2020 Oakland Ballot

Prepared for Broke-Ass Stuart’s Goddamn Website

A week from Tuesday is the final day we Oaklanders will be casting ballots in the ongoing election. While we can’t pick up our cell phones without being reminded of the critical importance of 2020 as a national election year, the effect of social-distancing on smaller campaigns as well as the ongoing dismantling of independent local news outlets has made finding solid analysis on our local contests more difficult than in past cycles. This is a shame because right now Oakland is very much a battleground between the two wings of the Democratic Party; a grassroots wing that is engaged with the various movements for social justice that have galvanized and grown over the past decade, and a corporate wing committed to ensuring that the any remedies undertaken to address the very real crises of we face today should only go so far as can be reconciled with the interests of the party’s donor class. At present our city government is split between these two camps, with our mayor Libby Schaaf acting as a tie-breaker in favor of big-money interests on a host of issues.

Many of the competitive match-ups discussed below feature candidates grown from the East Bay’s very deep activist bench facing off with high-dollar-donor-backed alternatives. If Oakland is to have a real chance of addressing our ever-worsening housing affordability crisis, halting the hand-off of our public schools to charters, or defunding the bloated budget of our violent, criminal, and embarrassingly dysfunctional police force, we as voters must use this current election to empower Oakland’s activist community by supporting the candidates and policy reforms they endorse.

This guide is largely informed by the work of longstanding community organizations and independent activists with a history of working on behalf of Oakland’s most vulnerable. For further analysis of the issues and candidates evaluated here, please refer to these voter guides from #OakMtg Appreciation Club, and Oakland Rising, as well as essential reporting from local news outlets like The Hyphenated Republic, The Oakland Post, and Oaklandside.

Endorsements: Especially strong endorsements in bold.

• CA 13th District Congressional Representative — Barbara Lee
• State Senate — State Senator Nancy Skinner
• Assembly — Rob Bonta
• AC Transit D1 — Jovanka Beckles
• AC Transit D2 — Jean Walsh
• AC Transit At Large — Christian Peeples
• BART Board D7 — Lateefah Simon
• City Council D1 — Dan Kalb *with Tri Ngo 2nd*
• City Council D3 — Carroll Fife *with Seneca Scott 2nd*
• City Council D5 — Zoe Lopez-Meraz with *Richard Santos Raya 2nd*
• City Council D7 — Aaron Clay *with Marchon Tatmon 2nd*
• City Council At-Large — Rebecca Kaplan
• School Board District 1 — Sam Davis & Stacy Thomas
• School Board District 3 — Vancedric Williams & Cherisse Gash
• School Board District 5 — Mike Hutchinson
• School Board District 7 — Kristina Molina & Victor Valerio & Ben Tapscott
• City Attorney — Barbara Parker
• Alameda County Superior Court Judge — Elena Condes

County Measures

• Measure V — YES
• Measure W — YES
• Measure X — YES

City Measures

• Measure QQ — Yes
• Measure RR — Yes
• Measure S1 — Yes
• Measure Y — Yes

13th Congressional District — Barbara Lee — Since her election to this seat in 1998, it could be argued that the Congresswoman has been the most praise-worthy member of the US congress. Beginning with her laudable and lonely opposition to the Iraq War, and continuing today with her unwavering support of Medicare-For-All and The Green New Deal, Barbara Lee has been on the right side on issue after issue. Given this history, her endorsement of Kamala Harris in this most recent Presidential primary was confounding to some. Still, congresswoman Lee will win re-election easily, as she should.

State Senate District 9 — Nancy Skinner — Sitting State Senator Nancy Skinner is also extremely likely to win re-election. Since her election in 2016, she has been a solid, mainstream progressive. Skinner is best on environmental issues. As a member of the Berkeley City Council, she was instrumental in the country’s first Styrofoam ban and she is a co-founder of Local Governments for Sustainability *Fun fact, there is no Republican in this race so doing your due diligence as a citizen means getting to dig into the rather bizarre (and kind of adorable) campaign of Libertarian Jamie Dluzak*

Assembly District 15 — Sara Brink — This candidate will not win. Her own website says so. Brink is avowed anti-fascist, running without party affiliation, against an incumbent opponent who is a darling of both the Democratic Party power-brokers and likely your friend who not only listens to Pod Save America but also buys their t-shirts and coffee mugs. Prior to her election in 2018, Wicks, who had worked on the Obama campaigns, was parachuted into the district with the backing of both big-business and the Democratic party establishment. At that it appeared that Richmond City-Council Member, Jovanka Beckles — a queer, Black woman and a member of the staunchly anti-corporate Richmond Progressive Alliance — was poised to take this seat. From Brink’s website “To Buffy Wicks: you’re obviously a person whose values are organized around the accumulation of power, and whose community is those who help you gain it. Your presence in this seat is a result of your privilege, not your worth to us.” In the assembly, Buffy Wicks has been what most expected her to be, a consistent progressive with no appetite for upsetting those who put her in office.

Assembly District 18 — Rob Bonta — Like Skinner, Bonta maintains a 98 out of 100 score from Courage California. This is hardly a rigid standard as Buffy Wicks maintains a perfect score. Nonetheless, as with Skinner’s race, there is no radical alternative here, and unlike many of his colleagues in our statehouse, Bonta has demonstrated a willingness to be pulled toward more radical reforms. Most recently Bonta introduced legislation alongside San Francisco’s anti-carceral DA, Chesa Boudin which would bar elected prosecutors from handling police misconduct cases if they accepted money from police unions during their campaigns.

