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Residents of the college district ward representing a portion of the San Ramon Valley as well as much of central Contra Costa County are set to have a new representative in office starting next year, with the incumbent trustee opting not to seek reelection and two candidates competing for her seat.
Judy Walters is set to depart the district at the end of the four-year term in the Ward 2 seat she was elected to in 2020, beating out then-incumbent Vicki Gordon, with attorney Diana Honig and businessman and scientist Kofi Opong-Mensah vying to replace her on the Contra Costa Community College District Governing Board.
Prior to her time on the board, Walters served a three-year tenure as president of Diablo Valley College, which operates a satellite campus in San Ramon.
Ward 2 represents a majority of Alamo and the northern San Ramon Valley, as well as Walnut Creek, Lafayette, Moraga and Orinda.
Voters in that region are set to decide in the upcoming general election whether to elect Honig, a disability rights attorney and advocate, or Opong-Mensah, president of Hercules-based Mensa Laboratories and African Cultural Center USA, and a former chemistry professor at Los Medanos College.
Born in Ghana, Opong-Mensah said on his campaign website that he is the first of his family to get a college education, earning a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry in his country of birth before attending grad school at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned masters degrees in water resources management and environmental technology and a Ph.D. in toxicology and chemistry.Â
Opong-Mensah has served as a diplomat for the American Board of Toxicology and as president of the Toxicology of African Origin, a group within the Society of Toxicology. His campaign is endorsed by nurse and former student Deanna Turley and security expert James Owusu.
Honig said on her campaign site that she has “strong ties” to the college district already as the daughter-in-law of former DVC Dean of Students Verle Henstrand who retired in 1983 after 25 years in the role. She also pointed to her own background as a product of public education, having graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and from UC Davis with a juris doctor degree.
Her experience being diagnosed with learning disabilities while attending law school shortly after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities act caused Honig to become “allied with the disability rights movement,” according to her campaign site.
She went on to work as a disability rights attorney for 12 years and participate in policy work and other advocacy throughout her career, including assistive technology and voting rights programs, as well as seeking to address discrimination issues in a range of domains including higher education, according to her campaign site.
Honig’s campaign boasts a number of high profile endorsements, including Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord), Asm. Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda), county Supervisor Candace Andersen, and all five sitting members of the CCCCD governing board, including Walters.
In addition to Walters’ departure, the governing board could see another new face following the upcoming election with Ward 5 trustee Fernando Sandoval seeking to defend his seat amid a challenge from Debra Vinson, who previously ran for the seat in 2018.
More information on Opong-Mensah’s campaign is available at kofi4cd.com. More information on Honig’s campaign is available at dianahonig.org.
