Editorials

The word “politician” is not a pejorative in my lexicon. Even “political operative” is okay, because in our system of government we can’t get along without some pros. It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it. “Party hack” might be the term I’d choose if I wanted to denigrate someone who’d made an undistinguished career of playing politics, but it’s not one I’ve used often.

However, I do have a problem with professional pols of whatever stripe who style themselves “community organizers.” No, working on electoral campaigns for pay is not being a community organizer. Running for office is not being a community organizer. Cesar Chavez was a community organizer; Willie Brown (whom I grudgingly admire) was not.

Which is why, when I cleaned out my mailbox for the umpteenth time today, I was annoyed all over again by the flood of huge glossy color super-expensive mailers on behalf of carpet-bagger Buffy Wicks. Seven of the 19 in today’s haul were from her, obviously representing a ton of cash spent by those who are behind her do-drop-in candidacy.

Just in case you haven’t heard who are the pay-to-play interests behind primary candidates in districts guaranteed to be safe for Democrats, a good place to start is this article in In These Times:

YIMBYs Exposed: The Techies Hawking Free Market “Solutions” to the Nation’s Housing Crisis

Reporter Toshio Meronek does a stellar job of tracking the big bucks behind the variously titled promoters of the development industry who have been busy endorsing California candidates in this electoral season. The umbrella title for these promoters is YIMBYs, acronymically signifying Yes in My Back Yard. Here in the 15^th Assembly District, their main mouthpiece has been re-named “East Bay for Everyone”, but it’s the same pirates flying under a new flag. 

How can we determine that Buffy’s on the development gravy train? Well, here’s one of the fancy glossies in the pile on my desk. 

Cover: two appealing non-White young persons, one African and the other Asian, in soft focus, apparently eyeballing a display of architectural drawings.  

Title, in all caps: WHO WILL FIGHT FOR AN EAST BAY FOR EVERYONE? Where have we heard that before? 

Pull quote: EAST BAY EXPRESS: “Of all the candidates in the race, [Buffy] Wicks may be the most pro-housing…” Well, yes. But pro what kind of housing? The current editor of the Express seems never to have met a development he didn’t like, including the fanciest of top-market projects, so she meets his specs, for sure. 

Wicks was an early and eager backer of SB827, a state senate bill opposed by genuine community activists in low income communities all over California. Its effect would have been to remove almost all local control over what gets built approximately anywhere in cities near public transit, both BART and bus, greenlighting enormous developments of expensive apartments for the well-paid and squeezing out low income residents. There was so much opposition that none of the Democrats on the state senate’s housing committee were willing to vote it out of committee except the two authors, who voted with the Republicans and lost. 

The truth is that EVERYONE just can’t fit in the East Bay, an area historically home to vigorous minority communities, any more than San Francisco has room for everyone who’d like to be there. That’s why the kind of people who are backing the YIMBYS and their friend Buffy are busy pushing those who already live here out, just as they’ve been doing in San Francisco.  

YIMBY operatives, including founder Sonja Trauss, shouted down a San Francisco City Hall demonstration by real mostly-minority community organizers who wanted to put saving and increasing housing for poor tenants first. 

Meronek quotes a San Francisco Examiner report that a 77-year-old woman with the Chinatown Community Tenants Association “was so disturbed by the YIMBY shouting that she later fainted and was ferried by ambulance” to the hospital. ‘I think the YIMBY have no heart,’ Association President Wing Hoo Leung told the newspaper. ” 

It’s not enough to be the “most pro-housing” candidate if you court the support of identified allies of development profiteers who consistently favor expensive projects. Yes, yes, I know Wicks is new in town, but after being here for at least a year she should have learned that if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. 

At this point you may well ask who’s not pro-housing? 

Those who have been working for years to set aside some part of our cities for the less prosperous are opposed to the projects backed by developers like the Lennar corporation. California’s lax campaign finance laws allow huge amounts to be put into shell organizations like the one listed on the back of this mailer: “Govern for California Action Committee”. 

A quick search on the committee’s name produced this description on the Capital & Main web site : “a PAC controlled by anti-public-pension gadfly and neoliberal Democrat David Crane.” According to the linked story by Sacramento Bee reporter Christopher Cadelago, Crane, a former advisor to Republican Governor Arnold Schwartzenneger, fielded a similar pro-business candidate in Davis in 2014 who was eventually elected to the state senate. 

(Someone should investigate whether this committee or the people behind it were also behind the Schwarzenegger-backed 2010 “Top Two” amendment to the California constitution, which is what got us into this mess. “Top Two” also threatens Democratic challenges to weak Republican districts for the U.S. Congress.”) 

Another piece funded by this committee awards Wicks the lion’s share of the credit for passing Obamacare. It’s accompanied by photos of her in proximity to President Obama, though if you’re a close reader you can figure out that it doesn’t actually say Obama endorses her. Tricky! 

At any rate, it’s apparent, looking at this big pile of printed stuff, that there’s a whole lotta spending going on for Buffy Wicks by “dark money” third parties. Has AD15 reached the point that the biggest bucks buy the biggest vote? 

It’s hard not to think that all this money will at least get Wicks into the November election. What happens after that might depend on who number two turns out to be.  

As I believe I might have said before, at least four of the other candidates would do a better job of representing our progressive and diverse district than Wicks. Unfortunately, the lion’s share of financial contributions to both political parties have traditionally come from the real estate development industry, and money talks. 

It’s doubtful that any of the other worthy candidates would be enough of a draw to match those Buffy Bucks in November, which is a shame. 

AD15 incumbent Tony Thurmond, who’s moving on to run for State Superintendent of Public Instruction, did win his seat in 2016 against the candidate endorsed by moneyed interests, so it’s possible it could happen again. The approximately insoluble question is which of the others would be the best competitor in the top two runoff in November.  

Gotta vote for one of them in June, however. I’m still on the fence myself.