Only one board seat is up for grabs on the Salinas Valley Healthcare Memorial District Board of Directors on Nov. 3. The other three seats had no challengers, so those candidates will automatically be appointed. In Zone 4, covering South Salinas and parts of Monterey County to the west and south, incumbent Catherine Carson is facing challenger James Dacus, a retired SVH internal medicine physician and U.S. Army veteran.
In the last several weeks, Dacus has amassed donations from the agricultural industry of over $50,000, which could prove a formidable challenge to Carson, who loaned nearly all of her campaign cash to herself in her first election cycle, totaling $37,100. Earlier this year, a report filed for that campaign noted a deficit of $25,868.
Carson was elected in 2022, beating an incumbent and two others. She ran on her experience of more than 45 years as a registered nurse and hospital administrator overseeing quality control.
She says she’s running for another term to complete several projects, including helping SVH achieve a five-star rating with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, as well as maintaining a key federal accreditation.
“This is an ‘all hands-on deck’ effort with participation of all levels of hospital and medical staff,” she says.
The effects of the federal H.R. 1, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed in 2025, will bring one of the biggest challenges to SVH, she says, adding she is engaged with the hospital’s leadership, as well as leaders at other hospitals and clinics to develop strategies on how to handle the increasing number of uninsured and underinsured patients.
Dacus, who retired last year after practicing in Salinas for 40 years, says he was encouraged to run by some SVH medical staff members who said the board needed a physician’s voice. They turned to Dacus who had served as chief of staff twice at SVH.
He believes the next few years are going to be tough on the district. He sees Kaiser Permanente’s move into the county as a possible threat, taking privately insured patients away from SVH.
Dacus sees his decades-long connection to important community leaders, like Bruce Taylor of Taylor Farms, as potentially helpful in the hospital’s future.
“I have taken care of a lot of the descendants who made the hospital, who put the shovels in the ground the first time. Those are the kind of people who made the hospital and are probably going to help save [it],” Dacus says.
As for the three board seats where there are no challengers, Joel Hernandez Laguna will serve for a third term in Zone 5, having first been appointed in 2020 and reelected in 2022. In Zone 3, Isaura Arreguin, who was appointed in 2025 to fill an unexpired term, will serve two more years. Kathie Haines, who serves as president of the board for Meals on Wheels of the Salinas Valley, will begin a four-year term in Zone 1.