- [Announcer] This production is made possible by the financial support of AARP California.

(gentle upbeat guitar music) - Dr. Flojaune Cofer is an epidemiologist and public health advocate who has dedicated her career to improving health outcomes and advancing social justice.

Cofer has led public health initiatives in California, and has served on a number of governmental boards related to climate change, transportation, and public safety.

She joins us today to share her story and vision for Sacramento as she campaigns to become its next mayor.

Welcome, Dr. Cofer.

- Thank you so much for having me, Scott.

- So I want to go back to the beginning and ask you a little bit about your early life coming from Pittsburgh, and what sort of were the formative experiences that made you and shaped you into who you are today?

- Yeah, I grew up in the Hill District in Pittsburgh, which famously is the neighborhood that August Wilson wrote his Century series about.

It's the only neighborhood, it's the only city, really, in the country that has had every decade of the 20th century chronicled.

And he grew up in my neighborhood, and so that was a real point of pride for us.

My parents would always take me to the openings of his later shows at the public theater, and so that really shaped who I am as a person, that community that I grew up in that is an historically Black community, but also incredibly socioeconomically diverse.

We had people at every spectrum of, you know, the income range, and lots of people who come from all different kinds of backgrounds.

And so you don't think sometimes about diversity within a community, but that's what I grew up with.

- What did you love most about that community growing up?

- I loved the fact that most people went to our high school.

Many people went to the church that was two blocks away from me.

We all went to Porter's, which was the corner store, and we had just these shared experiences of being outside during the summer or playing in the street until the bus would come by, going to the park for our various festivals and celebrations that were held there.

There's just this synergy of energy and excitement that existed in the community, where we all really knew each other.

I mean, there's nobody on the block that I couldn't name and know exactly who they were and what they were up to.

And so it's something that for many people, you know, in a city today, they may only know one or two of their neighbors, if any, but at that time you knew neighbors block by block and many blocks out, and so it really created this sense of connection because they knew the neighbors more blocks out than you, so you felt like you knew the entire neighborhood, essentially, even though you were, you know, mostly confined to maybe one or two blocks yourself.

- Does that in any way inform your vision on the type of community- - Absolutely.

- that you have in your mind for what Sacramento should be, - Absolutely.

- and could be, and maybe is?

- Yeah, it's one of the things that attracted me to Sacramento, is that there are tight-knit neighborhoods here, and people who know each other and lived here for a long time and have a real pride in their schools and their faith communities and the other institutions that they're involved in.

And my parents were both public school teachers.

My mom taught eighth grade English, my dad taught eighth grade math.

That's actually how they met.

And so if you lived in my neighborhood and you wanted to go to college, someone would tell you to knock on our door, sometime, probably around this time of year, August or so, and you'd be seated at my dining room table, which was long, not quite around like this one, and you would work on your college essays.

And on the way out the door, my dad would be yelling over your shoulder, "Hey, make sure your parents call so we can work on those FAFSA applications and scholarships," because the idea was that they wanted to help you, not just apply, but go to college.

But it wasn't one way.

These were also the people who mowed our lawn, who babysat me when my dad was coaching girls basketball, or my mom was doing PTA work.

We were a community that had all different strengths and assets, and everybody was kind of putting them into the pool and you could take what you needed.

And that was really the one of the first values that I remember ever being instilled in me without anyone saying it out loud, is that community is about connection, it's about caring for one another, and it's about the ways in which we all show up with what we have, and we all take what we need from that pool.

- It's interesting you talk about August Wilson, because August Wilson, one of our greatest playwrights in the last century, all of his shows, his plays, all seem to be very values-driven in telling their particular stories.

- [Flojaune] Yes.

- In addition to that phenomenal story that you just shared with us about your dad helping kids at the kitchen table, what are some of the other values that you carry with you from the youngest part of your life that inform who you are today and how it is that you see civic life, and not just, you know, from where you grew up, but here in Sacramento as well?

- Yeah, I think some of the other values that, you know, I got from my community were the sense that, you know, hard work should be rewarded, that when people put in effort for something, we should really recognize that.

And so, you know, both my school and my church really went out of their way to recognize when people were good citizens, right, when they were good students, when they were really good at sports or at music or at art.

