Four candidates vie to succeed Brown as District 5 supervisor
- Lake County News Reports
- Posted On
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – For the first time in 20 years, the incumbent supervisor for District 5 is not seeking another term, leading to a wide-open race between four candidates.
Supervisor Rob Brown is in the final year of his fifth term. He originally had planned to leave the board after his fourth term but changed his mind after the Valley fire.
Since then, he’s made clear that this would be his final term, and as it became clear that the seat would open up, several candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds went forward with the effort to place their name on the ballot.
The four individuals seeking to succeed Brown as District 5’s next supervisor are Kevin Ahajanian, an activist and musician from Cobb; Bill Kearney, a retired pharmacist and business owner, from the Buckingham area of Kelseyville; Jessica Pyska, an educator and business owner of Cobb; and Lily Woll, who has taught Spanish and English as a second language at both the community college and high school level, of Kelseyville.
The district they want to represent includes the greater Kelseyville area, as well as Buckingham, parts of Cobb Mountain, the Clear Lake Rivieras and Loch Lomond.
Much has changed since the seat was last open to a general race, without an incumbent on the ticket.
Looming over the race is one of the county’s defining issues – wildland fire.
The threat of wildland fire has always been an issue around Lake County, but the problem has escalated over the past decade.
Much of Cobb was devastated by the 2015 Valley fire, the district was evacuated in 2018 due to the Mendocino Complex and there have been several close calls, such as the August Golf fire that ignited above Buckingham and resulted in evacuations for nearby residents in the Riveras.
Two of the candidates for District 5 – Ahajanian and Pyska – lost homes in the Valley fire.
Recovery is a key economic and social issue in the wake of the fire disasters, but just as concerning is what might yet happen, in an area where many communities are clustered around the base of Mount Konocti, an area that has been a concern for a major wildland fire for decades.
Brown, in a January Board of Supervisors meeting, said that when his term ends, he hopes his greatest accomplishment will be to have prevented the communities that interface with Mount Konocti from burning down.
Another concern dominating the race’s landscape is the economy. Economic development and solutions to build and strengthen opportunities in the local business landscape have been raised by all of this year’s candidates.
Regarding fundraising totals, counting 2019 and 2020 totals, so far Kearney has raised just over $34,000 in monetary contributions, Pyska has raised nearly $16,000 and Woll has raised about $4,800. Ahajanian filed forms for both 2019 and 2020 saying he would raise less than $2,000 for each year.
Ahajanian said he’s not asking anyone for money. In describing his campaign, he said, “No big-money donors, no consultants, no expensive campaign managers telling me what to do.”
Many of the candidates are using social media to reach constituents, but door-to-door interactions, mailers, forums and other events remain key to their strategies.
Going door to door “is my favorite thing to do,” said Woll. “I really appreciate it.”
They also are regularly attending county and Board of Supervisors meetings.
The new supervisor is expected to be a key swing vote on a board that is reportedly considering issuing millions of dollars in raises to county employees as the result of a classification and compensation study that has been pushed by County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson. Huchingson, who for the last several years has stated that the county government is in a fiscal crisis, is reportedly in line for a hefty raise herself.
At the Lake County News forum for the District 5 candidates held in February, Kearney said that Huchingson – now also the subject of a multimillion-dollar tort claim alleging wrongful termination and discrimination filed by the county’s former human resources director – needs to go.
In the Super Tuesday presidential primary, District 5 voters will cast their votes for who they want to represent them in the critical years ahead; it’s a race that could extend until a November runoff unless the top vote-getter gets 50 percent plus one to clear a majority.
Ultimately, there is a question of whether who is elected will signify a value shift from Brown, who has been known for a more conservative political approach and a goal of smaller government while he’s remained an ally of Huchingson.
Ahajanian: Emphasis on sovereignty, private property rights
Newest to the county of the four candidates is Ahajanian, 48, who moved to Cobb in the summer of 2015, after his father’s death and just months before he would lose his home in the Valley fire.
He went to high school in Napa, lived in Seattle for eight years, then lived in the desert in Southern California before later moving to San Francisco and Sonoma County.
He acknowledged that while living in Riverside County in 2012, he had a domestic violence case involving the mother of his child.
“This is a hard thing to talk about,” he said.
However, Ahajanian addressed it in his interview with Lake County News, stating that he owned up to it in three different courts. Court records show he completed the required domestic violence program, served community work time and satisfied the terms of his probation.
Ahajanian said he sought to rebuild their family life. He said his daughter’s mother and her new husband later moved to Loch Lomond and they are on good enough terms that the couple signed his nomination papers to run for supervisor, which Lake County News confirmed with the elections office.
