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SOLANO COUNTY – November’s election could be the most consequential in years for the cities of Vallejo and Benicia, with a majority of seats on the city council in both cities up for election. 

In Vallejo, only one incumbent is running for reelection, District 6 Councilmember Cristina Arriola. Councilmember Mina Loera-Diaz has declined to seek reelection and longtime council fixtures Mayor Robert McConnell and Councilmember Rozzana Verder-Aliga have both served two consecutive terms and are ineligible to run again, guaranteeing at least three new faces on the council next year.

Meanwhile in Benicia, longtime Councilmember Tom Campbell has declined to seek reelection while Mayor Steve Young and Councilmember Trevor Macenski will both face reelection challenges.

Solano County will also choose a new representative for the state Senate and will decide whether to reelect Assemblymember Lori Wilson to another term. School districts in Vallejo and Benicia both have seats up for election, but a lack of interested candidates have led to some candidates running unopposed. 

The city of Benicia will decide on two tax measures as the city grapples with its ongoing fiscal crisis. But one notable ballot measure that won’t appear this year is for California Forever’s plan to build a new city between Fairfield and Rio Vista. The group pulled it off the ballot in the face of a scathing report by the county Board of Supervisors and said it would take a more considered process working with the county to bring it back for a vote in the future.

Vallejo Mayor

Vallejo’s mayor is elected to a four-year term by a plurality of city voters. The mayor’s responsibilities are not as extensive as in other cities with strong mayor systems. The mayor runs the City Council meetings and is a voting member of the council who represents the entire city.

Pippin Dew

Pippin Dew has been a real estate agent in Vallejo and Benicia for 18 years and she is a single mother of three daughters. Voters elected Dew to the City Council in 2013 and 2018, but Vallejo councilmembers are limited to two consecutive terms. During her years on the council, she supported the Measure P sales tax increase, an early childhood learning center that is planned for South Vallejo and the controversial sale of 157 acres of land on North Mare Island to the Nimitz Group for $3 million. 

Dwight Monroe Jr.

Dwight Monroe Jr. serves as the Vice Chair of Vallejo’s Economic Development Commission, and is Vice President of the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum and a member of the Vallejo Police Chief’s Community Advisory Board. Monroe is the owner of Dwight’s Mobile Brake Service and is sensitive to the needs of small business owners in Vallejo. He is also president of the local nonprofit Angels with Heart which organizes services such as free laundry days and other services to support those in need. 

Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar is a community advocate who serves on the Vallejo Participatory Budgeting Committee, the board of directors for the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum, and the Vallejo Sister Cities Association. Before he retired, he worked in accounting for finance and data processing companies.

Andrea Sorce

Andrea Sorce is the current chair of the city of Vallejo’s Surveillance Advisory Board. She teaches economics at Diablo Valley College and helped form a local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union focused on addressing police violence in the city of Vallejo. As a member of the surveillance board, Sorce has supported policies to limit police department data sharing agreements that could be used by out of state law enforcement agencies to track those seeking reproductive health care in California.

Vallejo City Council

Three Vallejo City Council seats are up for election in November. But for District 3, where Councilmember Mina Loera-Diaz declined to run, only one candidate filed to run, San Francisco Housing Authority CEO Tonia Lediju.

Vallejo City Council District 1

District 1 represents the northeast area of Vallejo, which includes the Hiddenbrooke and Northgate neighborhoods. With three candidates running, the candidate with the most votes will win the election, regardless of whether they have a majority.

Alex Matias

Alexander Matias is an executive for the nonprofit Children Now. He formerly worked for KIPP Charter Schools in compliance and operations and also worked at the politically connected philanthropy and impact investment consultancy Arabella Advisors. As a resident of Vallejo he is very active in city government and currently serves on the Economic Development Commission and the Code Enforcement Appeals board. Matias is president of the board of directors for Vallejo Main Street, a nonprofit focused on the revitalization of downtown.  

Brenda Plechaty 

After retiring from her position as senior human resources manager at an interior architecture and design firm, Brenda Plechaty founded a support group for traumatic brain injury caregivers. She is the vice chair of Vallejo’s Civil Service Commission, and she is a member of the Marina Advisory Committee. Plechaty has over 20 years of experience in human resources and payroll management, she has been involved in union contract negotiations and has advocated for the city to restore the Marina as a means to generate economic activity.

Carl A. Bonner

Carl Bonner has served as an investigator with the Alameda County District Attorney’s office since 2017. He is a former Oakland police officer who began working with the department in 1985. Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price promoted Bonner to lieutenant of inspectors in 2023.

