Lou Calcagno retiring after four terms; Judge John Phillips will run for vacant seat.

Retired Judge John Phillips is no stranger to disagreement. In his 21 years on the bench as a self-described “hard-nosed judge,” Phillips issued more than a few decisions that didn’t sit well with everyone.

“Sometimes I’d come home from making a decision, and my own wife and kids would say, ‘How could you make that decision?’” Phillips says.

He’s starting off his first competitive run for public office with more support than that. Most of his would-be competitors for the North County supervisorial seat, which is being vacated after 16 years by retiring Supervisor Lou Calcagno, were planning to join Phillips as he announced his candidacy Dec. 18.

There was North County Fire Protection District Chief Chris Orman, who backed out of a planned race. And Salinas City Councilwoman Kimbley Craig, former Mayor Dennis Donohue and Planning Commissioner Cosme Padilla, all of whom had been rumored to be considering running for the North County district. (And would-be Democratic frontrunner Anna Caballero, former Salinas mayor and assemblywoman, has kept a low profile after being reappointed to Gov. Jerry Brown’s cabinet.)

Plasha Will, who manages mostly Democratic campaigns, is managing the Phillips campaign, though he’s a Republican.

“I’m not a politician. I never thought I’d be a politician,” Phillips says. In his years as an elected judge, he never faced a challenger. While it’s still early for a 2014 election, power players from both sides of the political aisle are already lining up behind Phillips, indicating good odds for a prosecutor-turned nonprofit-dreamer.

Phillips and his wife, Patti, created Rancho Cielo in North Salinas 13 years ago after he retired from a career of delivering tough sentences in criminal and juvenile court. The 100-acre campus serves about 100 students. They’re in the criminal system, and probation officers are on staff full time, but here they have a chance to earn high school diplomas and work skills, like construction (a 30-bed transitional housing project is about a year away from completion) or cooking (the Drummond Culinary Academy is on-site).

Phillips describes the case that gave him an epiphany: “There was one kid who was the worst of the worst. He was very unrepentant, had no remorse about what he had done [attempted murder].

“The day he was to be sentenced, his grandmother came from Visalia to see him. She walked into court, and he started crying like a little baby.

“I thought, ‘I’m sentencing these kids – they’re dangerous kids, but they’re just kids,’” Phillips says.

He wants to see state prison realignment money from AB 109 applied to social and educational programs.

“I wish that we put our resources into programs that address the issues early on, versus waiting till the kids are here at 17 or 18, when they have a lot of baggage they’re carrying,” Phillips says. “They have tattoos and they’re behind on their education, and sometimes they have a child already. They’ve dropped out of school, they’ve got bad attitudes.”

Of course, a county supervisor deals with a wide range of issues. Phillips served in the District Attorney’s office for 13 years before becoming a judge, leaving him well versed in criminal and public safety issues, but getting up to speed on others – a process he says is a lot like serving as a judge, and waiting for all the facts to come in before ruling.

“In some ways I’ve been a one-trick pony in that I’ve been focused on Rancho Cielo,” Phillips says.

He views the biggest issues facing the county as safety, jobs, water and traffic. But he’s reluctant to talk specifics. That means no position yet on making Highway 156 a temporary toll road to fund widening, the desal project for the Peninsula, or Fort Ord development proposals like Monterey Downs.

North County construction magnate Don Chapin serves as president of the Salinas Valley Leadership Group political action committee and on the Rancho Cielo board. He’s one of the board members who vigorously supports Phillips’ run, though Phillips is already distancing himself from Chapin: “I don’t want to be viewed as pro-development,” Phillips says. It’s too early for Chapin’s PAC to make endorsements, since the filing period hasn’t even opened yet.

Phillips points at an asphalt Rancho Cielo parking lot, recalling it was donated by Chapin Construction and GraniteRock. He also remembers bringing his friend Ted Balestreri of Cannery Row Company to the site before it was built, and persuading him the decaying infrastructure had potential.

“His candidacy is very exciting,” Chapin says. “Everything he touches has been a success.”

Calcagno announced his retirement at the Board of Supervisors meeting Dec. 17. The lifelong dairyman was born on his Moon Glow Dairy adjacent to Elkhorn Slough, where he still feeds cattle every morning by 6am.

As a founding member of the Ag Land Trust, Calcagno helped lay out the vision for preserving agricultural land.

Over his 33-year career in public service, first as a planning commissioner then a county supervisor, Calcagno reflects on a few major highlights: securing transit service to South County, helping devise the Prunedale Improvement Project (the Highway 101 construction currently in progress), and getting a community park built in Pajaro – which opened on Oct. 22 – despite major funding challenges.

Phillips will face perennial District 2 candidate Ed Mitchell, a Prunedale activist who has served as a watchdog throughout the desalination project downfall and many land use issues.