For the third time, Ryan Coonerty, Santa Cruz local and current UC Santa Cruz lecturer of politics, legal studies and Jewish studies is running for Santa Cruz mayor. The primary elections are set to take place on June 2.
“Given what’s going on with the country and the community, there’s an opportunity for me to really lean in and try to serve,” Coonerty said. “I’m always challenging my students to get engaged and rise to the challenges of the day, and I felt like it was time for me to live up to my call to service.”
Following a three-year hiatus from local government, Coonerty announced his candidacy for mayor earlier this February. As of publication, Gillian Greensite, Ami Chen Mills, Susan Warner Andre, Joy Schendledecker and Chris Krohn have also informally expressed interest in running for the position.
Santa Cruz Local and Longtime Official
Born and raised in Santa Cruz, Coonerty is a former two-time mayor of Santa Cruz and previously served on the County Board of Supervisors. During his time on the board, he assumed the District 3 County Supervisor position following his father, Neal Coonerty, in 2014, and was reelected in 2018.
The Coonerty legacy runs deep within the Santa Cruz community, as the family has owned and operated local Bookshop Santa Cruz for the past 50 years. Separate from the family business, Coonerty and Santa Cruz attorney Caleb Baskin are business partners of a private office space company called NextSpace.
Current Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley, Congressman Jimmy Panetta, and California State Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, have all endorsed Coonerty’s candidacy.
Coonerty’s website outlines his priorities as mayor, which include beautifying public spaces in Santa Cruz, improving accessibility of public programs, filling vacant storefronts, addressing the ongoing housing crisis and ensuring a responsive and transparent city government.
“That’s what the people expect from the city government,” Coonerty said. “We need to do that and make sure that we are being totally transparent in the success or lack of success we’re having. It’s also engaging the community in a broader conversation about what Santa Cruz will look like five years from now, ten years from now, fifty years from now.”
Coonerty has an extensive background in teaching, with experience as the executive director for the Leadership Santa Cruz County Program at The Panetta Institute, and as a lecturer at UCSC for the last 20 years. Coonerty says this connection to the university allows him to engage with the student body in a more direct way.
“He opened on the first day [with] ‘I’m going to put out an offer for you guys. If you guys need any help, if you want advice, if you want to meet for coffee, if you want to talk through your career path, if you want any guidance on anything, just know you can reach out to me and I’ll be there to help you. This offer doesn’t expire, even if you graduate, and four years from now,’” said Aneri Pillai, a fourth-year legal studies major.
In his first term as mayor, Coonerty worked with the university to negotiate thirteen lawsuits between UCSC and the City of Santa Cruz over the university’s long-range development plan in 2008. They reached a settlement agreement that the university would house two-thirds of its new enrollment on campus, among cutbacks on traffic and water usage.
“We are now back in a situation where UCSC has a long-range development plan,” Coonerty said. “There are lawsuits again. That will be one thing to negotiate and bring the students’ voice into those negotiations so that we are clear on the outcomes we want. The impact on students, and creating a positive impact for students, I think will be important.”
Experience and Opposition
The opposition to Coonerty’s candidacy stems from concerns over his previous support for policies regarding the unhoused community. Keith McHenry, co-founder of the global movement Food Not Bombs, is one such critic.
“Donna Myers and Ryan Coonerty proposed in 2019 that they start trying to figure out a way to move the homeless out of the city,” McHenry said. “One of their proposals was to start moving them to Camp Roberts down on the Santa Barbara and Monterey border, down on 101 at the California National Guard facility … I get the sense from what I’m reading that he’s going to clean up the homeless and Santa Cruz again if elected.”
McHenry is resistant to the very existence of the mayor’s office and is known for carrying a sign during election season, reading “Will Be Mayor For Food.” During many elections for local office, he has told community members to write in his name on the ballot. If elected, he would “abolish the mayoral office.”
In 2011, Coonerty took part in creating a crime predicting software alongside his business partner, Caleb Baskin. The software formerly known as Predpol, now Geolitica, was adopted in police departments nationwide. Locations include Santa Cruz Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department, New Jersey Police Department, Atlanta Police Department and many more.
Coonerty ultimately stepped down from director of government relations of the company in 2013. According to Coonerty, he sold his stocks in 2018 and donated them to charity. He is not interested in revisiting this crime predicting software in Santa Cruz after its official ban in 2020. Coonerty agrees with the board’s decision to terminate their contract with Flock, a facial recognition surveillance system.
Moving Forward Amid Uncertainty
With recent ICE activity threatening bordering towns, Santa Cruz students and non-campus community members alike have voiced concerns about possible deportation raids. Coonerty plans to address these safety concerns by keeping individuals informed.
“The city has had a longstanding commitment to not cooperating with federal immigration,” Coonerty said. “We should continue that to the extent that they are trying to avoid or co-opt law enforcement. We need to join lawsuits as we have done to combat that.”
“We also need to be doing proactive outreach to undocumented families in our schools, and letting our community members know that we are there, and that our policies are designed to protect them as valuable members of our community,” he continued.
Amid uncertainty and concern for the current state of the U.S. government, Coonerty is committed to the endurance of local initiatives. For him, community is the key to combating ongoing national threats and growing anxiety.
“We’re in a crisis moment in our democracy, and there are lots of things that we need to do at the national level,” Coonerty said. “At the local level we need to show people that government can work and reflect the values and improve their lives. If we do that in hundreds or thousands of communities across the country, we could rebuild democracy from the ground up.”
