Flojaune Cofer leads Eric Guerra in Sacramento County supervisors race as polls close

The Abridged version:

• Flojaune “Flo” Cofer leads Sacramento City Councilman Eric Guerra in the early ballot returns for the Sacramento Board of Supervisors’ District 1 seat.
• Cofer, a progressive candidate, narrowly lost the 2024 race for mayor of Sacramento.
• Guerra has served on the Sacramento City Council since 2015.

---

After early ballot returns Tuesday night, Flojaune “Flo” Cofer leads Eric Guerra in the race to become the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors’ next District 1 representative.

With 17.8% of the votes recorded as of about midnight, Cofer (38.55%) led Guerra (30.49%) by 2,301 votes.

Cofer came to the race as something of a political outsider, though perhaps less so than when she narrowly lost a bid to become Sacramento’s mayor in 2024. Her previous and current campaigns operated with the grassroots approach of many contemporary progressive candidates, relying on small individual donations rather than larger sums from political action committees funded by corporations.

An epidemiologist by trade, Cofer was the senior policy director for Davis-based nonprofit Public Health Advocates and chaired Sacramento’s Measure U committee for four terms. She’s also worked on the City of Sacramento Active Transportation Commission, the Mayors’ Commission on Climate Change and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office Outreach Community Advisory Board, though current Sheriff Jim Cooper recently accused her of “fear mongering and misinformation” on social media.

Guerra has sat on the Sacramento City Council since 2015, representing District 6 (Tahoe Park, Sierra Oaks and Campus Commons, among other neighborhoods). He’s currently the mayor pro tem, previously chaired the Sacramento County Planning Commission, was president of the Sacramento State Alumni Association and was a member of the California State University Board of Trustees.

Born in the Mexican state of Michoacán, Guerra began picking the same Esparto fields as his parents when he was just 5 years old, and he worked as a janitor while sleeping in his car to graduate from Sacramento State. He spent years as a policy adviser within the state Legislature after graduating and currently sits on the California Air Resources Board.

Deborah Ortiz, a Los Rios Community College District board member and former state senator and assemblymember, is currently third (18.43%). She’s trailed by Tim Riley, a South Natomas programmer (12.52%).

The candidates are running to replace Phil Serna, who joined the board in 2010 and declined to run for a fifth term, endorsing Guerra instead. District 1 includes much of the city of Sacramento (though not southern neighborhoods such as South Land Park, Greenhaven and Meadowview) as well as some unincorporated areas. Polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Benjy Egel is the senior food editor at Abridged. Born and raised in the Sacramento region, he has covered its local restaurants and bars since 2018. He also writes and edits Abridged’s weekly food and drink newsletter, City of Treats.