This year, San Mateo County residents of District 3, which includes Atherton, Portola Valley, Woodside, West Menlo Park and a number of unincorporated areas, face a diverse pool of candidates on the ballot for the June 7 primary election.
It includes the political newcomer Steven Booker, an electrician and labor union representative; Virginia Chang Kiraly, who is the first Asian-American woman to serve on the boards of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District and San Mateo County Harbor District; Laura Parmer-Lohan, a San Carlos City Council member and member of the LGBTQ community; and a seasoned politician, Ray Mueller, who has served for 10 years on the Menlo Park City Council.
Each candidate is looking to represent a district that is often said to be the geographically largest and most diverse in the county, spanning from Peninsula cities to rural and coastside communities as well as large swaths of the county’s open space lands.
It’s why climate change touches upon every one of the candidate’s campaigns, as coastside communities such as Half Moon Bay continue to deal with the threat of increasing sea-level rise. Then there’s the hot-button issue relevant to all of the Bay Area and the state: affordable housing.
In representing their home district, the elected candidate will join a board of five supervisors which oversees a $3.3 billion county budget.
The Almanac interviewed each of the candidates to talk about some of their top priorities for the district, how they hope to address some of the issues of the coastside and rural communities and what motivated them to run for the seat in the first place.
The primary election will take place June 7. The top two candidates will move on to the general election on Nov. 8.
Laura Parmer-Lohan wants to tackle climate change head on as District 3 Supervisor
With a slogan hinting at her top campaign priority, “Our Environment, Our Future,” Laura Parmer-Lohan, former mayor of San Carlos, has established herself in the District 3 Supervisor race as the candidate who wants to take an aggressive stance on climate change initiatives for San Mateo County.
A position that distinguishes her most from the three other candidates is her firm support for the parcel tax measure that will fund preventative measures against wildfires and rising sea levels. (The tax measure will be voted on by residents.)
For Parmer-Lohan, it’s a necessity when looking at about half a dozen capital-intensive projects throughout the county that require attention, including an early flood warning system, Belmont Creek restoration and other projects outlined by OneShoreline or the San Mateo County Flood and Seal Level Rise Resiliency District which formed in 2020.
Separate from the projects that could be funded by the tax measure, Parmer-Lohan said that there’s a number of issues currently facing the county due to rising sea levels, citing the king tides in Pacifica that are eroding the pier and cliff near the homes on Beach Boulevard and Highway 1 by Surfer’s Beach in Half Moon Bay that is only temporarily protected by a riprap.
The opposing candidates point to rising gas prices and inflation as reasons why they can’t support another tax measure on county residents at this time. But Parmer-Lohan believes she is addressing her districts’ concerns by backing it.
“The community has shared with me that they want bold and swift action when it comes to addressing the impacts of climate change,” she said.
A mother to two boys, Parmer-Lohan has held several marketing positions in medical device and biotech companies, is currently the chief of staff at Amgen and runs a small business.
She was inspired to get involved in public service after her son, who was 12 at the time and plans to study environmental energy at University of California, Davis, expressed concerns to her about the future and climate change.
Parmer-Lohan first got a taste of city politics by joining San Carlos’ single-family housing advisory committee, reviewing design standards for home remodeling or building projects. In 2018, she won a seat on the San Carlos City Council, where she said she is currently working to go beyond the city’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation numbers and has helped create a strong climate action plan for the city.
“Now we have one of the most robust climate action plans, with over 40 different strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as to address the impacts of climate change,” she said.
Moving to a position on the board of supervisors, where she can increase the scope of the work she has done as a San Carlos City Council, just seemed like the next natural step, she said.
With climate change at the center of her campaign, Parmer-Lohan proposed developing water recycling and reclaiming programs for use in irrigation, farming and landscaping.
Parmer-Lohan said the city of San Carlos has been able to encourage developers to use recycled water in commercial development projects. On a county level, she said a water recycling program will look different depending on the uses, whether that’s for development or farming, and that the trick is to make sure that ultimately the costs to carry out these programs will fit people’s budgets.
Parmer-Lohan frames the affordable housing crisis as a climate issue and wants to look at housing policies related to the county’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, support transit-oriented housing, push for more workforce housing and look at available public lands to build upon.