It wasn't just this one kind of narrow construction of what achievement looks like.

If you were the type of person who really helped other people, that was recognized as well.

And so it showed me, again, it just reinforced that notion of like, there's a way that we all show up, and that when you show up as your best in whatever domain it is, that that should be rewarded and recognized.

And so I think a lot about that in terms of when you're developing a team and when you're working together to be able to solve challenges like what Sacramento has, also recognizing all the great strengths that you have at the table, and the way that people are showing up every day to be able to make something possible.

- Well, one of the great things about a community that surrounds any one of us is it helps us when we need to be resilient.

When you think about your own resiliency, what have been kind of the highs and lows for you in terms of your own journey that tell us a little bit more about who you are, and some of the things that are most important as you think about leading, not only your work today, but potentially as mayor of Sacramento.

- Yeah, I think this is a really great question, Scott, and, you know, I think the one that obviously stands out for me is that when I was 11 we were at my aunt's birthday dinner, and my dad collapsed and died from heart disease.

And so here we have my entire family gathered together to celebrate this really, you know, fantastic occasion.

This is actually not my aunt, but my dad's aunt, right, who was in her eighties, and my dad is 47, and by the end of the night he's no longer with us.

And so that experience, you know, of the trauma of not only losing a parent but watching it happen, stays with you.

And in retrospect, like looking back on that, a few things are true.

One is that my dad was failed by policies that didn't protect him.

He was born- - Like what?

- in 1947, at a time... And he started smoking before the Surgeon General's Report came out, when the tobacco lobby was lying about the harms of smoking, and when it was heavily and in a really predatory fashion marketing to kids, marketing in, you know, lower income communities, and in particular communities of color, in Black communities like the one my dad grew up in.

And so for him, he didn't get the same opportunity I did being born in 1982, to know that smoking is bad, to see the warning labels, and to be able to avoid that addiction, and it ultimately cost him his life at a really early age.

And so that stands out to me, and it's one of the reasons I went into public health.

- I was wondering about that.

Epidemiology is a little bit different than somebody saying, "I want to grow up to be like a firefighter," or this or that.

- Or even a physician, right?

- Or even a physician.

So give us a little bit more insight on how you ended up making that unique choice.

- It's a great question.

I actually really found public health kind of by accident.

So this story is the shout out to college professors who get annoyed enough with you to help you, and also to being able to see some data and relate to it.

So my mom was, when I was in college, reviewing scholarship applications, and these were mostly Black and Latino students.

And what I noticed because of my own lived experience were how many of the students talked about in their college applications for the scholarship losing a parent.

And so I started doing the mental math, because this was an experience that was unique to me and maybe a few other people I knew, and then I was like, "Wow, this is a lot of students that, you know, share an ethnic background with me who all lost parents presumably before they turned 50," right, just doing like some basic estimation math.

And so that was my first observation of patterns of life expectancy, was like, this shouldn't be happening.

Like, our parents should be living to see us graduate high school and college and get married and have kids, and all of these life things that we weren't.

And then when I was in college, you know, having had that experience, I had a professor, and I was doing chemistry research with him.

And he was a bench chemist, did not care about application much at all.

And I kept asking him public health questions while we were analyzing breast milk samples.

What impact do these bands that we're seeing have on a woman's ability to lactate, or, you know, the growth charts of the babies?

And eventually he said to me, "Flo, do you have room in your schedule next semester?"

And I was like, "Yeah."

And he was like, "I want you to take this class at Clark Atlanta University," which is across the street from Spelman, and it was a maternal and child health epidemiology class.

And the first day when I got there and they shared the syllabus with us, I was like, "I have found my people."

This is the combination of chemistry and of math, which was my minor, chemistry was my major, women's studies was my double major.

And I was like, "Here we have sociology mixed with math, mixed with a basic understanding of biological sciences."

I was like, "This is what I wanna do with my life."

It helps us to better understand how the world is organized, identify patterns, and then do something about them.

- And so when you look at society today, you spend a lot of time talking about things related to income, educational levels, sometimes race, gender, and all of these different indicators that people have.

What is it that you glean from that sort of approach that helps inform how you make policy or how it is that you think about designing or leading program efforts to address challenges in society?

- Yeah, that's also a great question.