In order to reduce his stress and raise his young daughter in a better environment, he said he came to Lake County to live his “so-called libertarian dream,” and found his niche in a place where he could be more outspoken and could have an acre of his own. Lake isn’t as expensive and overbuilt as he found Napa and Sonoma counties to be.
The Valley fire destroyed his home, and after the property was cleaned up, he sold the lot and bought a house at another location. “After the cleanup, I saw the writing on the wall,” he said, referring to the difficulties of rebuilding.
Ahajanian, running for the first time for public office, gives his occupation now as “activist.” However, prior to moving to Lake County, he had a nearly three-decade-long career in the culinary industry, working as an executive chef in places including San Francisco. He’s also a rock musician.
Of the four District 5 candidates, Ahajanian has courted the most controversy and been the target of the most criticism for his political stances, which even in a nonpartisan supervisorial race have come to the fore.
“Your worldview is going to matter in your decision-making process,” he said.
In the statement he submitted for the ballot booklet, Ahajanian stated, “I have been an organizer of free speech rallies within the Patriot movement of Northern California, for the past few years. My views are libertarian leaning, with a strong emphasis on civil liberties and a free market economy.”
He explained that he began putting on those rallies in response to what he said is an attack on free speech by the far left, as well as the polarization of politics in California and the violent actions of Antifa. Antifa similarly has called him out on social media for his activities.
Ahajanian defined the Patriot movement as a reaction to polarization and ostracization, especially with people in the Bay Area, where the rallies he’s been involved with have taken place.
The Proud Boys also have reportedly endorsed him. That group has been identified as a far-right neofascist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that Ahajanian in turn criticized. Like the Patriot movement, Ahajanian described the Proud Boys as a reaction to the actions of the left.
When asked if he’s a white nationalist, Ahajanian replied, “Absolutely not. Under no circumstances,” adding, “I cannot stand identity politics at all.”
Ahajanian rejects attempts to lump him into that group, saying that he can sit down and talk to people with different political ideologies all over the political spectrum.
He has been active on the local level, joining the Lake County Republican Party and acting at one point as the group secretary. He said that one of the reasons he chose to run is that the local Republicans were trying to find a candidate for the seat and after they couldn’t locate one he decided to join the race himself.
Asked about his big issue, Ahajanian replied, “It’s going to be sovereignty and private property rights, and that’s why I’m running. It kind of feels like the walls are closing in.”
He cited issues with property owners’ insurance as well as the Second Amendment, stating that his neighbors in Cobb are concerned about Gov. Gavin Newsom coming to their doors to take their guns. During the Lake County News candidates forum, he spoke about arming militias locally.
Ahajanian said he also plans to stand against any attempts to raise property tax.
He said Lake County needs money coming in, and pointed to the Maha resort project near Middletown as one project that can help do that. He said there is a big difference between a project like that and the Dollar General that had been slated for Middletown. He said it’s easy to say no to Dollar General due to the low wages it pays and what it does to local businesses.
In speaking with constituents, he said people want help with vegetation management to prevent further first. “But a lot of folks want to have it done properly.”
He said there have been too many demands on tree crews on what can be cut down and can’t in the wake of the area’s fires. “I wish every tree was given a judicial process but it’s not possible,” he said, questioning if local contractors familiar with the area and its needs are being passed over for the work.
Ahajanian and other candidates were at the February meeting of the Lake County Public Safety Power Shutoff Committee, which hosted Aaron Johnson, a Pacific Gas and Electric vice president.
At that time, Ahajanian said he took the opportunity to speak with Johnson about the local concerns.
Whatever happens, Ahajanian said his future “is wide open.”
“I’m a little bit older and wiser,” he said, adding he’s going to be more cautious about getting things done as he negotiates the new political climate.
Kearney: A focus on economy and business
For nearly 40 years, Bill and Dana Kearney worked in their local pharmacy business, building up North Lake Medical Pharmacy, which has two Lakeport locations. Last year, they sold the business and retired.
Since then, Bill Kearney, 77, has turned his mind to becoming a county supervisor. He said he wants to bring to it his longstanding commitment to helping others.
In addition to successfully owning and operating a local business, Kearney – a US Army veteran who served during Vietnam – has four decades of community service, including previously holding the president’s job for both the Lake County Chamber of Commerce and the Sutter Lakeside Hospital board.
Kearney said he’s concerned about a variety of challenges Lake County is facing, chief among them wildland fire, the need to protect against them and recover from their impacts.
