Greensite won 11.1% of the vote in the June primary. Coonerty had 47.8%, and Chen Mills had 20.5%. 

Greensite’s endorsement

A core plank of Greensite’s campaign was her concern that the city was allowing too much housing. While Coonerty didn’t share that rhetoric during the primary, “everything that I brought forward that had helped him change his mind about that issue, and in talking about it with him, I feel that we have common ground,” she said. 

Greensite has been called a progressive activist, a label she shares with opposing mayoral candidate Chen Mills, and the three other candidates of the June primary.

But, “right from the beginning of the campaign,” she said, “I made it very clear to everybody that I was running an independent campaign on specific issues, and that I was not wanting to be part of any slate, or group.”

Greensite has supported Coonerty’s push for more data-gathering about the city’s housing — she remains skeptical that below-market-rate housing is being occupied by people who already lived in Santa Cruz — and his history of negotiating with UC Santa Cruz to protect the city’s interests.

Coonerty also has close ties with some local developers. He helped scout a site for affordable housing developer The Danco Group — eventually landing on the Downtown location of Dell Williams owned by Coonerty’s wife and mother in law. 

He was hired by RedTree Partners to help them close out lease negotiations between them, the City of Santa Cruz and UCSC for a 161-unit housing project for UCSC students and staff on Delaware Avenue. He’s also helped in negotiations about the proposed Downtown hotel, and a proposed Warriors stadium redevelopment. 

He doesn’t see a conflict of interest with his potential role as a mayor, “I see it as really relevant experience,” he said in September.

Ryan Coonerty was hired by RedTree Partners to help with negotiations between the developer, the city and the university for Delaware Addition. The project finished construction in May. (Nik Altenberg — Santa Cruz Local file)

As a consultant, “my role was to work with the city, when relevant with UCSC, and with the building owner to get to a solution,” that would allow the project to move forward, he said. “In some ways, that’ll be the same thing that I’ll be doing, but on behalf of the residents.”

He added, “there are projects and developers that I have turned down over the years working with because I don’t believe they’re doing the right thing.”

Coonerty’s views on housing

Ahead of the June primary, Coonerty said that city leaders must be realistic about their ability to block or change new housing developments. 

“When the city has authority, we need to use it to protect neighborhoods from out-of-scale development,” Coonerty told Santa Cruz Local in May. At the same time, “pretending like we can go back and just stop every project is lying to people, and it’s not how you should be running a government.” 

In a September interview, he said that recent housing proposals, including a six-story project in Seabright, has led him to reconsider his attitude.

“The city has to be more aggressive in pursuing legal options” to stop or curtail projects with large amounts of community pushback, he said.

A full description of Coonerty’s platform is forthcoming in Santa Cruz Local’s Election Guide on Oct. 5.

At the Thursday press conference, Coonerty said that his overall political view of housing policy remains constant, and that he’s opposed some projects in the past.

Greensite’s influence, he said, is more about the strategies the city could use to push back on state mandates. “What are the levers we have? What is the data we need to provide? Where are the opportunities to fight?” he said. 

The two aren’t aligned on all issues — Greensite opposed the Downtown library and affordable housing project, which Coonerty supported — but Greensite said she believes Coonerty is best positioned to shape the future of housing in Santa Cruz. 

“I feel Ryan is the stronger, the better candidate,” she said.