Five candidates for City Council and three candidates for mayor mean new leadership is headed for Greenfield.

The city’s first of cannabusiness to open, Loudpack Farms, quickly became its largest employer, with 278 jobs. It’s across the street from City Hall—and upwind. It’s not atypical to smell cannabis on windy days wafting through town.

Cannabis, specifically that smell, has joined affordable housing as one of the defining issues in the upcoming Nov. 6 election. 

Across the street from Starbucks, along the contentious field along Walnut Avenue where a farmworker housing project was approved then overturned, there are three political signs: Avelina Torres for mayor, Irene Garcia for council and Angela Untalon for council; the three are endorsing each other. 

The trio is campaigning as a slate saying yes to growth—more retail and more affordable housing.

There’s a parallel slate opposing them: Councilmember Lance Walker for mayor, and Planning Commission chair Drew Tipton and Jessica Madrid-Bautista, whose campaign slogan is #VotePositive, for council. Political newcomer and Greenfield native David Mendoza, who has been working for several years in the cannabis industry, is also welcoming to the industry in Greenfield. (The five are running for two open council seats, with no incumbents in the mix.)

There’s a three-way contest for mayor, with Walker, Torres and former councilmember and former planning commissioner Raul Rodriguez, who owns La Plaza Bakery. Rodriguez is positioning himself as the experienced outsider running on a platform of change. 

“Our current City Council is dysfunctional,” he said at an Oct. 18 candidate forum. "Basically, the group is not working like a team. We need change, and we need it as soon as possible."

In that same forum, Torres made clear that she has stood up to outgoing Mayor Jesus OlveraGarcia, and was on the losing end of a 3-2 vote when it came to terminating former city manager Jaime Fontes. 

Meanwhile, Walker—who is midway through a council term, so will still be on the dais whether he wins or loses—took pains to show that he would not exceed mayoral authority if he wins. “The mayor is the face of the city," he said. "The mayor is the face of the city; the mayor the person that goes out and kisses babies and shakes hands and cuts ribbons and speaks. If anyone thinks the mayor is above the other councilmembers, they’re not."

For the most part, the candidates all echo each other when it comes to their vision for the future of Greenfield: They want to see more commerce, a healthy economy and opportunities for youth and recreation.

Where they disagree is on the specifics, particularly in matters of affordable housing and cannabis. Torres was the lone dissenting vote on council in support of a proposed farmworker housing project that Walker's friend and campaign treasurer, Stephanie Garcia, appealed. (Torres is also getting big support this campaign season from the cannabis industry.)

Rodriguez is mostly self-funding his campaign, with almost $4,700 of his own money. Walker has raised $5,200, chiefly from two donors: $4,000 from the right-leaning Salinas Valley Leadership Group and $1,000 from the conservative Lincoln Club of Northern California PAC. Tipton and Madrid-Bautista also each got $3,000 from Salinas Valley Leadership Group.

Torres has only one significant donor that's donated enough to report (more than $99): $5,000 from Gleanomic LLC, the cannabis company behind Greenfield Organix. Torres was a cannabis supporter from the outset, although she says she voted against the statewide recreational marijuana ballot measure—“I’m one of those old-fashioned people that thinks, you can’t be smoking pot”—but she saw great potential for medical use, and for Greenfield’s revenue. This fiscal year, the city expects to collect $1.7 million in cannabis revenue.

There is big money behind Torres’ campaign, largely from the cannabis industry, in the form of an independent expenditure committee called Greenfield Families for Better Jobs and Affordable Housing. (Such committees are not permitted to coordinate with candidates.) They’ve spent $28,000—that equates to more than $6 per registered Greenfield voter—as of late September, with money mostly from Gleanomic, another $3,500 from cannabis company Second Sun, plus $3,000 each from wineries Franscioni and Scheid.

It might be a strange pairing—wine and cannabis and affordable housing—but as Greenfield reckons with what that growth will look like, the issues have started to align. Will there be farmworker housing, or more upscale units? Where will new retail go?

With the lines that have formed along those issues, there are also positions in support of the former management. Torres says she's not sure if it would be possible to bring Fontes back given the status of litigation, but if she wins, she is interested in that possibility.

Walker says he believes the council acted appropriately in terminating Fontes, and he stands by the decision "110 percent." 

Underlying that is the divisive issue of cannabis—the platform that outgoing Mayor Jesus OlveraGarcia campaigned on, and a big part of why voters recalled his predecessor, John Huerta.

Today, it is the city’s cash cow. “Greenfield’s always been a little backwater place,” City Manager Paul Wood recently told the Weekly. “The movement [on cannabis] by council is potentially a boom, and we can actually make our little town into something that competes for tourist dollars.”

In the Oct. 18 candidate forum, Walker was vocal in his opposition to more expansion of the cannabis industry: "The smell is ridiculous," he said. "I’m the only one up here that voted no for the cannabis. Cannabis needs to be slowed down; the mayor needs to slow this thing down."

Rodriguez expressed a desire to see improved filtration systems to minimize the smell during harvest season.