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Mayor Tom Bates handily won a third term, while two new faces will join the Berkeley City Council, Jesse Arreguin and Susan Wengraf. 

Bates defeated former Mayor Shirley Dean by 25,432 votes to 14,656, with 1,226 write-in votes in a race with three candidates asking voters to pen in their names. 

The mayor’s 61.5 percent compared with the 62.8 percent margin he compiled two years ago. 

Jesse Arreguin, a city housing commissioner and an aide to Councilmember Kriss Worthington, won the four-candidate battle to replace Dona Spring, who died earlier this year. 

Arreguin, with 2,250 votes, won 49.5 percent of the total, while Terry Doran, a former school board member and current member of the Zoning Adjustments Board, came in second with 1,642 votes, or 36.1 percent. Three other candidates split most of the remainder of the vote. 

At 24, he becomes the council’s youngest member and its first-ever Hispanic. 

The most hotly contested race pitted incumbent Councilmember Laurie Capitelli against challenger Sophie Hahn, with Capitelli winning by 3,199 votes, or 52.7 percent, compared to Hahn’s 47 percent, or 2,841 ballots. Only 10 write-ins were cast in the District 5 race. 

Susan Wengraf, aide to and designated successor of retiring District 6 Councilmember Betty Olds, easily defeated challenger Phoebe Anne Sorgen, capturing 3,995 votes to Sorgen’s 1,186—a margin of 77 to 23 percent. 

District 2 incumbent Darryl Moore defeated challenger Jon Crowder, capturing 81.8 percent of the votes compared to Crowder’s 17 percent (3,227 to 669). The remaining 47 votes were write-ins. 

Neither Moore nor District 3 incumbent Max Anderson bothered to form campaign committees or raise money. No one even bothered to file against Anderson, who captured 96.2 percent of the vote of 93,337 ballots, with the remaining 135 votes going to write-in candidates. 

The District 4 race to fill the remaining two years of the late Dona Spring’s term pitted at least three candidates with similar views on many issues against one candidate heavily backed by the majority of the current council, the chamber of commerce and the development community. 

Dona Spring had faced a similar challenge two years ago in what would prove her final run for office. Raudel Wilson managed to win only 28 percent of the vote against the highly popular incumbent in that race. 

Like Spring, Arreguin is a natural ally for Councilmember Kriss Worthington, whom he has served as an aide in addition to holding a variety of posts on city boards and commissions. Spring and Worthington often comprised the only two dissenting votes on a variety of issues. 

A last-minute infusion of developer dollars didn’t give Doran the margin he needed. 

The district represents downtown Berkeley, currently the subject of a new area plan which will go to the City Council in the coming months, with a deadline for final approval before the end of May. Many of Arreguin’s supporters had served with him on the Downtown Area Planning Committee which passed the first version of the plan. 

On the planning commission, newly elected Councilmember Susan Wengraf has generally sided with a pro-development majority, opposed by a minority that includes Spring appointee and Arreguin ally Gene Poschman. 

Jesse Arreguin 

Around 11 p.m., when Arreguin had solidified his lead over Doran by 400 votes, a string of supporters stopped by his campaign headquarters at 2040 University Ave., a space he had shared with school board President John Selawsky—who was also re-elected Tuesday night—over the last couple of months. 

“Now that the results are in, it looks like we pretty much won the election,” Arreguin said smiling. “I am just amazed, but we really did an incredible job. It’s a victory for everyone in the district. It’s part of the entire movement for change. We made history tonight with the presidential elections, and I am happy to be a part of it.” 

Arreguin said he looked forward to taking on a more community-based approach to improving the downtown, create green buildings and affordable housing and make the city more safe. 

Running on what he and his supporters called a “grassroots level campaign,” Arreguin was able to cut across the age barrier, which several City Council candidates have tried to do before but failed. 

“Jesse has volunteered thousands of hours to the people of Berkeley and people have paid him back by overwhelmingly electing him today,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who stopped by the campaign office. “It’s a strong victory of grassroots activists. The insider developer mentality said he is not supposed to win, but the activists supported him. Once again, the activists are telling the politicians to listen to them.” 

Arreguin has been the chair of the Housing Advisory Commission and the Berkeley rent board and has also served on the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board. 

“He is extremely knowledgeable about affordable housing and environmental issues,” Worthington said. “I expect we will be competing to see who can appoint the greatest diversity [of commissioners].” 

Spring’s aide Nancy Holland said she was delighted with Arreguin’s victory. 

“He’s the right person for the job,” she said. “I am very pleased for Dona, and you can always trust the voters to make the right choice.” 

Zoning commissioner Sara Shumer, who was Arreguin’s campaign treasurer, said that although the Arreguin campaign had raised enough money to send out mailers to voters, most of the work had been carried out through volunteers, who put in hundreds of hours to make phone calls and knock on people’s doors urging them to vote. 

“Jesse himself walked the whole district meeting people,” she said. “Every time he talked with someone, he made a good impression. Someone told me, ‘I don’t know much about city politics, but I am going to vote for Jesse because he talked with me.” 

Arreguin’s mother Cindy stood watching as people congratulated her son. 

“I am just very proud,” she said. “He only had a short time. He got in the race in August, but he was determined to knock on every door.” 

Common Ground  

Wengraf and Capitelli celebrated their victories in a joint campaign headquarters on Solano Avenue, while Bates and Doran supporters gathered at 1941 University Ave., a block down from the headquarters where Arreguin and school board member John Selawsky had run their campaigns. 

Volunteers at both sites gathered to watch President-elect Barack Obama make his victory speech, and tears were visible in many eyes at both locales. 

Obama’s victory proved the one thing that all sides could celebrate, whatever their differences. 

While none of the council race outcomes is likely to change, a representative of the Alameda County Registrar of Voters reported early Thursday afternoon that at least 120,000 ballots remain to be counted—the vote-by-mail returns and provisional ballots turned in Tuesday. 

Mail-in ballots generally tend to be more conservative than election day votes at polling places.