Primary Reflections
In which: I talk about the primaries. An anti-housing Supervisor is called out. And the Council sets a Meeting Speed Record.
Wading Into Elections
The Primaries have come and gone. If you’re wondering if I have Thoughts on it: yes, I do. The issue is that most of the primary elections have almost nothing directly to do with Hayward. But since nothing of real importance happened at Council this week—it was literally 18 minutes long, I thought I could share some overall thoughts and analyses on what’s happened and highlight one down-ballot race with more local significance.
State Senate
Adam Schiff pulled a Gavin Newsom and it paid off. After dumping an obscene amount of money into “attacking” Steve Garvey to raise his profile among Conservatives, our Establishment Heir got what he paid for. He’ll go into November with a walk in the park victory against Garvey in an overwhelmingly Blue state—though as of this writing, Garvey leads Schiff in the partial-term race.
There’s been rumor that Schiff was hand-picked for this position by Nancy Pelosi years ago—possibly even using one of her daughters as a Guardian for Dianne Feinstein. The idea being to keep Feinstein in her seat long after she was fit to be there in order to avoid a mid-cycle election that her and Schiff hadn’t prepared for. This kind of politics is dirty, expensive, and the stuff Netflix producers dream of. I try not to touch the stuff.
Alameda County Board of Education Area 5
This was always an uneven match with incumbent Janevette Cole—backed by tens of thousands of dollars of Charter School PAC money—going against Haywardiste Lupe Angulo—backed by Teacher Unions and half of the current Board of Education. The initial results aren’t positive but leftists break late, everyone knows this.
Big county elections like this rely so heavily on money that anyone running has to find wealthy backers of some kind. There’s just too much ground to cover for a race decided in the primary. And if you’re backed by teachers, they’re not famous for having a lot of disposable income.
I’m also not entirely sold on these County races that get decided in the Primary. If someone can show me where it lays out the rules for this, I’d owe you. It seems awfully undemocratic to me. I’d understand a “winner-take-all” primary where it goes to whoever gets over 50% of the vote, if anyone. And it may be like that, but it’s always been explained—without evidence beyond experience—that it’s decided in the primary.
Please fill in my abysmal Civics education, fam.
Alameda County Board of Supervisors District 4
I’m not in this district, so I couldn’t even vote on this one. But as someone who grew up in that district and is a housing advocate and has seen renters I care about suffer from lack of legal protections: Nate Miley is a coward.
He had the gall to add Just Cause Eviction Protections to the Board of Supervisor’s (BoS) agenda. But when it came up a week before the election, Mr. I-Have-The-Experience leaned on fellow a landlord-friendly Supervisor to undemocratically postpone the item until after the election. There was no discussion. No vote.
Supervisor Marquez tried to block the move, but apparently this is some undemocratic Old Boy’s Rule the BoS has where anyone can postpone something all alone and nobody can do anything about it! And it just so happened that someone who received $400,000 from multiple Landlord PACs didn’t have to share his paid-for feelings of hostility toward renters a week before the primaries.
That’s cowardice. That’s another Boomer so desperate to hold onto power that he’s willing to talk out of both sides of his mouth to do it. He’s all but guaranteed to win and some of the most vulnerable people in Cherryland, Castro Valley, Ashland, and Oakland are going to suffer for it.
Also, I swear if people keep referring to landlords as “housing providers” I’m about to lose my mind. They’re not providing anything. They are managing, at best, and exploitative at worst. The astroturfing campaign to rebrand Landlords is insidious and intentional. Don’t buy it.
20th Assembly District Democratic Central Committee
I want to preface this by saying I’m not a registered Democrat—I’m No Party Preference. My wife says it’s because I’m pigheaded and she’s a very smart woman. The importance of this particular race is the ideological struggle for the East Bay Democratic Central Committee (EBDCC)—leftist/progressives vs. liberal/establishment. This group controls who the EBDCC endorses, which can earn candidates substantial votes.
If you’re looking for a choke point for gatekeeping, this would be a good place. There were two slates running, and our own Councilmember Julie Roche was on one of them. Aside from being able to have influence on how the EBDCC swings on endorsements, Councilmember Roche is also forming political alliances with other local establishment figures which will benefit her future fundraising.
Most of this campaign was self-funded with Torello, Sakakihara, Torello, Lopez, and Knowles all dropping at least $2,000 a piece. Former Assembly member Bill Quirk also dropped $2,000. But the biggest chunk came from none other than CA-District 14 Representative and Man Who Won’t Help Children Dying of Starvation Eric Swalwell. His campaign donated $11,000—almost half of their entire fundraising total.
Former Councilmember Al Mendall also financially supported the campaign, perhaps suggesting an ideological alignment between himself and Councilmember Roche. Given the barbs from Mayor Salinas during the State of the City Address and their comments around a Ceasefire Resolution, Mendall and Roche clearly have a few things in common.
And it looks like their slate is set to sweep the race: of the eight members of their slate, only Torello failed to make it, falling far below the rest of her colleagues. In short, Eric Swalwell put his thumb on the scale and the DCC reps in his district will align more closely with him. It will make both Roche’s future Council run and the months leading up to November something to look out for.
City Council Meeting
This City Council meeting was literally less than 20 minutes long—the shortest one I’ve seen in recent history. The only things of note were the two public comments.
Teacher Pushes Unity
A local HUSD Teacher stepped up to thank the City Council on the action it took against the hate speech at the last meeting. He brought posters saying “Hayward Stands United Against Hate”—which if you’ve been to Berkeley, you’ve doubtless seen one that looks almost exactly the same.
He attempted to bring the posters to the dais, but was told to leave them with the City Clerk for distribution later. This stands in contrast to members of the Eden Interfaith Council on December 5th, who were allowed to distribute literature directly to the Council dais without intermediary.
Community Services Pushes Back In Person
A member of the Community Services Commission (CSC) showed up in person to call out the City Council for alleging that the CSC went “off the rails” in their February 10th meeting. She reminded them that the members of the CSC are volunteers who give freely of their time and that circumscribing their duties would limit the good work that they are able to do.
In the recent past, the City Council was supportive of social justice-minded recommendations from the CSC, though the composition of the Council has changed dramatically since then. The Commissioner ended by inviting the City Council to the next CSC meeting on March 20th to allow them a chance to see how engaged the Commission is in the funding process. The City Council will receive the funding recommendations at their April 2nd meeting for approval.
Looking Forward
This was a short one, Haywardistes, but I’m not sitting on my laurels. With the primaries out of the way, that clears the runway for our own local City Council elections. I’m already digging into campaign finance records and hope to provide an in-depth analysis next week.
In the meantime, I hope y’all voted—can you believe the turnout in Alameda County is hovering at only 8%? Santa Clara and Contra Costa Counties are at 20%, at the time of this writing. I’m hoping that the County is just bogged down with counting the Pamela Price Recall signatures, because that’s painful to see.