District 4 Santa Cruz County Supervisor

Santa Cruz County voters on Nov. 3 will have a packed ballot, depending on where you are registered to vote. Key races include: Santa Cruz Mayor, Scotts Valley City Council, Capitola City Council and Watsonville City Council. Voters will also decide on trustees in these school districts: Pajaro Valley, San Lorenzo Valley, Cabrillo College and Soquel Union Elementary School District. Additionally, eligible voters will get to weigh in on candidates running for director positions in the Felton Fire Protection District and the Scotts Valley Water District.

Our comprehensive election guide featuring in-depth profiles of each race will be published on Oct. 5.

Jump to:

Quick comparison • On the issues • Campaign donations • About the Board of Supervisors

Meet the candidates

Elias Gonzales

Age: 48.

Occupation: Youth organizing leader for the Hollister nonprofit Youth Alliance.

Political background: Longtime community organizer and advocate, Santa Cruz County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commissioner.

Felipe Hernandez (incumbent)

Age: 54.

Occupation: Incumbent Santa Cruz County Supervisor.

Political background: Watsonville Mayor and City Councilmember from 2012 to 2020. Current member of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission and the Pajaro River Watershed Flood Prevention Authority.

Tony Nuñez

Age: 34.

Occupation: Marketing and Communications Manager for nonprofit Community Bridges.

Political background: Chair of the Pajaro Valley Health Care District. Former editor of The Pajaronian and Good Times. 

Quick comparison

How would you… Gonzales Hernandez Nuñez
Improve economic development and expand public assistance?
  • Allocate more money for rental and utility assistance.
  • Make applying for public assistance easier.
  • Provide outreach in Spanish and Indigenous languages. 
  • Audit county contracts with local nonprofits.
  • Share South County sales taxes with Watsonville for downtown development.  
  • Create areas for business tax breaks in Watsonville. 
  • Continue to support tenant legal assistance.
  • Allow people to get help from nonprofit and county programs simultaneously. 
  • Offer loans to local small businesses to open shops.
  • Try to site a future UC Santa Cruz medical school in Pajaro Valley.
Address wage theft from farmworkers?
  • Fund nonprofits for  outreach and legal assistance
  • Build relationships with growers and state regulators.
  • Encourage the county’s agricultural commissioner to work more closely with state regulators. 
  • Ban contracts with companies with a history of wage theft.
  • Expand support for legal aid.
  • Uplift employers who follow regulations.
  • Consider a pilot program to help train more legal aid providers.
Increase affordable housing?
  • Build affordable housing on county land.
  • Find ways to reduce construction costs and give incentives to affordable housing developers.
  • Prioritize locals for affordable housing.
  • Streamline affordable and workforce housing. 
  • Encourage for-sale homes and condos.
  • Build affordable housing on county land.
  • Encourage medium-density and farmworker housing.
  • Find partners to jointly fund affordable housing.
Address high rents and prevent displacement?
  • Prevent investors from buying up houses.
  • Strengthen rent stabilization and eviction protections.
  • Give tenants the right to legal counsel.
  • Give more funding for rental assistance using money from a proposed sales tax hike.
  • Help families free up money for rent by expanding access to free or low-cost child care.
Expand health care access?
  • Expand clinic capacity and reduce costs. 
  • Focus on access to preventative care to prevent more costly care.
  • Use a proposed sales tax hike to fund more county health care.
  • Partner with clinics and hospitals to encourage sign ups for MediCruz.
  • Use a proposed sales tax hike to fund more county health care.
  • Ensure those eligible keep Medi-Cal.
  • Partner with private health care providers.
Increase youth recreation options?
  • Fund programs like apprenticeships and art classes.
  • Pay schools for public access to fields.
  • Improve beach access.
  • Plan a new community center and pool.
  • Share sales tax money with Watsonville to bring new youth-serving businesses.
  • Incentivize schools to open fields to the public.
  • Give youth-serving small startup loans.
Cut the county budget, if needed?
  • Audit city spending.
  • Reallocate some Sheriff money. 
  • Put off non-essential construction projects.
  • Require department heads to identify cuts.
  • Raise money with economic development and a higher hotel tax.
  • Put off deep cuts, even if it requires drawing down reserves. 
  • Create a multi-year plan to fill budget gaps.

