Coonerty in Race for Santa Cruz Supervisor

In the last 15 years, Neal Coonerty, owner of California's Bookshop Santa Cruz, has learned much about the "mechanics of governance," as he put it. In addition to his service as a director on the American Booksellers Association's Board and two terms as president, Coonerty was a Santa Cruz city councilman from 1990 to 1994 and the city's mayor in 1993.

Neal Coonerty

Now, he is running for office once again: This week, Coonerty announced his entry in the race for a seat on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. Noting that his son, Ryan, is currently serving as a Santa Cruz city councilman, Coonerty said, "We seem to have politics in the blood."

Coinciding with his decision to run for the full-time position of county supervisor, Coonerty also announced that as of mid-April his daughter, Casey Coonerty Protti, would assume the day-to-day operations of Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Coonerty entered the race for a seat on the County Board of Supervisors after the incumbent, Mardi Wormhoudt, made public her decision to retire. Initially, Coonerty's plan was to run for the supervisor seat for the third district -- which covers the city of Santa Cruz and the north coast -- at the end of Wormhoudt's next term. However, he explained, "She decided to retire [in March], and you had to sign up to run by March 15."

Coonerty will be running for the seat against two other candidates, and, in the very progressive Santa Cruz area, it's no surprise that his two opponents are, like Coonerty, liberal, noted the Santa Cruz Sentinel. The primary election will be in June and a run-off, if necessary, in November.

For Coonerty, however, it's not about his opponents so much as it is about effective government, and he believes that his experience as a bookstore owner, coupled with his previous political experience, gives him qualifications that the other candidates cannot match.

"Bookshop Santa Cruz is known as the community's 'living room,'" Coonerty said. "When you're in the center of all that you get to know a broad selection of the community, and it provides you with knowledge about the nature of the community and [its members'] interests." He added that there are similarities between great customer service and great "constituent service."

Now, Coonerty will be concentrating on campaigning and, like any politician, raising the requisite funds to do so. As such, this is a good time to transition the bookstore to his daughter, though the move had been planned for "quite a while," he said. "Casey is fully capable of taking over the store, so we decided to take the leap."

Protti is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and has a Master's in Public Administration from the Kennedy School at Harvard University. Protti grew up with Bookshop Santa Cruz, Coonerty noted, and educated herself with the plan of carrying on the family business in mind. Currently, she is working as a consultant for ABA in Tarrytown, New York.

"[Bookselling] is a very challenging business to be in at this point," Coonerty told BTW. "I've been doing it for 33 years, and I think it will be good to have fresh eyes and a new look." --David Grogan