Editorials

Berkeley Progressives Seek Candidates on Saturday

Becky O'Malley
Thursday April 28, 2016 - 04:58:00 PM

In this issue you’ll find a press release about an endorsement meeting which will take place this Saturday under the joint auspices of Berkeley Citizens Action (BCA), Berkeley Progressive Alliance (BPA) and Berkeley Tenants’ Union (BTU). Full disclosure: from time to time in my 40+ years in Berkeley I’ve been a member of all three, even though I haven’t actually been a tenant since I’ve lived here.

I’ve never been an active decision-maker in any of them, though I’ve shown up to vote on endorsements and platforms from time to time if I remembered to pay my dues on time, and have almost always voted for the candidates one or more of them supported.

BCA was here when I came, when councilmembers were elected city-wide and mostly were on the progressive end of liberal. It lost influence when district elections brought more conservative councilmembers on board. Successive rounds of gerrymandering by incumbents created ultra-safe council districts held by the same person, in some cases, for more than 20 years at a stretch.

BPA is a recent phenomenon, an offshoot of the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition, formed out of the outrage over the deal that went down around the 2211 Harold Way project. It has especially attracted environmentalists and affordable housing advocates.

Mostly, in recent years, the candidates I’ve voted for have lost, of course, which is why (in my opinion) Berkeley is in such a mess. 

As a card-carrying member of some or all of the sponsoring groups, I’d be eligible to vote on Saturday. I might or might not make it before the end because of pre-existing family obligations to a granddaughter turning 14. 

(Here I must say with some pride that Mayor Tom Bates Is Not My Fault. Fourteen years ago at this time he was endorsed by a similar meeting hosted by similar folks of good will, but my granddaughter was born that very same day and I wanted to be present at her birth, so I missed what amounted to a coronation. Progs are often suckers.) 

According to an earlier joint press release from the three organizations, these candidates will be present to ask for endorsement for these offices: 

Mayor:
Jesse Arreguin, Ben Gould, Mike Lee, Kriss Worthington
District 2
Cheryl Davila, Nanci Armstrong-Temple
District 3
Ben Bartlett, Mark Coplan
District 5
Sophie Hahn
District 6
Fred Dodsworth III 

Since I’ll probably miss the meeting, I’m going to take advantage of this space to put my opinion as of the time of this writing on the record, though I reserve the right to change my mind. 

For Mayor: What?? Arreguin and Worthington, colleagues on the City Council for at least 8 years in the progressive minority, are both running? Yes, that’s what it looks like. There’s a rumor around town, and I’m betraying no confidences here, that they hope to agree to run cooperative campaigns to take advantage of the mathematics of ranked choice voting. That’s how Jean Quan and Rebecca Kaplan managed to defeat Don Perata for Oakland Mayor, with their respective supporters agreeing to put the other one as second choice. Some claim that Quan was not the perfect mayor, but she was a whole lot better than Perata would have been. Some supporters of these two Berkeley mayoral candidates (including me) believe that either would be a whole lot better than Realtor Capitelli, and that this strategy is the best way to ensure that one of them gets the job. 

Unfortunately, as far as I’ve been able to figure out, the predetermined rules for Saturday’s meeting require choosing only one candidate for each office—dual endorsements not allowed. In my opinion that’s a mistake—I haven’t been able to discover if some kind of preferential voting, or a vote which says “not yet” would be a possibility. 

The rules should be posted on someone’s website, but they’re not. Someone who went to the Berkeley Tenants’ Union Rent Board endorsement meeting last Sunday told me there was a long messy discussion about the rules there—this could happen again. 

Mike Lee (running as “The Old Bum”) has put forward a number of interesting ideas, some in this space, and as of now I’d probably rank him as #3 if the election were today. 

Grad student Ben Gould, who has a very professional-looking website, seems to have drunk the developers’ Kool-Aide, believing with the BARFers that more market rate housing will somehow trickle down to create affordable housing. Nope. 

And just to make this even more confusing, a friend who is a critic of the council majority and active in neighborhood issues but not part of the BPA etc. configuration told me he’d run into East Bay Municipal Utility District commissioner Andy Katz (sort of a progressive), who said he wasn’t endorsing any mayoral candidates yet because he’s thinking of running himself. Uh-huh. His name will not be in play on Saturday. 

Moving on down the line: 

In District 2: Cheryl Davila and Nanci Armstrong-Temple both show up well in a Google search for various activities, but I don’t know much more about them. It’s obvious either would be preferable to incumbent Darryl Moore, so they might also benefit from a cooperative strategy vis-à-vis ranked choice. 

District 3: Ben Bartlett, Mark Coplan. Ben, a Planning Commissioner, has been endorsed by retiring Councilmember Max Anderson to be his successor, which counts for a lot. I don’t know him personally, but as we used to say, “I know his people”, i.e. his father, Dale Bartlett, longtime aide to Councilmember Maudelle Shirek, who used to bring Baby Ben to work at City Hall sometimes (and doesn’t that date both of us?) I’ve encountered Mark Coplan over the years he’s done public relations for the Berkeley Unified School District, and he seems to be an honest, straightforward fellow with some good ideas. 

One factor that should be considered: the preponderance of Berkeley’s diminishing population of African-Americans live in Districts 2 and 3, now both represented by African-Americans. Both candidates running against Darryl Moore, District 2 incumbent, are Black, as is he, so that’s not an issue. However in District 3, where Anderson is retiring, Ben Bartlett is an African America, as is another opponent who’s not asking for progressive endorsement. She’s dreadful, another real estate agent and a ZAB member who usually votes with developers. 

District 5: Sophie Hahn, now on the Zoning Adjustment Board, is excellent and has run before against Capitelli, who’s now quitting to try for Mayor. Her newbie opponent, who is not asking for progressive backing, was hand-picked by the current council majority, who gerrymandered District 5 to include his home. 

District 6: Fred Dodsworth III, a major backer of BCA, is running against majority incumbent Susan Wengraf. No other district candidate has asked for this group’s endorsement, though Isabelle Gaston, also announced for the race, is considered more liberal than Wengraf. She could win as everyone’s #2 in ranked choice. 

There is no primary any more for any of these local elections—the adoption of ranked choice voting did away with both primaries and run-offs. Voters get one, and only one, shot at choosing local officials, in November. A perhaps unintended consequence is that many Berkeley voters in November will be drawn to the polls for the first time by the national elections, and will know little or nothing about local candidates. 

The main issue, as always, is land use, the only area where there’s still some measure of local control, many other topics having migrated to the state or national level. The major problem in Berkeley is that we’re already one of the very densest cities in the state, but increasingly a sought-after destination for spillovers from San Francisco’s start-up housing crush. 

Development capital, like the boll weevil “just looking for a home”, has targeted our already crowded city for cash-register multiples, the market-rate-only high-rises which promise to engulf downtown Berkeley and beyond. The current majority councilmembers, especially the mayor and his lieutenant and designated successor Capitelli, have been all too eager to give developers everything they want here in Speculation City. 

Student voters especially, stressed by overcrowding, might be tempted to believe, like candidate Gould, that some of this largesse would trickle down to create affordable housing for them, though the data say otherwise. The best candidate for mayor (I guess, in this all-male field, that would be the best man) will be the one that can explain it all in such a way that even novice voters get it. 

And don’t forget, candidates have until August to file. The landscape could change by then.