Ashley Swearingen, in the minds of the FCGG Board, clearly stands out as the mayoral candidate most qualified to lead Fresno. FCGG did not endorse in the primaries because Ashley had been one of our founding board members and we did not know all the other candidates well enough to feel comfortable making an objective endorsement decision.  The field has now narrowed to two candidates we know well, and the choice is obvious to us. Ashley Swearengin stands head and shoulders above Henry Perea. Her visionary leadership and hands-on engagement are the combination Fresno needs. While both support public safety, reduction of our concentrated poverty, air quality improvement, and support of the cultural arts, these are the characteristics that strongly differentiate them:

Experience: Leading a City with over 4,000 employees and a $1 billion budget requires executive experience. Swearengin has ten years of executive experience, from her days as the Executive Director of the Central Valley Business Incubator to her most recent duties as the Chief Operating Officer of the Regional Jobs Initiative and as lead executive for the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley. Her experience and demonstrated leadership caused the Governor to appoint her to the California Commission on Economic Development.  Although Perea has served five years on the City Council, he has no executive experience whatsoever.

Demonstrated Tangible Outcomes: Perea deserves credit for teaming with Mayor Autry on two important initiatives, the $45 million “No Neighborhood Left Behind” project and the City’s solar initiative. These noteworthy accomplishments pale in comparison with those generated by Swearengin. The business incubator, which Ashley revived and led from 1998 to 2000, has provided business assistance to 3,800 entrepreneurs, the largest job generators in our community.  As the Chief Operating Officer of the Regional Jobs Initiative (RJI), Ashley has worked with some ten industry clusters that have generated more than 75% of the non-farm/non-government jobs in Fresno County since 2004. The five founding co-chairs of the RJI, Mayor Autry, then-Clovis Mayor Lynne Ashbeck, then-Fresno County Supervisor Juan Arambula and two local businessmen, chose Ashley to lead the RJI. Talk to them and the ten leaders of the industry clusters and they will tell you her leadership has been extraordinary. The California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, born out of the RJI, is an unprecedented effort to align the eight counties in the Valley in pursuit of solutions to long-neglected problems, with remarkable results.  So far, the Partnership has helped generate over $2 billion in new investments for the Valley, including $1 billion for Highway 99, more than $800 million for cross-regional transportation projects; more than $300 million for air quality mitigation, and smaller amounts for workforce training, planning of a UC medical school in the Valley, fighting meth addiction, and many other programs. Ashley knows how to get things done.

Independence: When we launched FCGG in 2003, we said that pursuit of solutions to our most important challenges “will require sustained effort over several years and we cannot afford to have them derailed by diversions in support of narrower interests, or sacrificed at the altar of the next election”. The campaign contributions reports of each candidate speak volumes on this subject. Swearengin has, by far, the largest list of individual contributors. Perea’s campaign, on the other hand, reports large “independent expenditures” from a Southern California PAC tied to the Service Employees International Union and to local developers. A Fresno Bee editorial correctly pointed this out and said “when special interest groups put money into a race, they want something from their investment”. As to “the next election”, much can be learned from the fact that when Juan Arambula said he would not run for re-election in 2006, Perea immediately announced he would run for the office, then withdrew when Arambula reconsidered, and shortly thereafter made it known that he would instead run for Mayor of Fresno. There’s nothing wrong with political ambition, but we know Fresno is better served by a leader who is not looking past Fresno to the next election or running for Mayor now because their 1st choice fell through.

We are endorsing Ashley not only because she is the better choice, but because she has the skills, experience and character to be one of the best mayors in Fresno’s history.  Mayor Autry has opened unprecedented opportunities for our city, and we are convinced that Ashley’s abilities will enable her to capitalize on these opportunities and deliver on her promise to make Fresno a top tier city.