Two Sonoma State employees – Caroline Bañuelos, SSU Community Partnerships Coordinator and alumna, and Professor of Mathematics Ben Ford – won area city council seats in the 2024 Sonoma County elections.
Bañuelos won the Santa Rosa City Council District 5 race with over 60% of the vote, and Ford won with 27.6% of the vote in what was considered a three-against-one race for the Cotati City Council.
Councilmember Bañuelos
The Santa Rosa race was considered competitive, featuring Bañuelos, a seasoned civic leader, against political newcomer Jeremy Newton, a military veteran and commercial pilot.
According to Bañuelos’ candidate website, she is the “first self-identified Latina to serve on Santa Rosa’s City Council — an achievement made possible by a community that values representation, equity, and progress.”
With a budget deficit and imminent cuts for Santa Rosa City Hall, Bañuelos has some work ahead. She has to untangle persistent housing needs and homelessness, and find solutions to increase interest in the city’s downtown and make Santa Rosa more enticing to visitors.
Bañuelos said she is looking forward to working on affordable housing not just for low low-income people, but also for working-class people like herself.
“I’m hoping we can expand and encourage development of different types of housing for our residents in Santa Rosa,” she said. “I’m also very interested in working on issues around homelessness and unhoused people. We need to look at the underlying causes of homelessness and how to break the cycle of chronic homelessness and generational poverty.”
Bañuelos also serves on the Santa Rosa Junior College Board. She is a former Santa Rosa Planning Commissioner and participated in the Board of Community Services and the first Community Advisory Board (CAB).
Since 2018, Bañuelos has managed community partnerships with Sonoma State’s Center for Community Engagement (CCE) and is responsible for developing new relationships for the university. She also leads CCE’s risk management efforts and supports the AmeriCorps program as well as on-campus service-learning projects.
Bañuelos graduated from Sonoma State with a B.A. in Political Science in 1994. During her early years at SSU, she became involved in politics on campus and learned the value of youth-led participation. She started the “Students for Boxer” group to help elect Barbara Boxer to the U.S. Senate and later formed the first Sonoma State University College Democrats chapter.
Councilmember Ford
First elected to the Cotati City Council in 2020, Ford supports climate and environmental sustainability, racial justice, and affordable housing development
His candidate website states that he is “proud to have championed a city's recognition of diversity as a source of strength.”
Working as a math professor at SSU since 1998, Ford served as Chair of the Mathematics and Statistics Department for three years and was twice elected Chair of the Sonoma State University faculty.
Ford said because of his work with the university and his political position, he is able to support the SSU and Cotati communities in various ways.
“Through my work in mathematics education and my job as a mathematics professor, I’ve become involved in the local community, which led to more service opportunities, including serving on the Cotati City Council for the last four years,” he said.
Krista Sherer - Strategic Communications Writer