photo credit: Ballotpedia
Mike Greer.

As part of our ongoing coverage of the June 2 primary election, we’re bringing you interviews with candidates on your local ballot — including the race for the District 2 seat in the California State Assembly.

The seat is currently held by Chris Rogers, the Santa Rosa Democrat elected in 2024.

Challenging him is Republican Mike Greer, a Del Norte County school board member and longtime education advocate.

He spoke with KRCB News about what he hopes to bring to the role.

KRCB: Greer says his work in education spans more than two decades and several counties across the North Coast.

GREER: I'm Mike Greer. running for the Assembly District 2. Um, I actually ran against Chris Rogers at the last election. Uh, so a lot of people know who I am.

I'm on the school board in Del Norte County, both as a unified school district trustee and a county board trustee. So I do both of those because we are a one-on-one county. I'm also the director of County Office of Education for four counties, which is Mendocino, Lake, Humboldt and Del Norte with the California School Board Association.

I've actually have lobbied for education for past 20 over 20 years in both Washington, D.C. and Sacramento for education, retirement, and wildfire protection. Before I moved to Crescent City six years ago, I was the school board president at the time of the campfire in Paradise where we lost everything that we had.

I stayed in an extra year to make sure we got the kids back in school and to go ahead and establish the building plans for the future for the school district.

KRCB: Greer says he’s running because he believes the state legislature has become disconnected from the people it represents.

GREER: I have some very strong feelings about what is happening in state government this year.

The average: voter, the political landscape has become so become just an exhausting cycle of recycled promises and worsening results. We see the same systematic failures in our schools, our infrastructure, our state budget year after year. And yet the faces in the hall the power ranks never change. And this stagnation is not an accident.

It's the result of a profound accountability gap that we have right now in the state that separates our legislators from the common sense realities of those that have to live with their decisions of one-size-fits-all and live with all the high regulations and taxes and high housing costs, and so I'm concentrating on the affordability.

KRCB: He says affordability is one of the biggest issues he hears about across the district.

GREER: I've seen the decline in education. I've seen the decline in the affordability of California.

It doesn't matter where you are, whether you're up here in Del Norte County, whether you're down there in Sonoma County, whether you're down in LA. You cannot afford to buy a house, you can't I don't afford the insurance, either on your home or your car anymore. This affordability is a legislature caused problem.

KRCB: Greer says statewide mandates often don’t work for rural counties, and he wants to bring more flexibility to local governments.

GREER: What happens in Sonoma County is not the same thing that happens up in Del Norte. Well, that's two different things. So, don't give us the same restrictions. Give us the flexibility.

As a school board member, I have seen in the last six years, the responsibilities of the school boards have been really tightened down on by mandates and by legislation that don't affect us. And a good example of that are electric buses. Electric buses don't work in Del Norte. They work very well in Oakland… Up here where it's two hours to take a bus just to have a a speech contest or our band or sports teams. It's two hours one way and it makes it very very difficult to go ahead and do it with the electric buses.

KRCB: He also says education funding needs to reach classrooms more directly.

GREER: Right now, a lot of the money is stopped at the higher levels of the state government. And it's not just California and Texas too, but it's very evident here that the money stops there. And it does not trickle down into the classrooms, into the school districts. I just was back in Washington D.C. two weeks ago with the Department of Education. And at that time, we were talking about how do we get money down to the classroom, down to the districts, down to the superintendents. And with the new block grants coming out from the federal government, I said, ‘Well, it's really quite simple. 

You don't deliver it to the state. It gets in the state, a lot of that money is taken right off the top for all the different commissions and so it doesn't get to the classroom. Have them deliver it straight to the counties and let the counties give it out to the districts in their county and get that money there.

KRCB: The thing he wants people to know most about him?

GREER: I think probably is my integrity. All of us say that. I think the other thing is I don't go from one side to another side very quickly. I am very open to suggestions. I am very open to hear what the problems are and the solutions. Too many times we complain without solutions.

KRCB: Greer says he believes decisions should be made closer to the communities they affect.

GREER: We need to get it down to where it does the good. We need to look at education. We need to look at affordability. We need to look at energy prices which is a state cost problem… It's the state regulations that are causing businesses to go and making the state unaffordable to live in.