Campaign Contributions? In This Economy?
In which I explain local political power groups, I analyze City Council candidate fundraising, and the City funds urban forest software.
Digging Into The November Council Race
The City Council doesn’t have to worry about the primaries, but that doesn’t mean that incumbents haven’t been prepping. With four seats up for grabs, the November election is a big one for the City. Although currently no new candidates have filed their paperwork as of this writing, the new City Council salary of $43,305/yr may entice some serious new candidates to wade in.
The filing deadline is sometime in June, if memory serves, so that leaves a few months for prospective Councilmembers to put their hats in.
The Local Players
Before we get into the individual candidates, I want to explain a few of the broad categories of lobbying groups to watch out for. They’re not always coordinated, but they push in similar directions and have shared interests when it comes to candidates.
Construction Trade Unions
Construction trade unions have always been a big presence in Hayward fundraising. They’ve got deep pockets, blue-collar appeal, and a long history of political lobbying. It’s also another part of why the Planning Commission is a pipeline for City Council: if you approve projects and get the trades money, they’ll reward you.
And although most construction trades don’t benefit much from residential development, the Planning Commission does approve a good amount of industrial construction. Industrial buildings are almost the exclusive purview of the trade unions.
Absent from this are the white collar unions like HEA, SEIU, and the like. they haven’t spent on City Council races that I’ve seen—possibly because they’re always in direct opposition at the bargaining table. Teacher’s unions have, in my experience, focused exclusively on the School Board, and then mostly in endorsements. That’s left the construction trades as the only ones with financial influence on council candidates, for better or worse.
Business Interests
Business interests are can have an outsized influence in local elections. Anyone who runs a small business in Hayward is going to have more pull on Council than you or I—for a number of reasons. On top of that, they’ve got organizational power: Hayward Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Hayward Improvement Association, Apartment Associations, and Real Estate lobbies. All of these groups have money and the ability to use it to pressure Council to move over for them.
The chamber is, without a doubt, the most historically powerful political interest in the City. They’re aligned with other business interests—especially landlords—and can change Council messaging pretty quickly. They have a PAC and will almost certainly continue to fund incumbent candidates this election year—appointees are usually establishment picks.
Political Establishment
The political establishment is always going to reinforce itself. Current City Councilmembers, former City Councilmembers, Planning Commissioners, and electeds from around the area all support each other politically. You’ll see a lot of the same names cropping up as Hayward is a pretty small political pond.
Although there’s no really defined “party line”, the general values of the Establishment tend to be pro-business, pro-police, pro-housing, and pro-landlord. It broadly falls on the neo-liberal centrist Democrat camp, but there have been some splits over recent policies—notably the divestment and the purchase of the Movie Theater.
Nonprofit Service Providers
Nonprofit service providers have some soft power, but are forbidden by law from donating to campaigns. They can’t even officially endorse candidates unless they have a 501(c)4 like BWOPA or FAJ Action or something. This means that they don’t have a lot of power politically—effectively cutting out people who are most vulnerable and their advocates.
Sound fair to you? Me neither. It’s part of why the groups above are so powerful.
Candidate Finances
I’ve pulled the campaign finance documents from 2023 for the current slate of candidates to get a feel for who’s putting dollars behind them. Hayward isn’t a City where candidates need a huge sum of money to run, but it does cost money to print and mail things—not to mention calls and events and texting and everything else.
It’s not everything, though. Running a grassroots campaign can be done—it’s how Councilmember Syrop got up there. But soliciting big establishment donations can make life a lot easier—why spend hours calling and knocking on doors when you can pay to mail your face to every address in the City?
Angela Andrews
Andrews is one of the more senior members of Council in this race, despite still being in her first term. She has a lot of connections to establishment figures, many of whom have had rising fortunes in the last few years. She’s currently raised about $17,500 in 2023—most of that in the last few months of the year. She held a Halloween fundraiser which doubtless brought some money her way.
One of her biggest contributors was Bill Quirk, who dropped over $1,500 on her. For the younger crowd, Bill Quirk is a former Hayward City Councilmember turned State Assembly member. He used to live in the Old Highland Neighborhood and is a former physicist. Unlike Liz Ortega, who hails from San Leandro, Quirk has continued to have an active interest in Hayward politics. In recent years he’s been playing the role of Old Don by dropping big contributions on local candidates.
Another big contributor was the Construction and Laborers (LiUNA) Local Union 304. Given recent Union split between Blue Collar and White Collar unions over Arreguin and Lybarger in the California Senate District 7 race, their spending is going to be something to watch if a leftist candidate enters the fray with any seriousness.
Another big backer of Andrews is Hasieb Lemar, President of Royal Ambulance Company. He sent $1,000 to her campaign in 2023, and has donated similarly in the past. It’s difficult to know what their connection is, but he hasn’t backed any other candidate. It’s likely some kind of person-to-person connection as opposed to any ideological alignment.
The majority of donations to Andrews’ campaign were under $250 and seemed to come from people with personal connections to Andrews. Most of her donors were from Hayward, and those who were from farther afield seemed to be friends or former colleagues.
