A slate of first-time contestants for the local Sierra Club's leadership committee - candidates seen by their opponents as interested only in bolstering bicycling access - won the club's annual election earlier this week.

The victory of Tawn Kennedy, Mary Odegaard and Greg McPheeters for three open seats over incumbents who included the committee chairman represents the second year of what longtime club leaders have characterized as a takeover aimed at reversing the group's influential views on bikes as tools for climate change and park land recreation.

"What is so grievous for me is that our responsibility as executive committee members of the Santa Cruz group is to address natural resources in the entire county," said Patricia Matejcek, who has been a board member off and on since the late 1990s. "These people are so Santa Cruz city-centric, and they know nothing about anything beyond cycling. It's an oversimplified, extremely juvenile approach to conservation that if people just got on bicycles everything would be fine."

But the winners of the mail-in election that began in mid-December and closed Wednesday say they are part of larger movement to open the club to an array of new ideas, not just bicycling access. As the divisive issues of the city's proposed desalination plant, Habitat Conservation Plan and the Climate Action Plan are debated this coming year, the new committee members vow to work with what is now a minority of club leaders for whom habitat conservation, water resource management and growth limits are core concerns.

"We all need to focus on what we have in common, and we have a lot more in common than we think," McPheeters, a solar energy developer, said. "There is definitely a desire to portray us as one-issue candidates, but I have spent the last decade in renewable energy, which has included bike issues. I think the club has a great history of working on forestry issues and I want to continue that work."

Three other pro-bike candidates won last year's election amid a flurry of endorsements from local civic leaders, and a host of biking organizations and businesses joined the club. One winner later stepped down and now there is a 5-4 pro-bike split.

It's unclear how the two sides will work together, but what is known is how low the turnout continues to be for Sierra Club elections, even though this year's tallies were higher than last year.....