You're hittin' 'em today, Scott.

So I approached this from the perspective, and this actually showed up when I was in NELP.

I approached things from the perspective of something could be true at the community level or the societal level and be untrue for you as an individual.

And so that does not mean that what you're seeing in the data is untrue or that what's happening with you is untrue.

It means that just because there's a pattern doesn't mean you fit into that pattern.

And so it's a duality in my brain that always exists, is just because I meet somebody who's in this demographic doesn't mean they follow the patterns that may be common for their demographic.

And so that allows me to both see people as individuals and relate there, and also see people as part of a collective, because we all are.

And I think that shows up in how I approach policymaking, because it means that when I come into communities, I'm fully aware that there are people who are ready for change, and that change may be something I am excited about and something I'm not.

And there also is this tendency as humans to balk when we don't feel like we've been seen and heard and invited in for partnership, and it's one of the things that I've seen as a real opportunity for Sacramento.

This is a town where 30,000 people wake up early on Thanksgiving morning to do Run to Feed the Hungry to support our food bank.

So this is a community of people who are willing to put in not just money, but sweat equity into being able to do something really meaningful to them.

And there also is a way that we will push back if we don't get a chance to be at the table to be a part of the decision that's happening in our communities.

And so that's a very normal human process.

And so understanding both of those, it means how we decide how we're gonna do things determines how people feel about it, their excitement or enthusiasm about it, and also its ultimate success.

And I think that really is why I approach this this way.

- So give us the practical application of that observation in terms of how it is you would lead.

- Absolutely.

So an example is the number one issue in Sacramento is homelessness.

Everybody, every neighborhood I knocked, and we knocked 25,000 doors in the primary, everybody named it as their number one issue with very rare exception.

And so when I think about addressing that issue, one of the things we need to answer is the critical question of where can people go immediately if we don't want them to be in front of businesses or at your home, whereas my experience was two weeks ago sleeping in my backyard, right?

- Oh really?

- Yes.

I woke up in the morning.

- [Scott] So you're living it.

- I'm living this experience, right?

I have been downtown catching a bus and had somebody who was experiencing psychosis pick up, you know, a sign and want to threaten me with it, and I have deescalation training, so I knew how to handle those situations, but I don't expect that from everyone in Sacramento.

So the fundamental question we have to answer is where can people go?

And so when we have that conversation, we start talking about what are the available spaces and lots all across the city.

If I were to say to you tomorrow, "We're gonna put this thing across the street from your house," the first thing you would say back is, "Absolutely not."

Even if you're a compassionate person- - You're probably right.

- who wants to be a part of the solution, right?

- You're probably right.

- Because you weren't a part of that decision.

And so instead what I do is I come to you and I say, "We have this challenge, Scott, and we need to figure out something to do.

And here are our four available parcels, which include a vacant lot that is technically classified as a park, but it's not being utilized at all.

It's an underutilized parcel.

And we have this lot over here and we have this.

What would be the best place to do this?"

And then everybody says, "Oh, I don't want this, I don't want that."

And then I get to say to you, "Why?"

And you say, "Well, I'm worried about my property values.

You know, I don't want there to be trash here.

I don't want there to be needles.

I don't want..." And I say, "You know, that's valid.

I don't want that either.

What if we commit to...?"

And now we can start to talk about the why behind your no.

And when we do that, then you go, "All right, yeah.

If all that stuff happens, I'm okay with this."

And what we've done now is made you a partner in it.

And then I say to you, "Scott, would you be willing to...?

Here's my number.

Would you be willing to be a partner on this?

If you see something that you don't like or you have an idea, call me."

Now you're an invested partner and you're a leader, and when you go to talk to other people, you're gonna bring them into that conversation in the same way, and you're gonna talk about why you like this as opposed to being the person riling up your neighbors and saying, "This is bad for us," right?

And so I have watched on the sidelines as Sacramento has imposed upon people, dare I say, in a very colonial fashion, ideas that most people probably would agree with if their voices were heard and if they were a part of the solution.

And it's one of the reasons why I haven't named specific sites of where we wanna do things, because that's something, if you want it to be successful, that you have as a conversation with the community.

You don't come and tell them what's gonna happen to them.

