" HE ' S AN INTROVERTED BRAINIAC."
— MIKE MCGOWAN, FORMER MAYOR, WEST SACRAMENTO
innermost feelings from friends. Not only did the young politico abstain from social drinking for fear of an embarrassing disclosure, he barely looked people in the eye in order to conceal his two“ dark secrets”— an enduring grief for Mom, and a jumble of alienating thoughts and insecurities stemming from what he would later recognize as homosexuality.
Though Cabaldon’ s professional passions were directed in state and federal policymaking( he envisioned someday working in Congress), he regarded local government as a worthwhile endeavor and potential stepping stone. But the notion of running for public office caused him concern.
“ I felt so unlike regular people in the world, but particularly here in West Sacramento, that the idea of being a politician— just the idea of putting yourself out there and having people ask questions about you and wondering about your personal life and all that— was something I wasn’ t up for,” he says.“ But I felt like something had to get done.”
Voters elected Cabaldon to the West Sacramento City Council in 1996, and the Council appointed him mayor two years later. He was elected mayor by voters in 2004 and has been re-elected every two years since.
One of Cabaldon’ s early projects was helping design the Southport neighborhood as one of the region’ s first walkable communities that followed a nascent smart-growth movement. Local leaders constructed Southport to house both industrial workers and company executives, a move that generated the city’ s first influx of wealthy residents.
Also in the late 1990s, Cabaldon helped create the financing plan for Raley Field, which attracted even more affluent residents from across the Sacramento River. The year 2004 saw the opening of the Southport Town Center, anchored by Nugget Market and ultimately drawing Ikea to town. Public officials used the increased tax revenue to improve city services and infrastructure, building a new City Hall and community college complex on West Capitol Avenue.
“ He spends a lot of his time studying. He’ s an introverted brainiac,” says Mike McGowan, West Sacramento’ s first mayor and a longtime colleague of Cabaldon. The mayor is a gifted public speaker, McGowan adds.“ But take him off the podium and have him walk around and talk to people. You can see that’ s not his comfort zone.”
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Cabaldon says concealing his sexual orientation for most of his adult life prevented him from building deep, emotional connections with anyone. For years, he says, he avoided eye contact with people( almost unfathomable for a career politician). That neurosis, combined with a natural preference for solitude, freed up nights and weekends and drove him to a life of near-constant work.
“ Can you imagine if you had no time or bandwidth for emotional distraction of any kind— not just involvement, but even thinking about it— what you could do with your career? I don’ t know what I’ m giving up, but I know what I have, so I’ m just charging toward this thing,” he says.
As a child, Cabaldon remembers family holidays, sitting around the chips and the Coors, and hearing his father and uncles say things like,“ If I had a gay son I would be the first one to shoot him,” he says.
“ The fact that I’ m telling you that now, 40 years later, it definitely sunk in,” Cabaldon adds. photo: shutterstock
60 comstocksmag. com | November 2017