Vallejo City Council District 6

District 6 represents South and Central Vallejo on the Vallejo City Council.

Cristina Arriola 

Councilmember Cristina Arriola is running for her second term on the Vallejo City Council. In 2020 she won on a platform that promised to bring attention to long standing issues in District 6 such as the limited availability of fresh groceries, crime and neglected streets. Arriola spoke out strongly against using a controversial location along the city’s waterfront for a new police station, she opposed placing an eighth-cent sales tax known as Measure P on the ballot, and she also opposed a supportive housing project on Broadway over funding concerns. 

Helenmarie “Cookie” Gordon

Helen-Marie Gordon is the chair of the SolTrans Public Advisory Committee and is a tenant commissioner for the Vallejo Housing Authority. Gordon has worked with Fighting Back Partnership in their mission to support families vulnerable to homelessness and she has often encouraged the Vallejo City Council to improve mental health services in the city. Gordon also ran for the District 6 seat in 2020 but lost to Councilmember Tina Arriola. 

Benicia Mayor

Benicia's mayor is elected to a four-year term. The mayor’s responsibilities are not as extensive in other strong mayor cities. The mayor runs the City Council meetings and is a voting member of the council.

Steve Young

Steve Young is running for reelection as mayor of Benicia. He retired as Director of Community Development for the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency in 2008, where he led the redevelopment projects that converted two military bases into commercial use areas and supported financing efforts for affordable housing and neighborhood improvement programs. As mayor of Benicia he has often spoken of the need for growth while maintaining the city’s unique character.

Kevin Patrick Kirby

Kevin Kirby’s ballot filings list him as a father, businessman and coach. According to his LinkedIn profile, Kirby is a showroom manager at Belmont Hardware in Walnut Creek and previously was general manager of Jack London Kitchen and Bath. He is active in Little League baseball.

Benicia City Council

Unlike Vallejo, the Benicia City Council does not have districts and all councilmembers are elected by the entire city. Two seats are up for election in November and the top two vote-getters will be elected. One big change this year is five-term Councilmember Tom Campbell declined to run for reelection, so his seat will have a new face for the first time in 20 years.

Trevor Macenski

Trevor Macenski is a current Benicia City Councilmember. He is an Urban Planner for a sustainable engineering and environmental consulting firm, the same company that Solano County consulted with to prepare a crucial report on the recently withdrawn California Forever initiative. Macenski served as a Benicia Planning Commissioner from 2016-2020 and as a Historic Preservation and Design Review Commissioner from 2014-2017. The Napa Solano Labor Council has endorsed Macenski’s reelection bid.

Franz Rosenthal

Franz Rosenthal is an electrical engineer who works with manufacturing and chemical processing. He is currently an instrumentation principal engineer at Genentech where he is responsible for maintenance and performance improvements in pharmaceutical manufacturing. Rosenthal formerly worked for Valero Energy Corporation where he managed maintenance of crude processing units and other refining equipment. He has also worked for Engineering and energy companies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, including Exxon Mobile.

Lionel Largaespada

Lionel Largaespada is a marketing and business development director for a local surveying and utility locating company. He served as a Benicia councilmember from 2018 to 2022 but lost to Councilmembers Terry Scott and Kari Birdseye. Largaespada has served on the board of directors for Benicia Main Street, the Benicia Chamber of Commerce, and he was Chairman of the Benicia Economic Development Board from 2015 to 2018. During his term on the council Largaespada supported investments in street maintenance, preservation of Benicia’s historic character, anti-blight regulations and Covid-19 relief grants for local businesses.

Christina Gilpin-Hayes

Christina Gilipin-Hayes is operations manager of innovations for a law firm that specializes in emerging technologies. She founded the Benicia LGBTQIA network with her wife Donna Hayes. Gilpin has volunteered her legal skills for election protection efforts that monitor voting access and ensure fair vote counts. She has coordinated successful fundraisers for animal sanctuaries and she regularly fosters dogs in search of permanent homes.

Benicia Unified School District Trustee Area 3

While there were two seats up for election on the Benicia school board this fall, multiple candidates only filed to run in one of them – for Trustee Area 3, which covers the western area of the city north of Highway 780. Incumbent Gethsemane Moss did not file for reelection, leaving an open contest between two newcomers.

Kashanna Harmon-Lee 

Kashanna Harmon-Lee is a registered analyst and parent, according to ballot filings. She is active in the Benicia community as a member of the Benicia Black Lives Matter leadership team and is co-chair of the diversity, equity and inclusion board at Robert Semple Elementary School.

