Sacramento mayoral candidate profile: Epidemiologist Dr. Flojaune Cofer

EDITOR’S NOTE: CapRadio interviewed the four major candidates for Sacramento mayor in the March 5 primary election. We asked how their life experience has shaped their approach to dealing with two of Sacramento’s most pressing problems: The city’s homelessness crisis and severe lack of affordable housing. 

Epidemiologist Dr. Flojaune Cofer is our final profile. We have already published articles on former Sacramento City Council member Steve Hansen, state Assembly member Kevin McCarty and former state Senator Dr. Richard Pan. 

Like a lot of Sacramentans, Flojaune Cofer loves the city’s cafes, live music  and walking along the American River. 

“And if it’s Kings season, you might catch me at a game ringing my cow bell!” Cofer said, bursting with laughter, during an interview at Long Island Ice Cream south of Oak Park. “I was a season ticket holder for 12 seasons.” 

But in her campaign for Sacramento mayor, Cofer said she’s unlike any other candidates. That’s true in several ways. 

Cofer is the only woman running. She’s the youngest of the group at 41. Unlike her three main opponents, she’s not accepting corporate donations. She’s also never held elected office, though she chaired the city’s Measure U Community Advisory Committee. 

More than any other candidate, Cofer said she wants to shake up how the city does business. 

“I’m not more of the same,” Cofer added. “And Sacramento is at a place where they don’t want what they’ve always got. They want new leadership. They want some new ideas. And they want some different outcomes.”

As an epidemiologist, Cofer explores the patterns and spread of disease — and its root causes. She said she’ll take that same approach to investigating the city’s many ailments, especially its homelessness crisis and dearth of affordable homes. 

“The question we always need to be asking ourselves is why? And as a scientist, I think that's what distinguishes me from the rest of the crowd is that I'm always asking: ‘Why?’” 

Sacramento mayoral candidate Dr. Flojaune Cofer.Fred Greaves for Solving Sacramento

Cofer’s plans to address homelessness 

More than 5,000 people live unsheltered on Sacrameto’s streets and along the city’s portion of the American River Parkway, according to the most recent survey. That amounts to three-quarters of Sacramento County’s overall unsheltered homeless population.

Given the city’s lack of traditional shelter and affordable housing, Cofer said Sacramento should open more sanctioned camping and parking spaces for unhoused residents, ones that are “safe and dignified.”

The spaces, commonly called safe ground sites, offer guests a place to live without the fear of being moved. They also provide services from restrooms and showers to meals and help finding housing.

Sacramento has been slow to open the sites amid pushback from neighborhood groups and bureaucratic hurdles. City leaders have also cited the steep cost, noting some can cost millions of dollars to operate each year.

“I don’t have a problem with us establishing safe grounds,” Cofer said. “What I have a problem with is us constantly telling people ‘You can’t be here,’ without being able to answer the obvious question of ‘Well, where can I go?’”

Cofer said Sacramento should encourage the creation of more self-governing camps like Camp Resolution in North Sacramento. The founding members of that camp reached an agreement with the city last April to run the site. 

The city’s role should be to ensure future safe grounds have water and electrical hook-ups, Cofer said. “But not necessarily to run all of them ourselves,” she added, “because it’s incredibly costly.” 

But Cofer said she also believes Sacramento should do more than just respond to the current crisis on the city’s streets. It needs to stop things from getting worse.

“For every one person we get re-housed three more are becoming unhoused,” Cofer said, citing a statistic from Sacramento Steps Forward, the region’s nonprofit homelessness planning agency. “So at that rate we can be incredibly successful and still have more people on the streets than we did beforehand.” 

But how do you stop that pipeline into homelessness? 

Cofer said Sacramento should start with stronger tenant protections.

“We need to start talking about rent control because having our rents go up 10% a year, it's just not sustainable,” she argued.

Landlords in Sacramento can’t raise rents more than 10% per year, based on an ordinance the city council approved in 2019.

A year later, Sacramento voters rejected a measure that would have strengthened the city’s rent protections by capping annual increases at the rate of inflation. Cofer said since then affordability has only gotten worse and the city should revisit the issue. 

Sacramento mayoral candidate Dr. Flojaune Cofer.Fred Greaves for Solving Sacramento

Cofer’s background and endorsements

Like three of the other major candidates for mayor, Cofer is not from Sacramento. She grew up in Pittsburgh and was raised by public school teachers. Cofer’s father died of heart failure when she was 11 years old, an event that inspired her to pursue a career in public health. 

In the wake of the tragedy, Cofer said she learned the true value of affordable housing.

“My mom was able to continue to afford our home on a public school salary by herself,” she said. “During the worst experience of my life, I was not upended from the only neighborhood and community and home I knew.” 

Cofer is endorsed by a range of labor unions, community leaders and elected officials including Sacramento City Council members Katie Valenzuela and Mai Vang. She also won the backing of the Sacramento Bee Editorial board, the Sacramento City Teachers Association and the Democratic Socialists of America.

On her campaign website, Cofer explained her decision not to accept corporate donations: “I’m not accepting corporate money because I’ve seen too many politicians serve their corporate donors and abandon ordinary hard-working people.”

If she wins, Cofer would be Sacramento’s first elected Black female mayor. Only three Black women have served on the city council.

Understanding the importance of representation, Cofer said she’ll make sure unhoused residents are heard as decisions are made. 

“Because I have identities that have historically been left out, I am always thinking about ‘Who’s not at the table?’ And ‘How do we make sure those voices are included?’” she added. “And that’s how I want to lead.” 

Cofer said she also wants to lead with creativity.

To build more affordable housing faster, for example, she said Sacramento should come up with pre-approved housing blueprints developers could choose from. 

“So if you choose the blueprints, you can skip over a bunch of the approval processes,” she added. 

Cofer said she also wants Sacramento’s city and county governments to consider buying construction material in bulk to lock in lower prices for developers. She said the move could ease developers’ concerns about the high cost of materials and ultimately lead to more affordable homes in Sacramento.

Mail ballots have been sent to all registered voters in the city. 

If no mayoral candidate in the primary wins more than half the vote, the leading two will face off in November. 

Contact CapRadio reporter Chris Nichols at [email protected]

This story is part of the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative. Solving Sacramento is supported by funding from the James Irvine Foundation and James B. McClatchy Foundation. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19.