Two challengers take on Jane Parker for county supervisor.

As County Supervisor Jane Parker seeks a third term to represent District 4—Seaside, Marina, much of the former Fort Ord and part of Salinas—she faces two challengers. 

One is former Salinas mayor and agribusiness executive Dennis Donohue, who launched his campaign in January with the support of four of the five mayors in District 4. 

The other is Alex Miller, a 32-year-old CSU Monterey Bay graduate and political newcomer, who is expected to formally launch his campaign Tuesday afternoon. 

Miller is a coach and referee for youth athletics, and says he first started thinking about politics in 2010. He'd been coaching a kids' soccer team on a field near his Seaside home when they heard gunshots and had to disperse from practice. 

"I started going to mayoral meetings in Seaside, Marina and Salinas," Miller says. "I saw no serious discussion of crime and the real serious issues of the county."

He started preparing his own run for county supervisor, where he aims to tackle crime. 

He proposes doing that by de-funding the District Attorney. 

"We do not need to be giving [DA Dean Flippo] raises until he starts focusing on the real issues: gangs and gang violence," Miller says. "He is focused on prosecuting every crime so his numbers come up."

In Miller's view, the Board of Supervisors should tighten the purse strings of the DA's office, forcing prosecutors to limit their scope to gang violence. Miller cites domestic violence charges against a man who was still in a romantic relationship with the alleged victim as an example of what he views as frivolous prosecution.

Although it's a common challenge to prosecute domestic violence cases for exactly those reasons—couple may still be in a relationship, and victims may still feel affectionate toward offenders—Miller says a friend of his served on the jury in this case and knew it to be an example of "wasteful" prosecution.

On Miller's campaign website, he tells another story. On April 22, 2012, he writes, he'd returned to his hometown of Los Gatos and was renting out his Seaside home. Sheriff's deputies searched his place in Seaside because his tenants were suspected of illegally growing marijuana there. 

"I was charged with unlawfully planting, cultivating, harvesting, drying, and processing marijuana," according to his website. "There was absolutely nothing that could remotely support this fantasy."

Those charges, Miller says, were eventually dropped, but for him became proof that the DA is focused on the wrong things: "I’m telling my story because this is a classic example of how the District Attorney tramples on the rights of members of the community."

Miller has not yet begun fundraising for what's likely to be a costly election; Donohue spent 2015 collecting $165,000 almost entirely from a handful of large agribiz interests, and Parker raised $148,000 in 2015 from more than 100 individuals. 

After Miller announces his campaign this afternoon—outside the DA's office in Salinas—he says he plans to start campaigning and fundraising in earnest, though he says he'll set a cap for donations. 

"My campaign is not about backdoor deals or taking big donations," Miller says. "It’s not something I’m going to participate in."