Similar to the apartments that just opened for the Jefferson Union High School District staff, Parmer-Lohan said that she wants to expand local school district partnerships with the county to build more housing.
For housing for farm workers, Parmer-Lohan said she was interested in a plot of land in Half Moon Bay that used to be the site of the former Bay City Flower Company.
“The lack of housing affects all of us whether we know it or not,” she said, adding that gaining support for more housing requires listening to everyone’s concerns and getting people to agree on the facts as best as possible.
Parmer-Lohan graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and received her master’s degree at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Busines .
She is endorsed by current District 3 Supervisor Don Horsely; Hector Camacho, president of the San Mateo County Board of Education; two trustees of the San Carlos School District; and a long list of other elected officials. She is also endorsed by the Redwood City Firefighters Association, Planned Parenthood and the National Union of Healthcare Workers. Her full list of endorsements can be found on lauraforsupervisor.com/endorse-laura.
Virginia Chang Kiraly wants to be District 3’s ‘fiscal watchdog’
Virginia Chang Kiraly has experience as an elected official, but she prides herself as the only candidate in the District 3 San Mateo County Board of Supervisors race with a financial background, frequently describing herself as a “fiscal watchdog.”
She has served as a board member of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District and the San Mateo County Harbor District since 2011 and 2015, respectively, and as former senior director at Nasdaq stock market, she credits her financial savvy for some of the accomplishments made by the two district agencies during her tenure.
“The fire district has paid down about $44 million of unfunded pension liabilities since I’ve been on this board … The harbor district has paid down about 50% of its unfunded pension liability,” Chang Kiraly said in an interview with The Almanac. “It’s a philosophy for me, so I’ve pushed for that.”
With good financial planning, Chang Kiraly said, the Fire District gained the opportunity to increase battalion staffing and to build its third fire station, while the Harbor District is in the process of fixing its coastal trail to Mavericks Beach and has placed life rings in county beaches that could save lives for those caught in strong waves.
It’s all about financial planning based on certainty that allows you to prepare for the future, Chang Kiraly said, and it’s an approach she hopes to bring to District 3.
Her time on the two boards largely informs one of her top campaign priorities: public safety.
When she moved to unincorporated West Menlo Park in 1994, part of the attraction to the area was the wide availability of open space, and she believes that everyone should feel compelled to take advantage of that resource safely.
But during the pandemic, Chang Kiraly, as the Harbor District’s board president, confronted some of the holes in coastside safety. Within a seven-week period, between November 2020 and January 2021, seven people were fatally swept away by strong waves, including a 12-year-old boy at Cowell State Beach.
The harbor district in response helped install three emergency life ring buoy stations within Pillar Point Harbor to give visitors a more immediate and safer rescue option while waiting for emergency responders. The hope is to expand the program across other parts of the state’s coastline. For Chang Kiraly, even more should be done.
“That’s such a small Band-Aid,” she said. “What we need is a real coastside water rescue effort.”
Using her fiscal-minded approach, Chang Kiraly believes she can achieve that by taking a second look at how Measure K funds are being used in San Mateo County.
The half-cent sales tax voters passed in November 2016, also known as the “San Mateo Critical Services Measures,” which helps fund a broad range of essential services such as paramedic dispatch, neighborhood health clinics and addressing sea level rise, among other things.
Chang Kiraly called it a regressive tax and didn’t approve of the way it is currently being used by the county, with about $1.4 million going to each supervisor’s district as discretionary funds.
Instead, Chang Kiraly said it should be invested towards a water rescue post, mental health crisis training for law enforcement, fire prevention and protection, and disaster preparedness.
“For me, Measure K was billed as funding for public safety,” she said.
Chang Kiraly joins two other candidates, Ray Mueller and Steven Booker, who have spoken against a new parcel tax measure proposal that will go towards climate change initiatives.
Although she’s not against taxes, Chang Kiraly said that it is the wrong time to impose another tax when inflation and gas prices are at an all-time high. Instead, she thinks the county should be looking at what resources are currently at hand, such as the special districts like the fire district, before asking county residents for more money.
“When you want to impose a parcel tax, you better work together with all the agencies that are already collecting taxes instead of having a redundant tax put out there,” she said.
