After Auburn was added to District 5 last October during the redistricting process, there was some concern that Supervisor Jennifer Montgomery, a Donner Summit local, would have a harder time getting reelected. Auburn is more conservative than the east side of Placer County and has a larger population than Tahoe.
The worries, however, proved to be for naught. The election that pitted four candidates — all from the east side of the county (and three with the last name of Johnson) — against Montgomery wasn’t even close. Montgomery won with more than 53 percent of the vote, a large margin over the second-place winner, who garnered only 16 percent.
Although Montgomery said she felt secure that she would win, she was unsure whether it would be in the first- or second-round election. Supervisors must receive 50 percent plus 1 of the total vote to win. If any candidate fails to get a clear majority, the top two winners go to a run-off election in the fall.
“I was confident that I was going to win ultimately, but I was uncertain whether ‘ultimately’ meant in June or November,” said Montgomery, who was first elected in 2008.
Winning in the first round was a big relief to Montgomery, who was saved from additional fundraising. She raised $50,000 over the past year but estimates she would have had to raise another $100,000 for a run-off election.
One reason her campaign was relatively cheap (she spent $220,000 to get elected in 2008) was because she already had name recognition. And although she only recently became Auburn’s supervisor, she spends at least three to four days a week working in her office in Auburn and attending community events like the Party in the Park and Auburn Community Festival. Montgomery is also a member of community organizations in Auburn such as Soroptimist and the American Association of University Women, and attends regular meetings of the Auburn Chamber of Commerce and North Auburn Municipal Advisory Council.
“Ever since I was elected three-and-a-half years ago, I have made a point of being in the Auburn community because it is the county seat,” she said.
Nevertheless, Montgomery did have concerns that as a new representative of Auburn, people wouldn’t know her or her accomplishments. So she worked hard to get her name out, sending out more mailers in the city than in Tahoe, walking the precincts, and having volunteers make phone calls to spell out her accomplishments in the area.
“We put together specifics on the things I was working on in Auburn and [unincorporated] North Auburn, and the things I was working on with the Auburn City Council,” she said. “I think it was very effective.”
Montgomery also believes that she won because her opponents failed to make a strong case about why she should be removed.
“People would look at their flyers and say ‘But Jennifer is already doing that,’” she said. “One of the candidates said ‘I’m going to make it [supervisor] a full-time job.’ Great, that would be only 40 hours!”
Montgomery, who is a full-time supervisor, says she regularly works 60 to 70 hours a week as supervisor.
“I think a lot of the candidates were not familiar with me,” she said. “I had never seen them at a public meeting.”
Montgomery also attributes her victory to getting people to vote. She knew that voter turnout would be low because there were no major issues on the ballot, so she encouraged people to make their voices heard.
“We really worked to motivate people that their vote counted because of low-voter turnout,” she said. “We told them, ‘Your vote will have more weight.’”
Despite her success, Montgomery said the election was exhausting.
“Running against four people is tough,” she said. “You have to strategize and have answers to all the issues.”