He also pointed to a lack of local jobs, to rising fire insurance costs – which he said is making it different to buy and maintain homes – and the public safety power shutoffs.
One of his key goals is to bring in more jobs and revenue-generating businesses, and one aspect of that is his plan to focus on recruiting high tech jobs.
He said Lake County offers a more affordable option and a better quality of life when compared to the Bay Area, explaining that he has friends who work for Apple and commute by plane.
“I’m looking for ways to get that message out to the high tech industry in Silicon Valley,” he said, adding you can work anywhere thanks to technology.
Kearney wants to see high-speed Internet get stronger, and said he has invested in local broadband improvement efforts to help make that happen.
Just as difficult as finding jobs is finding employees with the skills who will regularly show up, he said.
“If we aren’t paying minimum wage, we should be,” he said.
Kearney said he worked to create a good working environment for his employees, giving them medical insurance and paying them even when the pharmacy was closed during the fires. “That’s how valuable a good employee is here.”
He added, “You can make a decent living up in Lake County, we just have to take care of our employees.”
Kearney also is a proponent of the tourism industry, explaining that in 1984 he started bass fishing tournaments on the lake – which remain a local economic staple – in order to keep people coming to the lake year-round, not just during the height of the summer tourist season.
Other concerns for Kearney are the impacts to residents and business owners of increasing taxation in the state, water resources and the impact on local farmers, getting a fire station in the Buckingham and Rivieras areas to drop insurance costs, and increasing access to affordable housing.
Kearney said he’s heard from many people who believe he is against cannabis, which he said he isn’t.
He said the cannabis industry offers the county tremendous revenue opportunities and it needs to take advantage of that.
Kearney said he also wants to address Lake County’s growing homeless issue.
He plans to tackle that complex matter on a variety of fronts, with the main goal of working with nonprofits to secure the funding needed for mental health and addiction treatment, and transitional housing.
Pyska: Rebuilding and creating economic vitality
Pyska, 44, is a Lake County native. Born in Lakeport, she attended schools in Cobb and Middletown. Her father, John Jennings, was a Calpine employee for more than 30 years, and her mother, Karen Jennings, worked in the Middletown School District before serving two terms on the school board.
She went on to graduate from the University of California, Santa Cruz and worked in commercial real estate in San Francisco before she and her husband, Joel, returned to Lake County to raise their two children.
She and her husband own a technology consulting business, JP Consulting, and she is a classified employee at Cobb Mountain Elementary School, where she works part-time, teaching gardening, nutrition, cooking, science, art, math and environmental education to students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
Her family lost its home in the Valley fire, and since then they’ve rebuilt. Pyska has a wider vision for rebuilding the Cobb community and improving Lake County through disaster resilience and economic recovery.
In recent years she’s been a member of the Cobb Area Council. She said her work as the council’s economic development chair won it a $200,000 grant to develop an economic development strategy to overlay over the Cobb area plan.
They’ve also launched a microloan program for local businesses and she helped found and produce the Blackberry COBBler Festival, which had its debut last year.
In addition to the Cobb Area Council, she serves on the Lake County Risk Reduction Authority Ad Hoc Committee. She said she’s provided input on the county’s hazardous vegetation abatement ordinance that was approved last year, as well as the dark skies proclamation, and the tourist improvement district.
As she’s been speaking to voters, Pyska said that the biggest issue is fire – not just in those areas that have burned but those areas that haven’t.
“It’s terrifying for a lot of people. It’s terrifying for me,” she said.
“That’s the biggest issue, figuring out we can fortify those communities from a major disaster,” she said.
At a Lake County News candidates’ forum on Feb. 19, Pyska said concerns about fire and how to establish evacuation routes to safely get people out keep her awake at night. With the county experiencing a dry winter, Pyska is concerned about the potential for an extremely dangerous summer ahead.
For Pyska, the most important issue is the economy. Key to the economy, she explained, is rebuilding homes, getting new business and improving infrastructure.
Her focus on economic development includes updating area plans, as well as the county’s housing element and general plan. While the general plan is 11 years old, and such plans usually are updated every 20 years, Pyska thinks it needs updating now.
Thanks to the fires, “We’ve got a whole new landscape,” she said.
Once all of those documents are up to date, Pyska said the county can go after Community Development Block Grant funding for the purposes of updating infrastructure.
She said that infrastructure that needs upgrading ranges from roads, to water and sewer, to broadband.
Those are the components the county needs to have in place before it can grow sustainably, Pyska said.
Another big push for Pyska is the effort to rebuild homes in the areas of the county devastated by wildland fires. She said that’s key to recovering the county’s property tax roll.