Candidates on the issues

Santa Cruz Local interviewed and surveyed hundreds of Santa Cruz County residents about their top local issues. The following questions are based on what we heard from voters.

Watsonville area residents told us they’re struggling with high prices and low wages. What economic development or county assistance programs would you propose to improve residents’ economic outlook?

“It’s very expensive in this area,” Gonzales said. “I think we’ve been told for so long to work hard, and we’ve been working harder, right? But I think that points to more of a structural issue that we’re trying to navigate.”

Gonzales said he would focus on investing more in county programs and local nonprofits that fight poverty. He proposed to:

  • Give more money to nonprofit rental and utility assistance programs.
  • Create a “one-stop process” for people to apply for county and state assistance.
  • Ensure outreach is offered in Spanish and Indigenous languages like Mixtec and Triqui. 
  • Examine and audit the effectiveness and performance of local nonprofits that receive county funding.

Hernandez said he wants to bring more jobs, including more high-paying jobs, to South County. He intends to help Watsonville carry out plans to revitalize downtown. “We have great bones in Watsonville — the historic buildings, the plazas,” Hernandez said. “We just have to build on it.”

Hernandez said he wants to:

  • Give Watsonville a portion of the county’s sales tax from unincorporated areas surrounding the city. The money could help Watsonville make street improvements and waive developer fees to entice new downtown businesses. 
  • Help Watsonville leaders create “tax opportunity zones” within the city, which would give new businesses tax breaks. 
  • Proactively seek out businesses and encourage them to open in South County, such as agricultural technology and modular home construction businesses.
  • Continue to support legal assistance programs to keep tenants housed.

Nuñez said he wants to ensure that economic development efforts are “rooted in the people of Watsonville and the people in South County.”  If local leaders don’t uplift local businesses, “those opportunities in the redevelopment of our downtown and hopefully the rebirth of our downtown, are not going to go to some of our own residents.”

Nuñez said he wants to:

  • Create a “universal intake system” that allows people to find resources and assistance, both from nonprofits and county programs. 
  • Use county, private and philanthropic money to start a “revolving loan program” that gives loans to local small businesses, including those working out of their home or a trailer, as a stepping stone to a brick-and-mortar shop.
  • Begin working on a long-term plan to site the future UC Santa Cruz medical school in Pajaro Valley.

Research shows that the agriculture industry is rife with wage theft. How would you support farmworkers in your district to hold their employers accountable for fair pay?

Gonzales said he wants to visit peoples’ workplaces to give them information about their rights and how to contact state labor officials. “The reality is that they’re working from sunup to sundown,” he said. “They don’t have the time or the ability to actually go find some of these things.”

Gonzales said he also wants to:

  • Build relationships with the growers and the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which investigates reports of wage left. 
  • Fund nonprofit programs to conduct outreach with field workers.
  • Fund legal assistance organizations like California Rural Legal Assistance.

To protect farmworkers, “it’s critical that different agencies have to talk to each other,” Hernandez said. “We can’t be working in silos.” 

Hernandez said he would encourage the county’s agricultural commissioner to work more closely with the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which investigates reports of wage theft. 

He said he is also helping to develop an ordinance to prohibit the county from contracting from companies with a history of wage theft.

“It’s not just wage theft” that is an issue in the agricultural industry, Nuñez said, “it’s also other things that our farmworkers are afraid to report on,” including working conditions, housing conditions and exploitation of women farmworkers.

