Mayor Eugenia Sanchez is the most ill-prepared council member in
recent history. Her questions to staff members are rare and
irrelevant. She has severely lacked the initiative to propose
anything on her own or oppose ideas broached by others. Now, she is
openly considering a run for the 28th District State Assembly seat
to succeed Democrat Anna Caballero when she possibly pursues the
State Senate in 2010.
Mayor Eugenia Sanchez is the most ill-prepared council member in recent history. Her questions to staff members are rare and irrelevant. She has severely lacked the initiative to propose anything on her own or oppose ideas broached by others.
Now, she is openly considering a run for the 28th District State Assembly seat to succeed Democrat Anna Caballero when she possibly pursues the State Senate in 2010.
There is enough reason for us to stamp our vote of disapproval against Sanchez for the Assembly seat right now.
Sanchez at some point inevitably must tout her achievements during her time as a council member. She has personified passivity on the dais, and citizens would be hard-pressed to identify a single achievement or successful program on Sanchez’ political resume.
She has presented herself at times as a key player with Gang Task Force matters. Before recent multi-agency efforts to form a countywide gang coordinator office, however, the city’s task force had been a monumental flop. The committee had trouble even gaining a quorum to hold meetings and accomplished nothing.
It is one thing to get elected to a council district seat without experience or proven success. It is an entirely different ballgame at the state level, when the constituency stretches beyond the candidate’s neighborhood and county, when residents in outside areas have not even heard of his or her name.
Perhaps being mayor has motivated her further ambitions, but citizens don’t get to elect their mayor in Hollister. Council members each year appoint a new one. Traditionally, everyone on the council gets a chance to be mayor. It is no more of an achievement than the districtwide victories by each council member that eventually lead to the citywide mayoral job.
In that position since November, Sanchez has played the role of traffic cop. She tries to say all the right things as meeting chairwoman and makes sure she thanks all the appropriate people for their hard work. She reads proclamations and shakes hands.
Those duties are expected, basic staples of the job. They don’t do anything to ease the growing burden on taxpayers. They don’t help to reduce crime. They certainly don’t address the area’s growing stock of substandard and foreclosed homes.
Where is the action? Where is the leadership?
Sanchez was the face of a Hollister council whose members, in peaceful unison, failed the entire citizenry by voting unanimously on every last agenda item but one during a recent year-long period tracked by the newspaper. She was emblematic of that council’s oppositional paralysis because Sanchez, more than any of the members during that time, inherently followed her colleagues’ tones without adding any ideas to the debate.
The other council members at recent meetings have improved vastly in their tendency to spark real debate and disagree on votes, to ask challenging questions of city staff members, to make it clear who is boss.
Not Sanchez. She inevitably adheres to the city staff’s direction without hesitation. She follows.
The one time she did decide to at least portray herself as taking a bold step before the public, she left more questions than answers and needed the city manager to open her parachute.
Sanchez attempted to make the motion to cancel the Hollister Motorcycle Rally at the November meeting before a packed house of event supporters and detractors, but she stumbled over her words and eventually asked City Manager Clint Quilter to recite a proposal for her. It became even more humiliating for everyone involved when Sanchez attempted to repeat Quilter’s motion and had to ask him to recite it once more. She tried and again could not utter a proposal, and at that point merely said “I state that motion.”
The motion, never stated by a council member, was to end the city’s sanctioning of the rally while staying open to the idea of an outside group organizing and fully funding the event. It was a less-than-inspiring end to the historic tradition, and it was symbolic of her tenure to this point.
Sanchez, and her constituents, would be better off if she focuses on ways to improve her leadership on the council and immediately rules out a run for state office.