She said she still sees empty neighborhoods, building moratoriums due to lack of water supply and destroyed roads.
If she wins the supervisorial seat, Pyska is gearing up to make it her full-time job in order to be fully committed to the big to-do list she’s laid out for herself.
While she enjoys her work with Cobb Mountain Elementary’s students, she said she has lined up someone to take over for her if she’s elected to succeed Brown.
Like Woll, Pyska – who was an exchange student in Bolivia – is fluent in Spanish and has made outreach to the Hispanic community.
Pyska was the first to enter the race last year – she made her announcement in May – and has since then landed key endorsements. She’s got the support of State Treasurer Fiona Ma; Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry; Kelly Cox, the retired county of Lake administrative officer; Kelseyville Unified School District Trustee Gary Olson; Lakeport City Councilwoman Mireya Turner; and Tim Gill, an assistant superintendent for the Lake County Office of Education, among many others.
Woll: A desire to improve government, welcome cultures
Woll, 38, was born and raised in Kelseyville, and she said she plans to stay in Lake County.
Her parents owned Roto-Rooter of Lake County for 35 years and also farmed walnuts for more than 25 years. She’s owned a small grocery store in Mexico, which she said gave her a passion for preserving small, family-owned businesses.
A graduate of Kelseyville High School, she received bachelor’s degrees in Spanish and international studies at City College of New York; served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guyana for two years, focusing on HIV/AIDS education and forest conservation; earned two master’s degrees in Spanish and education at Sonoma State University; worked for a year for Lake County Department of Social Services as a bilingual eligibility worker; worked as a family advocate for Lake County Tribal Health; and has been an instructor of Spanish, English as a second language, high school equivalency test preparation, and basic studies at Mendocino College and Woodland Community College.
In the fall, she began teaching Spanish at Kelseyville High School. Between teaching high school and entering the supervisorial race, Woll acknowledged embarking on two huge endeavors that are out of her comfort zone.
Like Pyska, she intends on leaving her teaching job at the high school if elected to the Board of Supervisors because she wants to be fully available to attend meetings and events and interact with constituents.
“When I’m supervisor, I plan to only be a supervisor. I want to give it 120 percent,” and be “as connected as possible to the community,” she said.
Woll has a particular interest in the Hispanic community, explaining that friends and neighbors introduced her to the culture at a young age, and she’s loved it ever since.
“It has been one of the best gifts that I have ever been given in this life, this connection with Latino culture,” she said.
She is married but separated; her husband, who she said is of Mexican heritage, remains a friend.
Woll’s outreach has included a focus on the local Hispanic community, both at events and church services. The response? “It’s been incredible.”
She added, “No one talks about this population, how important it is to speak Spanish, how important it is to include them in our community, now more than ever.”
As she’s been meeting voters, Woll said a key issue is the difficulty of rebuilding in the fire-devastated areas of Lake County. She cited a backlog in county permitting, as well as the lack of availability of workers and services to aid the rebuild. Woll wants to work on educational paths to aid the contracting industry.
She said people also are scared about the coronavirus. In response, she has organized a town hall that will take place at 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 2, at Grace Evangelical Free Church in Kelseyville, where local officials will give updates. Woll will be on hand to translate the updates into Spanish.
Woll has a wide variety of issues she wants to tackle, including education about Clear Lake and Lake County’s natural offerings to aid tourism, reforestation of fire-damaged areas, finding solutions and support for drug and alcohol rehabilitation and mental health programs, addressing homelessness, offering youth programs and exploring how to raise the wages of In-Home Supportive Service workers.
But, first, if elected, she would start with the local government. “The first thing I would look at is, I would go to every department head and I would say, ‘What can I do for you?’”
She added, “My biggest concern is that the county government is not running smoothly right now,” and she thinks changes need to be made.
For her, economic development also is a key area for focus. She believes it starts with improving the government so businesses can expand. She also believes Lake County lags behind other areas when it comes to supporting business, and she wants to facilitate business growth and permitting.
How to find out more
For more information about the candidates, visit the following websites and social media pages, or contact the candidates.
Kevin Ahajanian
Facebook page: Click here
Bill Kearney
Website: https://billkearneyforsupervisor.com/
Facebook page: Click here
Jessica Pyska
http://jessicapyskaforsupervisord5.com/
Facebook page: Click here
Phone: 707-278-4007
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Lily Woll
https://wollforsupervisor.wixsite.com/wollforsupervisor
Facebook page: Click here
Telephone: 707-367-9107
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to show campaign financial totals for both 2019 and 2020 to date.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.