Nuñez said he wants to:

  • Expand support for legal aid organizations like Watsonville Law Center and California Rural Legal Assistance through the city’s CORE Investments program.
  • Connect with philanthropic organizations to encourage support for legal aid programs.
  • Find ways to uplift employers who follow regulations and support their employees by offering health care and providing safety training.
  • Invest more in the Santa Cruz County Office of the Public Defender.
  • Determine what the capacity is for local nonprofits to provide legal aid and, if necessary, ask the state to fund a pilot program to help train more legal aid providers.

South County residents said there is a lack of affordable housing in the area. How would you incentivize developers to build or otherwise increase the amount of deeply affordable housing in your district?

Gonzales said he wants to:

  • Partner with nonprofit developers to build 100% affordable housing on county-owned land.
  • Find ways to reduce construction costs and give incentives to builders of affordable housing.

Hernandez said he wants to:

  • Develop a policy to ensure locals are prioritized for new below-market-rate housing.
  • Work with developers to create more below-market-rate housing and workforce housing. 
  • Encourage developers to offer more homes and condos for sale.

Nuñez said he wants to:

  • Focus on infill development within Watsonville, and “missing middle” housing like townhomes. 
  • Use county land for new housing developments.
  • Work with the local farms to encourage new farmworker housing.
  • Partner with the Pajaro Valley Unified School District, the City of Watsonville and nonprofit developers to pool funds for new below-market-rate developments.

Residents said the rent is already too high. What changes to policy would you support to keep rent stable and protect renters from displacement?

Gonzales said he wants to:

  • Create county rules to prevent outside investors from buying houses.
  • Strengthen local rent stabilization and eviction protections beyond state law.
  • Create a right to counsel for tenants facing eviction.
  • Increase funding for nonprofit rental assistance and eviction prevention programs.

Hernandez said he wants to route more county money to the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County’s rental assistance program, using a portion of money from the county’s proposed temporary half-cent sales tax hike. 

While Nuñez wants to improve protections for renters, he said he also wants to “help them with some of the costs that are eating into the money that they would actually use for rent” — especially child care.

Nuñez said he wants to:

  • Help ensure residents are taking advantage of all the free and low-cost child care already offered.
  • Seek state money for a pilot program to provide residents assistance for child care on a sliding scale, based on income.
  • Support people providing informal child care to become licensed providers and potentially care for more children.

Following federal changes to eligibility requirements, many Santa Cruz County residents have lost or may lose Medi-Cal coverage. Would you support an expansion of MediCruz, a managed health care plan to pay for specialized care for people who are uninsured or underinsured? If so, how would you fund that expansion?

Gonzales said he wants to expand access to insurance and low-cost health care, though he is not sure how to fund it.

Gonzales said he wants to:

  • Work with community clinics to expand capacity for care and reduce health care costs. 
  • Focus on access to preventative care, to prevent more costly health care needs.

Hernandez said he wants to:

  • Use money from the county’s proposed half-cent sales tax hike to expand MediCruz.
  • Partner with clinics and hospitals on a publicity campaign to encourage people who may be afraid of immigration enforcement to sign up for MediCruz.

Nuñez said he wants to:

  • Use money from the county’s proposed half-cent sales tax hike to expand MediCruz.
  • Create a public education campaign to keep people enrolled in Medi-Cal coverage if they are eligible.
  • Encourage the county, federally qualified health clinics and local hospitals to partner with private nonprofit and not-for-profit health care providers like Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente.

How would you increase access to affordable things for youth to do in your district?

“I don’t think we’re doing enough for our young people,” Gonzales said. “We’re going to give our youth the best possible, because historically, they have been given the very bare minimum.”

Gonzales said he wants to:

  • Upgrade parks and ensure enough lighting and maintenance.
  • Fund afterschool and weekend programs for youth and free sports leagues.
  • Encourage new art classes and apprenticeship programs in Watsonville.
  • Give money to schools to make fields publicly accessible.
  • Make it easier for Watsonville youth to visit the beach.

