Editorials

Okay, the vernal equinox is creeping up on us. It’s light outside when we wake up in the morning, and the birds have launched their spring programming. As noted in these pages, stuff is blooming all over the place. It’s the time when the thoughts of many turn to romance. And, also, when the thoughts of some turn to politics. 

Two political agendas are currently preoccupying the activist wing of the greater Berkeley chattering class. First, the easy one: Will we or won’t we be able to swallow our pride and work for John Kerry? Even in greater Berkeley, the active chatterers are not, in the last analysis, crazy. There’s a lot of hemming and hawing on the usual suspect Internet list-servs, but precious few of the contributors, though they’ve been whining a lot, have any intention of sitting this one out. The challenge now, for those of us in California, is to figure out if there’s any strategy for adding more than money to the Fire Bush effort. We hope that California is safe for the Democrats, though that assumption needs to be regularly challenged. If it is, what else can we do to help?  

MoveOn.com is our local hero, constantly working on thinking up news ways to make a difference. A new group, America Coming Together, has targeted 17 key states for the Nov. 2 presidential election. They’re using traditional voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns. In my birthplace, St. Louis, for example, election officials report that their staff has been swamped by more than 32,000 new voters registered sinc e July. It has occurred to me that I should organize a family reunion to bring my 18 politically correct first cousins and their offspring back to the old home state to organize it against Bush. The only difficulty is that a fair number of them now live in Florida, another swing state where their help will be needed. 

But the presidential race is the easy one, as I said. Here in Berkeley, political minds are cogitating on prospects for the November City Council election. The four senior matriarchs of the council are up for re-election, and there is inevitably speculation about whether anyone’s going to retire this time. Mim Hawley has already announced that she’s on her way out, and affable real estate agent Laurie Capitelli hopes to take her place, so fa r without challengers. The other three are still officially on the fence. Margaret Breland has missed many council meetings recently because of poor health. Betty Olds is in her eighties, and Maudelle Shirek is in her nineties. Potential candidates are jo ckeying for position “just in case” one of them decides to retire. It’s an awkward situation, because true friends of all three have been heard to say privately that “she ought to retire in order to leave her legacy intact,” but no one is willing to say s uch things publicly. The inevitable result is that if an opening does develop in any of the three districts by the August filing date, candidates will most likely emerge from backroom deals instead of from an open public process. The new rule which lets a candidate win with 40 percent of the vote will make that outcome even more probable.  

All three, though they don’t necessarily agree on many topics, are well respected for their long history of generously contributing to Berkeley. That’s why all three o ught to give that legacy question a good hard look this year (and every four years). They owe it to themselves. 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Daily Planet.›a