Ray Bonilla Jr.
Bonilla has very supportive friends and family with deep pockets. As the newest Councilmember in the running, he’s got some ground to make up as everyone else has a previous campaign to pull money from. But inside of 6 months, Bonilla has pulled in almost $19,500—more than any other Councilmember so far. Almost three-fifths of his donations are $250 and over and three-fifths are also from outside of Hayward.
He’s pulled three different Labor Unions—Sprinkle Fitters Local 483, Sheet Metal Workers Local 104, and LiUNA Local 304—with donations of $1,699 each and IAFF Local 55—which is Alameda County’s local, not Hayward’s—gave $1,000. That would kind of position him as the Labor Candidate, except that the rest of the big-ticket donors are politicos and former colleagues.
As a Staff VP at Elevance Health and former Department Head at both Meta and Kaiser, he’s doubtless made friends with people in high places. Meta, Kaiser Permanente, consulting firms, and government administrators round out the big donors of $500 or more. He also has gotten fairly large donations from Sara Lamnin, Al Mendall, Shay Franco-Clausen, Briggitte Lowe, Elisa Marquez, among others.
He’s apparently running another fundraising event at the Turf Club soon—possibly riffing off of HUSD Board Candidate Austin Bruckner, who held a fundraiser there last year. If his current fundraising pace continues, he’ll have enough money that he won’t need the Chamber to back him—though they almost definitely will, anyway.
Dan Goldstein
Councilmember Dan Goldstein, at this point, is the weakest fundraiser—though he’s also the only one who hasn’t had a fundraising event for this cycle. The money he has raised bcould position him as the Labor candidate: Iron Workers, Teamsters, and Sheet Metal Workers have donated over $4,000 across 2 years.
The rest of his donors are local politicos—Zermeño, Al Mendall, Mark Salinas, and Barbara Halliday. He also got a big donation from an attorney in Sunol, Paul Martin. All told, Goldstein has raised less than $4,000 in 2023. He’s going into the summer with the least cash available. So if there was someone who might be a weak link in the Establishment, it might be him.
Francisco Zermeño
Zermeño has raised over $18,000 in 2023 alone. He’s gotten some money from Unions—Sheet Metal Workers Local 104 and LiUNA Local 304. But the vast majority of his money would position him as the Business Candidate.
He has gotten some maximum contributions from local Hayward businesses, including Gabriel Real Estate, United Western Wear, United Mexican Bar and Grill, Hayward Mitsubishi, Briggs Resources Inc, and The Poker Palace. All of these have donated over $1,500 each. He also, unsurprisingly, got a big donation from Bill and Laurel Quirk and even some from former State Senator Bob Wiechowski’s campaign for Secretary of State for California.
Zermeño also had the most donors from Hayward: he always bills himself as Mr. Hayward, so it would be strange if he didn’t. During that time, he’s been a vocal proponent of local businesses and they’ve definitely shown appreciation with their dollars. He also had a fundraising event for his birthday, but doubtless his dedication to local businesses—both on the dais and on social media—over more than a decade have paid off.
Having been on Council for so long has also endeared him to local establishment political players, including Bill Quirk, Al Mendall, Barbara Halliday, and a few members of the Planning Commission. You can’t sit on Council for that long without gathering some kind of establishment power.
So What?
Although money makes the world go ‘round, there’s a lot more to local elections than cash on hand. In the coming months, endorsements are going to ramp up, and various soft-power factions are going to rally around the candidates. I’m hoping to delve more into that soon, so if you have any hot information, drop me a line.
Although the November election is poised to be a big one on the national stage, unless someone else serious enters the fray, this election season is going to be a clean sweep for the status quo.
But What About The Consent Items?
I know, friends. I know. You’re so eager to hear a summary of the consent items for this week’s Council Meeting. Now that you’ve had your vegetables, here’s your dessert.
Grants for Urban Forest Master Plan
For those who love trees in Tree City USA, this item will hold some interest. The City is getting a grant of $500,000 from the Federal Government to tackle some projects around Urban Forests. Half of the money will go to software and the other half will go to removing hazardous trees.
The software holds a lot of promise because, according to the Staff Report, it will not only maintain an updated tree inventory, it will also monitor canopy health, hold a tree maintenance schedule, and have a public portal where residents can access data and report unsafe trees.
When it comes to the hazardous trees, the staff report claimed that the removed trees will be replaced by native trees. If that’s true, it would be a positive development. So far, many of the newer street trees throughout the City have been non-native species which negates any benefit to local animals and insects.
Streamlining Library Donations
The City is going to blanket approve mid-sized donations to Hayward Public Library. By mid-sized they mean anything between $1,000 and $50,000 which usually come from companies or trusts or wealthy donors. This is meant to solve a problem where most of the donations of that size were going to the Friends of the Hayward Public Library because the City takes too long to approve every single donation.
This was always a ridiculous policy, though it’s possible it was State Law. The library should never have had to miss out on donations simply because bureaucracy took too long. With this, the process will go a lot faster—no Council approval needed unless it’s over $50,000—and the community will benefit from donated money going to library programs.