She may be short on political experience, but Napa City Council candidate Amber Martin comes to the race with the populist agenda of her father, Harry Martin, the gadfly journalist who served on the council for 12 years.

Martin, a 35-year-old single mom, is the only challenger taking on incumbents Mark van Gorder and Jim Krider in the Nov. 4 election.

Although her public service resume is sparse, Martin said this works to her advantage. “I haven’t gotten muddled down with a lot of everyday thinking. I come in completely fresh,” she said.

She vows to control sewer, water and garbage rates, while finding surplus dollars at City Hall to fix the city’s streets and sidewalks and expand police and fire services. In her ads, she says she will fight for the “little guy.”

These issues may sound familiar. They were the cornerstone of her father’s successful campaigns for city council and two losing efforts to become mayor.

Being Harry Martin’s daughter has its pluses and minuses, Amber Martin said.

“There are a lot of people who love my dad. There are a lot of people who hate my dad. People who love my dad will expect me to be just like my dad. Hey, I’m my own person,” she said.

“I’m an individual. I do my own thing,” she said. “I do what’s right whether or not dad agrees or disagrees with me. It really doesn’t matter.”

Martin has lived in Napa most of her life. She is the divorced mother of two daughters, ages 10 and 7. She said she has some college credits, but has mostly spent her adult years working a variety of jobs. Today she is editor of her father’s Napa Sentinel. She lives in north Napa in a house adjacent to her father’s.

Her Sentinel job does not involve writing news stories, Martin said. She organizes letters to the editor and such features as the community calendar, senior activities and school menus, she said.

Out of the shadow

When she was in her 20s, Martin lived a year in Sacramento. “I needed a change of pace, getting out from under dad’s shadow,” she said. “In this town I’m in Harry Martin’s shadow. In Sacramento, I was Amber.”

While his daughter runs for the council seat that he lost two years ago, Harry Martin is in a runoff for county supervisor against incumbent Mark Luce.

If her father had not qualified in the June primary for the runoff, he might have run for council again, Martin said. She is stepping up because politics is in her blood, she said.

Also, she had a serious diabetic incident earlier this year. After recovering, “it occurred to me I’ve not accomplished anything I can be particularly proud of,” she said. She wants to do something that her girls will be proud to remember, she said.

Harry Martin said his daughter shares his passion for politics. “She was born into it,” he said.

But Amber is her own person, he said. “I’m sure we’re probably 90 percent on most issues,” he said. “She has her own ideas, believe me.”

Martin said her father writes her full-page campaign ads that appear almost weekly in the Napa Sentinel. She reviews them with her campaign manager before they run, she said.

Focus on locals

In her ads, she vows not to seek the big campaign dollars from developers and wineries that often go to winning council candidates. She wants to be beholden only to the average citizen, she said.

The city has the money to fix streets and sidewalks, but chooses to spend on other things, Martin said. She would make affordable housing a higher priority, while opposing 3,200 houses at Napa Pipe — a proposed project located outside the city — and additional housing at the Ghisletta property on Foster Road, she said.

In her ads, Martin says the flood control project should make Napa Creek a higher priority. In two Register interviews, she said only that the creek needs a good cleaning so debris doesn’t obstruct flood waters.

She lamented the current state of downtown. “We’ve almost got a ghost town in downtown. That’s not cool. If we don’t have life in downtown, we’ll dry up and blow away,” she said.

Tourist development may help to make downtown as lively as it was in her girlhood, she said. Downtown construction jobs should go to local workers, not outsiders, she said.

Martin said she helped form the Native American Student Council when she was a student at Napa Valley College. She is one-thirty-second native American, she said.

She once worked for a food bank in Sacramento and managed a low-income apartment project, she said.

Her biggest recreation interest is the Society for Creative Anachronism, a living history group that brings to life Western European cultures before the 17th century.

“I’m an authorized rapier fighter,” she said. “I’m getting trained in heavy combat.”

In addition to medieval combat, Amber Martin said she likes to sing karaoke at the Trancas Steakhouse, play pool at Billco’s and bowl.

When asked their opinion of Amber Martin, current council members say they don’t know enough to make an assessment.

She is a political unknown, Mayor Jill Techel said. Candidate debates help to introduce newcomers to the community, but there haven’t been any this year, she said.

“We’re not getting a real good picture of how Amber would be a problem solver,” Techel said. “We haven’t seen her on a board. We haven’t seen her in action. We haven’t seen how she would deal with the public.”

Councilwoman Juliana Inman said she knew Amber Martin slightly, having participated with her at a Relay for Life fundraiser. While it made sense that Harry Martin would have a child interested in politics, it concerned her that Amber might be a surrogate for her father, she said.

Inman said she would feel more comfortable if Amber Martin had paid her dues through community service. “I think it’s important to develop leadership skills over time. I think it’s very useful to put time in the trenches,” she said.

Voters should ask candidates, “What have they done to make their community better,” Inman said. As for Amber Martin’s resume, “I really don’t know anything,” she said.

Joe Turner, a fierce Harry Martin critic, sees Amber Martin as her father’s election stand-in. “She is a shy person who has never exhibited any interest in political leadership,” he said. As a new council member having to deal with complex city issues, she would be in over her head, he said.

Amber Martin conceded that she would have much to learn. “I am finding out that there is a lot more research that I have to do on things,” she said.

Even so, she would do a good job representing those who feel City Hall doesn’t listen to their concerns, she said.

“People need to decide if they want change,” she said. “They can stick with the same-old same-old or go with something different.”

Editor’s note: This is the third of four profiles of candidates running for office in the city of Napa in November. Monday: Jill Techel