District Attorney John Sarsfield hasn’t pulled papers or
formally announced his candidacy, but is planning to run as the
incumbent in this year’s district attorney race against the same
two opponents he bested in 2002.
Hollister – District Attorney John Sarsfield hasn’t pulled papers or formally announced his candidacy, but is planning to run as the incumbent in this year’s district attorney race against the same two opponents he bested in 2002.
“I’ll announce when I’m ready,” he said Tuesday. “There is still plenty of time.”
Sarsfield will be facing Deputy District Attorney Candice Hooper and local defense attorney Arthur Cantu in a three-way race for San Benito County’s top prosecutorial spot. The same three candidates ran in 2002, but Sarsfield trounced his opponents – claiming nearly 70 percent of the votes.
Sarsfield said the election would be “exactly the same as last time.” He does not expect Cantu to garner any more votes than he did in 2002, but wished Hooper “the best of luck” out on the campaign trail.
Sarsfield is hoping all candidates stick to the issues during the race and avoid the kind of personal attacks and dirty politics that plagued the last election, but he’s not holding his breath.
“I think it’s going to get disgusting, look who’s running,” he said. “But it won’t come from me.”
Sarsfield won’t start raising money for his campaign until after making a formal announcement sometime in the next few weeks. But money, he said, is not the key to a successful run.
“Cantu outspent everyone else combined last time,” he said. “But the voters aren’t buying what he’s selling.”
Before becoming district attorney in 2002, Sarsfield was a senior deputy district attorney for Monterey County and has 13 years experience as a criminal prosecutor, including a stint as a Judge Advocate General in the U.S. Army.
Sarsfield plans to stand on his record as district attorney by continuing to focus on prosecuting gang and gun crimes and civil rights violators, and believes voters will stand by him and the changes he made while in office.
Immediately after getting elected in 2002, he started a comprehensive truancy program with County Superintendent of Schools Tim Foley, which included fines for parents who let their students miss school.
“The truancy program curbs the daytime crime rate – particularly residential burglaries,” he said. “And it also helps prevent future crime by keeping kids in school.”
Sarsfield also instituted the use of gang and gun crime enhancements within months after taking office, which can tack on up to 10 years to the sentence of a person convicted of using a gun or committing a crime on behalf of a criminal street gang.
“I don’t know if you could say it has made the community safer,” Sarsfield said. “But it has made the community safer because these people are locked up longer.”
Last November, Sarsfield also established a zero-tolerance policy for gun and gang crimes, which forces defendants charged with those crimes to plea guilty or face a jury trial. Sarsfield said he did not know how many people had been successfully prosecuted under the zero-tolerance policy or with gang enhancements, but said the numbers would be available sometime in the next two weeks.
Although the district attorney’s race is not partisan, Sarsfield considers himself a “middle-of-the-road” candidate.
Hooper, who announced her intentions to challenge her boss two weeks ago, wished Sarsfield “good luck” in the race, but doesn’t foresee a tight race.
“I’m hoping that it’s not going to be close at all,” she said. “I’m planning on being victorious.”
Although Hooper lost to Cantu in the 2002 primary by a wide margin, she is expecting her experience and community volunteer efforts to pay off in spades this year.
“Mr. Cantu has no prosecutorial experience whatsoever – I’ve worked as a prosecutor for 18 years,” she said. “I’m hopeful that the community has seen my integrity, dedication to the community and caring. I’ve been working to make San Benito County a better place.”
Cantu expressed little surprise after hearing that Sarsfield planned to run again.
“I expected the incumbent to run,” he said. “His decision to run will not make any significant difference in my campaign – my message to the community remains the same: We need to start making gang violence our No. 1 priority and victims our No. 1 responsibility.”
Cantu said this year’s race will be vastly different from the 2002 contest.
“There is no comparison between this election and the last election,” he said. “I’ve learned that the community is not interested in politics – they are concerned about the growing threat of gang violence.”
In addition to cracking down on gang violence, Cantu has vowed to return the Victim Witness Center to its former downtown location and take up a quarter of the office’s case load himself.
“I have more jury trial experience than any other attorney in the county,” he said. “No slick attorney or criminal will pull the wool over my eyes, I’ve heard every excuse in the book.”
While Sarsfield contends that Cantu hasn’t been as successful in the court room as he would have people believe, Sarsfield’s tenure as district attorney has been rife with controversy.
Two women in the Victim Witness Department sued Sarsfield for sexual harassment in 2004, which the county ultimately settled for $35,000. The county then commissioned an independent investigation into the District Attorney’s Office to probe a host of allegations made in the women’s lawsuit. The Free Lance obtained a copy of the summary of the report, which sustained a number of the women’s allegations and concluded that Sarsfield retaliated against several of his employees, Hooper included, for political reasons.
After the details of the sexual harassment suit were made public, Sarsfield’s political adversaries tried and failed to recall him twice in 2005.
Last February, the San Benito County Bar Association overwhelmingly voted that they have “no confidence” in Sarsfield’s abilities as district attorney, issuing a statement that Sarsfield “abused the power of his office and that his conduct constitutes a threat to the public’s ability to exercise their constitutional rights.”
And more recently, Sarsfield was lambasted by county supervisors for using an investigator who former County Counsel Claude Biddle claimed isn’t qualified for the job. Supervisors were concerned that Sarsfield’s use of special investigator William “Andy” Simpson may have opened the county up to civil rights lawsuits by Simpson claiming to be a police officer when he’s not.
Brett Rowland covers public safety for the Free Lance. He can be reached at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or br******@fr***********.com.
