Angeles Times) revel in the Swearengin narrative: how she has excellent executive experience, how she is nonideological, how she has kept Fresno out of bankruptcy. (Possible Fresno slogan: “We’re not Stockton!”)

From most of the coverage, you would never know that Swearengin suffered at least one major setback on an issue that will certainly be raised if she decides one day to pursue a seat in Congress, say, or the U.S. Senate, or the governor’s mansion.

A couple of years ago, she persuaded the City Council to privatize Fresno’s residential trash collection. The move was projected to cost 120 jobs and save the city millions of dollars over several years. The city’s labor unions rebelled. Within 30 days, they gathered 29,000 valid signatures to put the question before voters in a costly special election. Failure, warned the mayor, could lead to widespread layoffs. The measure did fail, in a squeaker, but the layoffs didn’t materialize.

“I think she is coming from a camp that has a very specific agenda to go after public pensions, to go after labor groups, the working class,” said Dee Barnes, a city accounting technician who is president of the Fresno City Employees Assn.

I asked Swearengin’s political strategist Tim Clark to respond. “Swearengin is not anti-union,” he wrote in an email. “She inherited a city close to bankruptcy, and she worked to eliminate inefficiencies and find new ways to maximize the city’s resources.”

Advertisement

That fight, though, was a major reason the AFL-CIO has spent more than $400,000 on mailers attacking her.

When I asked Swearengin about efforts in cities like Los Angeles and San Diego to raise the minimum wage, she demurred. “That’s not been a policy issue in Fresno,” she said. “Cities that are pursuing those policy initiatives have a much lower unemployment rate.” She’s focused instead, she said, on improving skills among the unemployed.

Since she’s already discussed gay marriage, I thought voters might also want to know where she stands on that other hot-button social issue, abortion. “It’s nothing that I would affect as state controller,” she said. “It is the law of the land. Should I ever pursue another office, I fully expect that who-knows-what-all will be evaluated.”

Fair enough, but back in 2008, when she first ran for mayor, the local chapter of the National Women’s Political Caucus, which supports pro-abortion-rights female candidates, invited her to apply for an endorsement. Swearengin declined. “She’s pro-life,” said Billie MacDougall, who was president of the group. “Now she’s trying to be more neutral because she’s running for state office.”

If she’s aiming beyond the controller’s office, though, neutrality will not be an option.

“I remember when she was first running for mayor, and a lot of people were concerned about where she stood on social issues and whether she would inject religiosity into the mayor’s office. And in the end, that didn’t happen,” said Tom Holyoke, an associate political science professor at Cal State Fresno.

“California is not going to be attracted to a candidate who pushes a lot of conservative social issues,” he said. “She’s savvy enough to understand that.”

Advertisement

robin.abcarian@latimes.com

Advertisement