Previously, Chang Kiraly was appointed by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the California Commission for Economic Development and served from 2007 to 2014. She currently serves as a trustee on the California State Parks Foundation and is on the board of WIRE for Women, a nonpartisan nonprofit that promotes women in elected office throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and the National Alliance for Mental Illness San Mateo County.
She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1986 with a bachelor’s in government and a minor in economics. In 2020, she earned a master of public administration from the University of Southern California.
Chang Kiraly is endorsed by Nancy Reyering, president of the San Mateo County Harbor Board of Commissioners, Harold Schapelhouman, former fire chief of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District; Carlos Bolanos, San Mateo County Sheriff, among others. To see a full list of her endorsements, visit virginiachangkiraly.com.
From electrician to politician, Steven Booker envisions a more equitable San Mateo County
Out of the four candidates in the District 3 Board of Supervisors race, Steven Booker stands out as a bit of an anomaly. His political experience is limited to his time on the San Mateo County Democratic Central Committee since 2020, and he doesn’t hold a college degree.
Booker took classes at the College of San Mateo, preparing to be a police officer, before he pivoted to become an electrician.
But, as political director and community affairs liaison for a local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) labor union, he’s not without experience in advocacy. And as a lifelong resident of San Mateo County, living in Daly City, Woodside, Emerald Hills, San Mateo, Redwood City, Belmont and now Half Moon Bay, he has an intimate familiarity with some of the issues county residents face today.
In 2013, his wife, Lisa Booker. was diagnosed with brain cancer and moved back to her longtime home in Half Moon Bay with her father Ed Wilson. But with skyrocketing rents, Booker’s father-in-law could no longer afford to live in the area. Booker moved in to avoid shifting his wife around during her illness and helped pay for some of his father-in-law’s bills. His wife died in 2016, but Booker never left Half Moon Bay.
“Best place on God’s green earth,” he said in an interview with The Almanac. “I’m 53 now, about to be 54, and Half Moon Bay is perfect.”
Booker had always had a mind to run for office, but he said the pandemic truly exposed him to some of the inequities in the county. He recalled a time when Half Moon Bay’s only library was closed and left some children without internet access in the midst of distant learning.
“I had students outside of my house using my internet because they didn’t have Wi-Fi,” he said.
With current District 3 Supervisor Don Horsely being termed out this year, Booker said now was the best shot he had to address some of the gaps he sees in the district.
One of his campaign priorities is closing the digital divide and bringing high-speed internet connectivity throughout District 3. He said he hopes to look at the Measure K funds, a half-cent tax passed in November 2016, and other county bonds to invest more into the district’s broadband infrastructure.
Like all of the candidates, affordable housing is a top issue for Booker. He supports workforce housing such as the affordable apartment units that opened recently for employees of the Jefferson Union High School District, and wants the county to invest in similar types of housing for veterans, farm workers and other essential employees.
Booker said there’s an opportunity to build on public lands throughout the coast, especially anywhere that might be near transit hubs. He did not have a specific area in mind when asked, but wherever the “physical infrastructure and technological infrastructure” exists, his mentality is “build, build, build.”
Booker said he hopes to mend the community’s relationship with law enforcement. In his perspective, he sees local trust in law enforcement eroding, especially after recent demonstrations in 2020 and the 2018 incident with Chinedu Okobi who was tased to death in Millbrae by sheriff’s deputies.
Booker is firmly against defunding the police. Instead, he wants to see law enforcement interact more with the community outside the context of a traffic stop or a ticket.
“Living in Half Moon Bay, I rarely see (deputy) sheriffs outside of their cars,” he said. “They need to get out of their cars a little more and introduce themselves with the shop owners and introduce themselves to the citizens of that town so that not every interaction you have with the sheriff is a negative.”
As a workers’ rights advocate with IBEW for more than two decades, a recording secretary for the San Mateo County Central Labor Council, and by serving on the boards of the Police Activities League and the Sheriff’s Activities League, Booker believes he has a unique in with a wide demographic of county residents and hopes to leverage his position to bring more equity in the county.
“I have no hidden agenda,” he said. “I just want this to be the most equitable and equal county in all of California.”
