Ex-Supervisor Nancy Fahden Dies
By Andrew McGall
amcgall@bayareanewsgroup.com
The Contra Costa Times
MARTINEZ -- Nancy Fahden, the first woman ever elected to the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors, has died.
Fahden died Aug. 25 in Walnut Creek after a fall. She was 92.
Her grandniece, AnnaMaria Cardinalli, posted a video on YouTube showing Fahden laughing and singing "four days before she passed away."
"Four days ago, AnnaMaria and I left Nancy eating 2 pounds of See's chocolates, singing naughty Italian songs, and dancing," Fahden's niece, Giovanna Cardinalli, wrote on a memorial website.
Nancy Cardinalli Fahden was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1976 and charted her own political course representing northern Contra Costa County.
"It was a fluke," she told the Calistogan newspaper in 2006.
Longtime political writer Pat Keeble was the Contra Costa Times reporter checking election filings when Fahden stepped into politics. She and a group of women wanted to oust four-term incumbent Al Dias, of San Pablo. But their candidate came to the office to tell them his boss would not let him run.
Her friends told Fahden she would have to do it, and she did, Keeble said.
Dias thought she was a joke, Fahden told the Calistogan, "but the local newspaper endorsed me.
"I walked the entire district, and visited every home," she said.
In office, she fought to control refinery pollution and in 1990 sought stiffer fines for polluters and a noise ordinance to control the clangor of overnight refinery operations.
When a vigorous fight erupted over competing garbage dump proposals, Fahden sided with rural residents and environmentalists who opposed putting one in Marsh Canyon east of Mount Diablo. But she battled environmentalists and others who tried to block approval of the Keller Canyon Landfill off Bailey Road south of Pittsburg.
"Fahden takes lumps over dumps," a Contra Costa Times headline said.
Fahden also fought off Hercules' attempt to annex Franklin Canyon for a development of 870 houses and a resort hotel.
She was a businesswoman and a pioneering female politician, but a history of the women's equal-pay movement of the 1970s depicts her opposing the Comparable Worth Coalition.
In one election, Len Battaglia, another West Contra Costa politician, outraged women by telling Fahden she should "go back to the kitchen."
And Fahden was quixotic. She once suggested that the County Jail shave a "P" into prisoners' hair to deter escapes. She also proposed trimming inmate diets to divert money to a threatened girls' treatment center.
The supervisor was "on the cutting edge of penology," the Contra Costa Times remarked in a light editorial.
Keeble wrote that Fahden never hesitated to speak against something she thought was not right. If that didn't work, Keeble said, she worked behind the scenes. And if that didn't work, "She was one of best whistleblowers the news media ever had on the board."
Fahden remained a popular leader throughout her 16 years in office. She won 65 percent of the vote in her first campaign against Dias and 64 percent in her final campaign.
"It's been exhilarating," she told this newspaper when she decided not to seek re-election in 1992. "How many people in this world get this sort of experience? But there's a whole new world waiting for me, and it's time to move on."
She was the daughter of Antonino and Jennie Cardinalli, born and raised in the Martinez fishing community. Her late husband, Wilbur Fahden, was a dentist in the city.
Giovanna Cardinalli said she thought Fahden expressed the strength of her father. "They were a very old world Sicilian family attempting to be very American," she said. "They did everything they could to help others."
Fahden "was the spark that ignited a group," Cardinalli said, and there was always room for another at her table.
She gained prominence as a leader in beautifying the rundown Martinez waterfront and getting the East Bay Regional Park District to make it a regional park.
And she helped revive the city's bocce ball courts, sparking a resurgence that birthed the Martinez Bocce Federation. It bills itself as the nation's biggest such group with 15 courts and more than 2,000 members.
She retired to the family farm near Calistoga that her husband's grandfather, Hans Fahden, an immigrant German shoemaker, had bought in 1912. She and her sons Lyall and Antone set up the Hans Fahden Vineyard there. It is now a wedding venue and produces favorably reviewed wines.
In 1992, a reporter found her at the winery in a "wisteria covered gazebo serving visitors a lunch of sausages, rich cheeses, homegrown pears, bread soaked in olive oil and garlic."
Contact Andrew McGall at 925-945-4703. Follow him at Twitter.com/AndrewMcGall.
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