Janny Manasse

Janny Manasse has worked in development and fundraising in universities for 20 years. She currently is senior director of development at the University of California San Francisco and previously worked at UC Berkeley and Caltech.

Solano Community College District Area 3

The seven-member Solano Community College Governing Board manages the 10,000-student college, which is based in Fairfield and offers classes in Vallejo, Vacaville and Travis Air Force Base as well. Its members are elected every four years. Area 3 includes Benicia as well as parts of Vallejo and Suisun City. In two other trustee areas, representing parts of Fairfield, Vacaville and Dixon, the candidates are running unopposed.

Rosemary Thurston

Incumbent Trustee Rosemary Thurston was first elected to the board in December 2008 She was a business professor at Solano College for nearly 30 years and the college’s Vallejo center is named for her husband, Bill Thurston, who was a history teacher and college trustee and died in 2004. Thurston is in her mid-80s and would be nearly 90 at the end of another term.

Lilia Dardon

Lilia Dardon has worked as a teacher in seven school districts, including the Vallejo, Fairfield-Suisun City and Travis Air Force Base school districts. She founded a nonprofit, Ivan & Ivon Charities, in 2011.

Shannon Frisinger

Shannon Frisinger is a Benicia resident and a retired English teacher who worked at Jesse Bethel High School in Vallejo.

State Senate District 3

California’s third state Senate district covers all of Solano County and portions of each surrounding county. Sen. Bill Dodd, who was first elected in 2016, isn’t eligible for another term. 

Thomas Bogue

Dixon City Councilmember Thomas Bogue received the most votes as the Republican candidate for California State Senator District 3 in the March 5 primary election. Bogue served on the Dixon City Council from 2010 to 2014, then he was elected to serve a 4-year term as mayor in 2016. After losing his reelection bid in 2020, Bogue won back his current seat on council in 2022. Bogue is the owner of First Choice Automotive in Dixon. He is an advocate for parental rights in schools and supports the removal of some LGBTQ materials from school libraries. Bogue supports reducing taxes on small businesses and streamlining approval processes that can slow much needed development projects such as housing. 

Christopher Cabaldon

Christopher Cabaldon received the second largest number of votes in the March 5 primary despite a split among the other democratic candidates Rozzana Verder-Aliga and Jackie Elward. Cabaldon served as mayor of West Sacramento for over 20 years, during which time the city became one of the top housing producers in the state. Cabaldon worked in the California State Assembly as a committee staff director and then as chief of staff and he was vice chancellor of California Community Colleges from 1997 to 2003. 

State Assembly District 11

Californa’s Eleventh State Assembly district covers all of Solano County and small sections of Sacramento and Contra Costa counties. State Assembly members are elected for two-year terms and they can serve a total of 12 years in the state legislature.

Lori Wilson

Assemblymember Lori Wilson overwhelmingly won a special election in 2022 to succeed Assemblymember Jim Frazier after he resigned. She was elected to a full two-year term later that year and is seeking a second full term in office. Wilson has a background in accounting and was elected to the Suisun City Council in 2012. She was then elected mayor in 2018. In the March 5 primary election Wilson received 50% of the vote.

David Ennis

David Ennis is a civil engineer and former business executive who is running on a platform of fiscal discipline and infrastructure improvements. He spent years working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and says that experience will help him bring federal infrastructure funds into the region. He is running as a Republican and describes himself as "a fiscal conservative and a moderate on social issues."

Ballot measures

Measure F – City of Benicia

Measure F, also known as the Benicia Special Sales Tax for Streets, would levy a half-cent sales tax on purchases in the city except for some grocery store food items. The tax would create an estimated annual revenue of $4 million which would only be used for street and road repair such as filling potholes, repairing storm drains and improving pedestrian and bicycle safety. The measure requires annual audits of the fund created by the tax as well as a citizens’ oversight committee. The measure requires a majority of over 50% to pass. Benicia voters overwhelmingly passed a three-quarter-cent sales tax in March.

Measure G – City of Benicia

If approved, Measure G would create a Benicia City Charter for the sole purpose of adopting a real property transfer tax beyond the amount allowed by the state under the city’s current general law status. The charter is limited to the implementation of the real property transfer tax as described in Measure H and the charter could be amended only by voter approval. 

Measure H - City of Benicia

Measure H would create real property transfer tax to fund roads, infrastructure, facilities and essential city services including police and fire. The tax would be due upon the sale of a property and assessed based on the sale price. Properties selling for $2 million and under would be taxed at a rate of 0.004%, over $2 million at 0.006% and over $10 million at 0.008%. The tax is expected to generate $850,000 in annual revenue for the city. Property transfers between family members would be exempt from the tax.