photo credit: Joanna Paun for County Supervisor 2026

Four candidates are vying to replace 2nd District Supervisor David Rabbitt on Sonoma County's Board of Supervisors, including Petaluma City Schools board member Joanna Paun.

Paun has lived in Petaluma with her family for the past two decades and currently works as a Foster and Homeless Youth Education Services Coordinator at the Sonoma County Office of Education.

"I'm running because over the past few years, I've been hearing and seeing firsthand the challenges that people in our community face and they really want a leader who's going to step into this role and speak out for them," Paun said.

She was first elected to the Petaluma City Schools Board in 2018.

"I've been in a leadership role, I was the board president for three years, and I'd say during arguably the hardest time in education, which was during COVID, overseeing a large budget, that's probably the closest of any of my opponents to the county budget," Paun said. "Our budget is about $130 million dollars per year.

We have 800 employees, oversee a million square feet of facilities."

Paun said her top concern for Sonoma County is affordability - of both housing and everyday costs.

"It's not just young families or young people, but our seniors as well," Paun said. "I've talked to many seniors and have seniors in my life who have owned their homes for 30 or 40 years and want to downsize, but can't find affordable housing options to downsize. And we also have many mobile home parks in our unincorporated areas, and they have no mobile home park protections."

Paun said she would defend sheriff oversight and Measure P, and supports a county-level "no cooperation" policy with ICE.

"We're seeing less people access government agencies and services like schools and courts and wanting to limit their interaction with our police departments," Paun said. "We know that our local law enforcement agencies have done a lot of work over time to strengthen trust with the community, and we want to make sure that people understand it is safe to go to our law enforcement. It is safe to come to school. It is safe to report crimes."

Paun said she'd also like to see the county expand food access programs, as well as early learning and childcare infrastructure, and strengthen family resource centers. She said the county also needs to be prepared to expand healthcare services because of H.R. 1. The so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" could boot as many as 35,000 Sonoma County residents off medical insurance by the end of the year.

Paun also said the county needs to take a holistic approach to the agricultural economy - a cornerstone of District 2 - securing legal protections for farmworkers, and reducing the wage gap for struggling farmers.

"I definitely think it is imperative that we protect our family agriculture and our food systems," Paun said. "I think that when we think about the people that grow our food as well as the people that consume the food, which includes me, we have a really delicate ecosystem that we don't want to see collapse. And so I think anything that we can do to address you know the price of fuel, the price of grain."

Paun said it's also critically important for the county to have local control of water supplies and protect water quality.

"The board of supervisors is responsible for making sure and helping to maintain safe reliable water supply for all of the 600,000 people that live here in our county," Paun said. "I do think that you know the solution that's been worked on for years with local water agencies that's supported by Congressman Huffman, working with PG&E for a really pragmatic, thoughtful agreement with our regional partners as well, that is already in place and I understand people might want to insert their opinions on it, but this is the solution that we've been moving to and towards for a while. I as a supervisor support the Two-Basin Solution and I do not think we should be even looking at selling our water to Southern California."

Current US Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has said the current administration would entertain a bid by the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District in Southern California - or other legitimate buyers - to purchase the Potter Valley Project which supplies water from the Eel River to the Russian River system in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.