photo credit: Rebecca Hermosillo for Supervisor

Three seats on Sonoma County's board of supervisors are on the ballot now in front of voters. One is uncontested---Lynda Hopkins is running unopposed for the District 5 seat.

For the 1st District, longtime supervisor Susan Gorin is retiring and two candidates are running to replace her: Jon Mathieu, a retired fire captain and contractor; and Rebecca Hermosillo, former executive director of the Valley of the Moon Teen Center.

She has received Gorin's backing.

Hermosillo spoke with KRCB's Noah Abrams about her candidacy.

You can read the transcript from their conversation below or listen to the left.

Noah Abrams: "To start, will you just tell me or really the people who will be listening, who you are and why you've chosen to run for this seat and this year?"

Rebecca Hermosillo: "So my name is Rebecca, her, I was born and raised in the 1st District. I still live in the 1st District. For the last 11 years I've worked with Congressman Thompson and really honed in my skills to navigate federal and local governments to help constituents and supervisor."

"Susan Gorin was not running for reelection and she asked me to run and it was the right time for the office and for me personally, and I decided to run for supervisor to help the 1st District and the county in a different capacity."

NA: "What would you say you bring to the seat that your opponent for the race doesn't?"

RH: "Well experience is the, the first and most important, I know how to navigate government. I speak government via the county, city, state, or federal. I know who to call to get an answer. Generally those folks are already in my cell phone now. And so I am bringing the experience that I've honed in with Congressman Thompson. I am the only deem running in the streets and I have always been in Sonoma Valley. In addition, I will be the first Latina. And so it's important given the population that we have in Sonoma County to be able to serve people in their monolingual language that they prefer. So I am looking forward to hopefully filling that seat."

NA: "Thinking about policy priority. Do you have three that you would identify as your biggest for countywide issues?"

RH: "You know, countywide, it is going to be climate change. Mitigating the fire hazards between Napa and Sonoma County, and that's a two-prong approach. Housing, lack of housing in different brackets of income, and then lastly, homelessness."

NA: "Do you think for district one specifically that there's different or an additional priority or two that you would wanna see resources invested into the district specifically to address?"

RH: "With some of the county departments moving to Airport [Boulevard], that's gonna make it a little bit harder to get folks from the Valley to get services. So I am looking forward to having a conversation on what that will look like in the Valley."

NA: "Supervisor Gorin served in her seat for a long time, you know. Do you think that you and supervisor Gorin would have a similar approach to governing for the county?"

RH: "We have a similar approach and we want to be of service to our constituents in our community."

NA: "If there's one sort of moonshot policy in your mind, what would it be?"

RH: "Really working together to address the infrastructure needs of the county countywide. All of my future colleagues have priorities in their district that we want to work on. And so I think that we can work together more closely to help meet those needs and build a county infrastructure that will be not only for the residents in 2030, but 2050."