Quick Take
District 4 Santa Cruz County supervisor candidate Tony Nuñez spoke with Lookout about his vision to increase economic development in South County and what inspired his bid for the supervisor seat.
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The Watsonville community means everything to Tony Nuñez, and it’s one of the main reasons he decided to run for the District 4 seat on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors.
Nuñez, 34, told Lookout in February that his community has done a lot for him and his family, who are longtime residents of Watsonville. And now, he wants to continue a tradition of giving back to the community – as a county supervisor.
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“What I’ve done in terms of my professional career, it’s always been about giving back,” he said in an interview this month. “Whether it was working at The Pajaronian, that was a great way to give back and tell people’s stories … and then at Community Bridges, where I felt that I was still in tune with the community and helping people.”
Nuñez is running in the June 2 primary election against incumbent Felipe Hernandez and community advocate Elias Gonzales for District 4 county supervisor, which represents most of the Pajaro Valley, Watsonville and Interlaken.
Since there are more than two candidates for the District 4 seat, the Nov. 3 general election will serve as a run-off between the top two vote-getters, unless one candidate wins a majority of the primary vote.
Should Nuñez win the supervisor seat, he would be required to vacate his role as board chair of the Pajaro Valley Health Care District, which operates Watsonville Community Hospital. He also would leave his role as marketing and communications manager for nonprofit Community Bridges.
Nunez played a part in transitioning the hospital into becoming a public-owned facility after it survived bankruptcy in 2023. He is currently part of the effort to find an external partner to help manage the facility’s day-to-day operations. The hospital reported a nearly $23 million loss for 2025, following a flurry of challenges including a decline in patients and changes to state and federal funding.
“I think that we’re really close to actually moving something forward that I think can stabilize the hospital and can start to get us out of the situation we’re in right now,” he said.
Nuñez said he’ll continue supporting the hospital and its journey to financial stability as a supervisor level by working with regional, state and federal representatives: “I think that I can still do really great things, and I can move the conversation forward that we’ve started with the health care district and the hospital.”
County officials have faced scrutiny from residents in South County in the past year over the development of an ordinance that would regulate battery storage plants, and more specifically over a proposal by Massachusetts-based developer New Leaf Energy to build a facility on Minto Road outside Watsonville.
At Lookout’s candidate forum last week, Nuñez said many of the residents he’s spoken with have told him they’re against the New Leaf project and were concerned about potential impacts to public health. During the forum, he told community members he was against the project.
The overall perception of these facilities has changed following the 2025 Moss Landing fire, said Nuñez. He said he would support battery storage facilities, but only if they are done “in the right way” and with public safety at the top of the priority list.
“What would the trade-offs be of bringing something so close to all of the residents around the area there?” Nuñez said. “It might look like a rural area of the community or of the county or our region, but really there’s houses right next door.”
He’s also worried about the agricultural land being used for the project. The site where New Leaf is proposing its plant sits on an apple orchard. “I have concerns about agricultural land being rezoned in a piecemeal kind of fashion,” he said.
Immigration fears continue to affect community members at all levels in South County since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have visited Watsonville at least 23 times since January 2025; nine of those visits happened within the first two months of 2026.
To ensure that members of the immigrant community feel they belong and are safe to do everyday tasks, Nuñez said that people need to stand in solidarity with them, and communicate to them that there are resources available.
He believes the county is on the right path with the creation of a subcommittee to help prepare for possible impacts of immigration operations on county residents, along with an ordinance barring ICE agents from using county property for enforcement activities.
However, he said Santa Cruz County needs to determine how many undocumented families in the county are without legal representation, and figure out how to support immigration lawyers aiding these families.
“There’s a real need for more legal representation for immigrant populations,” he said. “It’s not even that lawyers don’t want to take on these cases … the immigration attorneys are trying to help, they’re extremely committed to the work, and they want to do more and they can’t do more.”
Nuñez also wants to increase economic development in South County. Watsonville doesn’t have a hospitality and tourism industry, he said; the local economy is primarily driven by agriculture and nonprofits. He’d like to work with city officials to figure out how to develop tourism in Watsonville.
“It starts with working with the city on how the county can be a better partner for revitalizing its downtown,” he said.
The big issue the county is struggling with is bringing in additional revenue to fund programs in order to meet the community’s needs, Nuñez said. County staff are forecasting a $23.2 million deficit for the 2026-27 fiscal year, and a long-term structural deficit that could reach $67.5 million by 2028-29 in the absence of mitigating actions.
One of the initiatives Nuñez wants to create is a robust down-payment assistance program for local residents, specifically in South County, to help increase homeownership. But he acknowledged that those things take money and time to achieve.
“The No. 1 thing that we can do is try to solve our local economy, and really try to drive new businesses into Watsonville and into South County and into the county,” he said. “If we’re not putting a lot of our effort into that, then we’re just going to keep coming up into the same issue, which is, we don’t have enough funding, we don’t have enough revenue.”
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