You invite them in to be a part of the solution.

And I think that's my biggest lesson in watching and seeing what we've done well and what we haven't.

- It's interesting you talked about a little bit earlier on when you were talking about epidemiology and sort of the approach behind it, you were talking about looking at a person as an individual and as a part of a community.

- Yep.

- A lot of times when people view you as an individual, and these are observers within Sacramento.

- [Flojaune] Sure.

- What are the biggest misconceptions about you that you wish people would take the time to ask you about and investigate before they reach a conclusion?

- Sure.

You know, I think depending on how people meet me determines how they know me, right?

- Well, let me just give you kind of the caricature.

Super liberal, pie in the sky, solutions not necessarily grounded in reality, doesn't understand how the real world works, and so therefore is coming in with approaches like the one you just described that sound great but are operationally dead on day one, and just, you know, kind of like so far out on the utopian scale that there's no pragmatic realism to your approaches.

Respond to that.

That was a lot.

- Yeah, that's a lot.

(chuckles) So what I would say in response to that is, yeah, I do think those are misconceptions because most of what I'm bringing to this is over 20 years of experience having done these things, working with coalitions, working in communities, learning from other communities that have been able to be successful in ways that may be Sacramento hasn't, and also learning from some of the things that were successful, that now we do that postmortem and say, "Wow, what could we have done better?"

- [Scott] A more data or scientific approach.

- A scientific approach to what's working.

I say to my team all the time, "Let's wake up today and make new mistakes, not old ones," right, and so... - [Scott] Hold on.

Say that one more time.

- Let's wake up today and make new mistakes, not old ones.

- [Scott] That's interesting.

I never heard that.

- Because we're going to make mistakes, and if we don't try anything new, if we don't make mistakes, that means we haven't tried anything that's worth trying.

Let's just be honest, right?

Everything that we live under was made up by somebody.

And so while data is important, that's why we do evidence-informed versus data-informed, right?

Because evidence-informed says we already have the evidence to be able to say we should definitely do this.

Data-informed means there are some data here to say we should probably go down this path, but we don't necessarily have evidence yet to be able to say it's absolutely gonna work.

And so we're in both a doing and a learning experience at the same time, but we want to every day be trying something worth trying that we think is gonna work, so data-informed, and collecting the evidence to be able to say, "Yes, it worked," or "No, it didn't, and how can we pivot?"

And that's important for us in terms of learning.

And so yes, we wanna be in a place where we're probably going to make mistakes, because none of us is perfect, where we also don't repeat what's already been done and hasn't worked.

And so that's an example of, you know, having watched when people are made partners in something, they love it.

And when people are not made partners in something, no matter how much they may agree with it, they will balk and they will oppose you.

- So, but in talking about making people partners and bringing people along, that's a lot of process.

- [Flojaune] It is.

- And that means that's a lot of time, okay?

- [Flojaune] Not necessarily.

- And when you got somebody sittin' on your front porch who doesn't belong there, I don't have time for process.

I just need the result.

- Absolutely.

Yes.

And so that's part of what we're trying to do, because, right, you get bogged down in process if you have a great idea and everybody opposes you.

So the question is, do you want to take a moment to build a coalition so that you can actually be successful, or do you wanna be mired in opposition and never even get your idea off the ground?

The other part of this is there are things that we can do expediently when the community's already asked for them.

And I think it's a balance of both, of making sure that when we're doing something new we bring them in, but when the community's been banging down your door and asking you to do something, that you don't go, "Gosh, we need another process."

No, you've already done the process.

People have told you what they want.

- Yeah, so what inspired you to run for mayor, given the fact that you've got a career that you obviously love in epidemiology and public health?

So why take on what most considered to be a thankless job, that certainly it's not about the financial rewards?

Why subject yourself to all of this?

- Well, I have said this to a lot of people, and I mean it somewhat jokingly but very seriously at the same time, which is that I think my greatest qualification to run for mayor is that I was loved as a child.

- [Scott] What?

- What I mean by that is I think that this job requires some really deep roots.

It requires you to know who you are.

It requires you to be able to kind of take some of the natural criticism that comes with it.

It requires you to be a coalition builder.

It requires you to be able to hear through people's anger and opposition.

