The candidates for Fresno mayor largely agree on the key issues facing the city. Henry T. Perea and Ashley Swearengin disagree about who is best suited for the job.
Perea, serving his second term on the City Council, and Swearengin, on leave as chief operating officer of the Regional Jobs Initiative, focused on their backgrounds during a mayoral forum held Monday by the Rotary Club of Fresno.
Swearengin sought to portray Perea as a political insider incapable of bringing needed change to City Hall. She said she would bring new ways of thinking to the job.
Perea questioned Swearengin's record as head of the Regional Jobs Initiative, an economic development organization formed in 2003, and touted his ability to find consensus among diverse groups.
Perea and Swearengin each spoke for 10 minutes about their goals and then responded to each other's comments. More than 200 people attended the forum at the Cornerstone Conference Center downtown.
Both candidates in the Nov. 4 election said the city needs to help the local economy, support public safety and make government bureaucracy more responsive, among other things.
"We all agree on the things that need to happen," Swearengin said. "The things that have gotten in the way are bureaucracy, status-quo thinking and politics as usual."
Perea represents "old Fresno politics," Swearengin said.
Perea didn't respond to that claim.
He said he would establish consensus among many groups. "I've been doing the hard work of bringing together the different constituencies," he said. "That's the trick of governing in a city as diverse as we are."
Perea criticized Swearengin because the Regional Jobs Initiative failed to reach its target of creating 30,000 jobs in five years.
Perea also objected to a Regional Jobs Initiative proposal that he said called for a cap on public safety spending.
Swearengin conceded that the Regional Jobs Initiative did not meet its job-creation goal, but said it still helped create thousands of jobs.
She said Perea took the public safety spending proposal out of context and that she doesn't favor a cap on such spending.
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