“When people ask me, ‘what’s been your highlight in your elected positions?’ It’s always been parks,” Hernandez said, including championing the development of a skate park at Ramsey Park.

Hernandez said he wants to:

  • Continue progress on a skate park in front of Pinto Lake County Park and new fields at Mesa Village County Park.
  • Partner with Watsonville to plan a community center and pool, similar to Simpkins Family Swim Center in Live Oak.
  • Share sales tax from unincorporated areas surrounding Watsonville with the city to waive developer fees and incentivize youth-serving businesses like bowling alleys to set up shop.

“When I grew up in Watsonville, the thing that we did for fun was go walk around in Target for a couple hours,” Nuñez said. “Our community has stayed somewhat stagnant in terms of what is available for youth to do.”

Nuñez said he wants to:

  • Partner with Watsonville city leaders to incentivize schools to open sports fields to the public.
  • Use a revolving loan program to give youth-serving small businesses like bowling alleys help starting up.

If you had to trim $30 million from the county budget tomorrow, what would you cut?

Gonzales said he would:

  • Audit city departments and county contracts to ensure money is being spent effectively
  • Consider cutting part of the budget from the Sheriff’s Office to preserve services like housing assistance.
  • Put off non-essential construction projects to preserve access to housing and health care.

This spring, county departments were requested to cut their own budgets by 17%. If further cuts are required, Hernandez said he would consider requiring department heads to identify further cuts.

He also said he wants to avoid cuts by bringing in more money, including by encouraging new businesses to come to the county, and potentially raising the county’s Transient Occupancy Tax on hotels to 13% from 11%.

Nuñez said he would:

  • Put off deep cuts and layoffs, even if it requires drawing down the county’s reserves. 
  • Create a multi-year plan to fill budget gaps by raising more money, similar to the county’s proposal for a temporary half-cent sales tax hike.
  • Consider how future changes in the federal and state government might negate the need for permanent cuts.
  • Ensure that frontline services like local health clinics are preserved.

Campaign donations

Felipe Hernandez — $22,310 total reported contributions for 2026, for the filing period of Jan. 1 —  April 18.

  • Total Expenditures: $1,213.56
  • Cash on hand: $20,735.
  • Loans: $5,000 from himself.

Tony Nuñez — $21, 498.18 total reported contributions for 2026, for the filing period of Jan. 1 —  April 18.

  • Total Expenditures: $9,609.86.
  • Cash on hand: $11,888.32.
  • Loans: none as of April 18.

Elias Gonzales — $7,878 total reported contributions for 2026, for the filing period of Jan. 1 —  April 18.

  • Total Expenditures: $4,567.
  • Cash on hand: $3,311.
  • Loans: $2,000 from himself.

More information about campaign finances in the June 2, 2026 election.

About the Board of Supervisors

A map shows of Santa Cruz County supervisor districts. (County of Santa Cruz)

The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors includes five members representing five districts. District 4 includes most of Watsonville and some surrounding areas of South County. 

The board creates laws for unincorporated county areas, decides how to spend county money and oversees many state functions. On some issues, especially housing development, local lawmakers are limited by the laws and funding of the state government.

Supervisors are elected to four-year terms, with no limit on how many terms someone can serve. Supervisors are paid an annual salary of $151,728 excluding benefits.

The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors oversees:

  • County roads.
  • County fire protection.
  • Public health.
  • County law enforcement: Sheriff’s Office, jails, probation.
  • District Attorney’s office, public defender.
  • Handles most federal and state money for the county.
  • Building and environmental services.
  • County parks.

A map of Supervisor District 4. (County of Santa Cruz)

The board typically makes policies for the unincorporated areas of the county. However, they can coordinate with cities for countywide policies, such as:

  • Homeless services.
  • Advocate and plan for parks and recreation facilities.
  • Response to emergencies.
  • Planning for new construction and land use in unincorporated county areas.
  • Housing policies including vacation rentals, affordable housing.
  • Parking permits.
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