And one of the things that I'm known for is staying at the table, maybe sometimes too long, with people who don't agree with me, inviting people to the table.

Even if I'm not in 100% agreement with you, unless you are a hate group, like I'm not meeting with the Proud Boys or the Klan, but with the exception of that, I will sit down and I will work things out with you.

I've sat down with developers for multiple hours and talked to them about what's not working here.

I've sat down with people.

- But okay, all that's fine, but what is it that sort of stuck in your craw so much that it got you out of your house and into the street to essentially sign up to run for mayor?

- So it is the combination of optimism that Sacramento is wonderful, and it is a place that people are and very much should be proud to live in.

It's a place with a very bright future, and it's a place that has a lot of people who want to be a part of that bright future.

And also it has some major challenges that because we have people here, we actually can address.

We're not in the position of other places having sectarian fights about whether or not we wanna be inclusive and whether or not we want to address challenges.

We're in the problem of just being in maybe analysis paralysis where we keep analyzing the problem and not doing enough about it, where we're not collaborating with each other when we have the business improvement districts and the nonprofits and the city and the county all doing their own thing, all in the same boat rowing in different directions, putting in a lot of effort, but not getting us as far as we would if we could all row together, right?

And so I think that's what makes me excited.

It's like we have challenges, but we also have opportunities, and our choice is really clear.

We can manage towards a vision or we can manage decline.

- So that in itself sounds like a lot of work.

So when you talk about public health and health-related issues, sustainability is a big issue, not just for communities, but for individuals.

- [Flojaune] Yes.

- How do you balance, you personally, all of these aspirations in public life, and being grounded and being settled and being healthy in terms of just you as an individual?

- Yeah, I had a step aerobics instructor when I was in grad school who used to say that you have to think about your food, your sleep, and your exercise, and at any given time you wanna always make sure that you're on point with at least two out of three.

And so I obviously aim for three out of three, but at best two out of three.

So I try to be very, very disciplined about getting enough sleep, staying hydrated and eating nutritious food, and going to the gym at least three times a week.

I get a two-hour massage once a month to make sure that I have some time to decompress.

I make sure I prioritize spending time with friends and laughing.

And I love comedy.

It's one of my favorite ways to de-stress, so I will, you know, in the evening before I go to bed, watch a standup before I retire for the evening just to be able to laugh and to have the catharsis of that moment.

And so it's the connection, and it's the taking care of my body, and being in that that really grounds me in who I am and gives me the balance of being able to do a lot of hard work and keep that capacity while also not burning myself out.

- Very briefly, if you were elected mayor.

- When.

(laughing) - Okay, your words, what would be your top three priorities for the future of Sacramento?

- Yeah, so top priority is one of the ones that's not particularly sexy, if you will, but it is really the governance piece, because within the first 100 days, one of the things I wanna do is I wanna bring the council together to be able to do some, you know, just relationship building.

- Okay, so governance?

- Yes.

- [Scott] What's the second one?

- So, but to set goals specifically so that we can all work together, and also also goals for our staff, because that hasn't happened.

- [Scott] What's number two and number three?

- Number two would be addressing housing and homelessness, and number three would be, you know, really thinking about economic development, both in terms of climate change and also in terms of opportunities that exist in Sacramento to build up our revenue and be able to build up the base so that we're able to be a thriving city into the future.

- All right, one last question with a one-sentence answer.

- Sure.

- Okay?

What is it that you want the people of Sacramento to know about you that typically people miss when they're evaluating you?

- I am a coalition builder, and so I think one of the things I say to people all the time is that we know how to work with people we don't agree with, and that's one of my greatest skills is being able to work with people even though we don't have 100% alignment, and so being able to have the vision and pull people together is something that I absolutely think is missed sometimes because I do have strong opinions, but I have room to be able to hear other people out and to be able to stay at the table and collaborate.

- All right, and I think we'll leave it there.

And that's our show.

Thanks to our guest and thanks to you for watching "Studio Sacramento."

I'm Scott Syphax.

See you next time right here on KVIE.

(gentle upbeat guitar music) - [Announcer] All episodes of "Studio Sacramento," along with other KVIE programs, are available to watch online at kvie.org/video.

- [Announcer 2] This production is made possible by the financial support of AARP California.