Booker’s endorsements include David Canepa, president of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors; Rick Bonilla, deputy mayor of San Mateo; and Nancy Magee, San Mateo County superintendent of schools. To see his full list of endorsements go to bookerforsupervisor.org.
Booker served a tour of duty during the Gulf War as a United States Air Force member. He is also on the board of the Clean Energy Citizens Advisory Committee.
Ray Mueller wants to run toward the problems as District 3 supervisor
By Lloyd Lee
In his decade as a Menlo Park City Council member — two of those years as mayor — Ray Mueller has learned that effective governance requires him not to run away from problems.
“When someone comes to you and tells you something’s wrong, that’s the job,” Mueller said in an interview with The Almanac. “And so you run towards that problem to help them. If you’re sitting back away from the controversy you’re not really doing the job.”
It’s why one of Mueller’s immediate tasks if elected as District 3 supervisor would be to open an office on the coast in the first week and to be in that office two to three days a week. For Mueller, it’s an essential step for him because he looks at the county as a “social services backstop.”
It’s not just land-use issues the county supervisor is dealing with, he said. “The supervisor touches the health and hospital system, it touches children and family services … And so it’s amazing to me that if you are a farm worker on the coast or if you’re a person who’s working two jobs trying to make ends meet, then you have to drive all the way from the coast to Redwood City to meet with your supervisor. That has to change.”
Spending most of his career as a litigator, Mueller said he was spurred to get involved in city government shortly after the Great Recession, hoping to become steeped into communitywide issues in Menlo Park.
He joined the city’s transportation commission in 2010, which reviewed traffic impacts of large development projects. Mueller cited the Stanford University hospital expansion plan as one the highlights of his two-year tenure, where his advocacy helped secure more funding for Menlo Park after the advisory body urged Stanford to do more to mitigate its project’s impact.
Charlie Bourne, a colleague on the transportation commission, nominated Mueller to take over his chair position.
“Afterwards, I asked him why he did it and he said, ‘Because I want you to be on council,'” Mueller said. “And so I ended up running for City Council and that passion for public service that I had when I was a kid was just completely reignited.”
A decade later, adding a stint working as chief of staff for Santa Clara County District 5 Supervisor Joe Simitian during his time on council, Mueller hopes to continue working with his constituents closeby within San Mateo County rather than from up north in Sacramento.
One of Mueller’s six campaign priorities focuses on the economic recovery of District 3 as labor shortages continue to impact farms, restaurants, small businesses and even the start-up economy. For Mueller, this labor issue ultimately boils down to a housing issue.
“We have to build workforce housing,” he said. “We have to be committed to it.”
Mueller pointed to county-owned land in Pescadero as one of the areas that could start building affordable housing. He also proposed the idea of working closely with cities that may be interested in upzoning a business district or shopping center and providing those jurisdictions with grant funding.
Beyond creating more housing, Mueller said that one of the larger critiques he has of the county is its approach to affordability.
“We put people into a classification group based on how much they can afford and then we extract as much as they can afford but that doesn’t allow people to save anything to build equity,” he said. “So I really want to move towards a community-trust model of affordable housing that allows people to actually buy into their unit.”
Some of Mueller’s current constituents may consider him to be a more moderate voice when it comes to development, at least compared to his colleagues on the council, but Mueller counters that it’s all a matter of practicality.
“As a policymaker I try to be practical in terms of what infrastructure exists in an area,” he said.
He adds that housing needs to be built near services in such a way that can also reduce greenhouse gases, and that he has the most experience in looking at housing strategies as someone who has gone through three housing element updates and has sat on the board of the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee.
Another focus of Mueller’s campaign is stabilizing the coastal agriculture economy. He said that he wants to look at Napa and Sonoma Valley as a model for how farms on the coast should be branded to make them a more attractive destination to shop at and visit.
Mueller is endorsed by the San Mateo County Democratic Party, Menlo Park Police Officers Association and the San Mateo County Firefighters union, among other organizations. Endorsements from elected officials include U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, Simitian and more than 60 current and former city council members. To see a full list of his endorsements, go to raymuellerforsupervisor.com/endorsements.
Email Staff Writer Lloyd Lee at llee@almanacnews.com.