AC Transit District 1 — Jovanka Beckles — Consistent with her identification as both a Democratic Socialist and a member of The Richmond Progressive Alliance Beckles is running on a platform of free public transportation. Beckles was extremely effective as a member of the Richmond City Council. During her two terms on the council, Richmond fought Chevron and won, moved forward a community policing model that precipitated a significant drop in violent crime, and passed a living wage. As Berkeley mayor, Jesse Arreguín wrote in his endorsement of Beckles, “…she is the only candidate in her race who has won major legislative victories as an elected official, and the only candidate with ideas bold enough for the current moment.”

AC Transit D2 — Jean Walsh — Walsh is endorsed by many progressive groups but I have never encountered anyone who is really plugged into movements for social justice who is an enthusiastic supporter of hers. The main reason for this endorsement is that Walsh is running to unseat Greg Harper. Harper’s status as the leading fiscal conservative on the board places him at odds with people like Beckles who are working to make public transportation more accessible.

AC Transit At Large — Christian Peeples — LIke Walsh, Christian Peeples is endorsed by most mainstream progressive organizations and garners little enthusiasm from more radical organizations. Also like Walsh, this endorsement comes largely for fear of the election of one of Peeples’ opponents, Victoria Fierce. Fierce identifies as a YIMBY socialist and is a fixture at local government meetings. She has engaged in the harassment of longtime area activists, both on the internet and in-person, and she referred to the Berkeley Shellmound memorial sight, an ancestral burial site for the native Ohlone people, as a “sacred parking lot.” Fierce does not feel that we need to get police out of transit, and she has spoken disparagingly of concerns about the surveillance cameras on the BRT corridor. Despite her self-identification as a socialist, Fierce is functionally an ally to the Mayor’s pro-development wing and has personally donated over $1,000 to the PAC seeking to unseat Rebecca Kaplan.

BART Board D7 — Lateefah Simon — Simon’s community activist bona-fides are well established here in the Bay. Prior to being elected, Simon was the President of the Akonadi Foundation where her work to make Oakland a more racially just city was widely praised. While Simon is the incumbent in the race, the effect of COVID on the BART system makes it hard to evaluate her performance as a reformer in that capacity. This endorsement is based largely on Simon’s activist resume and connection to the community.

City Council At-Large — Rebecca Kaplan — Out of the three candidates that are running for this seat Rebecca Kaplan is the only one who supports shrinking OPD’s budget, expanding tenant protections, increasing funding for homeless services, a progressive business tax, and she was the only Councilmember advocating for clean air centers for unhoused people during the wildfires.

The biggest obstacle to Kaplan’s re-election is not one of her opponents; it is the obscene amount of money that Lyft and Uber have injected into this race. Back in 2017, Kaplan proposed a tax on ride-hailing apps operating in Oakland, and the two behemoth companies in that sector have remained dedicated to seeing her out of office ever since.

The beneficiary of the ride-hailing industry’s opposition to Kaplan is Derreck Johnson. Johnson enjoys the backing of a well-funded PAC, and the endorsement of Senator Kamala Harris whose brother-in-law is Uber’s chief legal officer. He is also the preferred candidate of Mayor Schaaf who has been at odds with Kaplan for years.

Previously best-known as the owner of a popular Jack London Square restaurant, Johnson claims he is running because he feels the current City Council hasn’t created a business-friendly atmosphere. Prior to this run, Johnson’s most prominent political activity was as founder of the Oakland Indie Alliance a collection of small business groups who petition state and local government in opposition to minimum wage increases. He supports the rollback of tenant protections and deregulation of Oakland’s housing market. He opposes a progressive business tax, opposes the right of return for workers who lost their jobs to COVID-19, and opposes cutting OPD’s budget.

Oakland City Council District 1 — Dan Kalb *with Tri Ngo 2nd* — With respect to the two main issues facing our city, police accountability and housing affordability, sitting councilmember Dan Kalb is a mixed bag. With respect to housing, he (along with Nikki Fortunato Bas who has endorsed Kalb in this election) has been the most reliably pro-tenant voice on the council. He worked diligently to turn a CCA dorm into a shelter and emergency housing, he was the author of Oakland’s tenant protection ordinance and co-authored the emergency eviction moratorium. Kalb has also worked with Oakland Tenants Union to ensure that much needed seismic retrofitting would not lead to displacement. OTU has also endorsed Kalb.

Unfortunately, when it comes to defending Oakland’s residents from our unaccountable police department, Kalb has not shown the same dedication and fortitude. Back in July when councilmembers Bas and Kaplan put forth a budget that would have defunded OPD by 50%, Kalb argued that there was much in the proposal he supported, but he ultimately abstained.

Kalb’s main competition, Stephanie Walton, is supported by the East Bay Rental Housing Association, a demonstrably anti-tenant-rights organization. Hyphenated Republic’s Jamie Omar Yassin reported that “Walton’s husband is a lawyer at one of the nation’s top real estate law firms and is a member of an advocacy group seeking to pressure Oakland into selling the Coliseum and promoting the Howard Terminal ballpark proposal. The law firm Walton works for advertised that it is available to challenge tenant protection laws until a short time ago, when I reported on the claim.”

While Kalb’s lack of courage when it came to defunding OPD offered Walton her opening, she has been very vague about the issue in the various online candidate forums and has previously spoken about wanting more police officers on the force.

Walton’s main qualification for local government seems to be that she was a devoted supporter of Buffy Wicks’ campaign against Beckles. Like Johnson, Walton enjoys the endorsement of Kamala Harris who has only endorsed candidates running against those who frequently oppose Mayor Schaaf’s agenda.

City Council District 3 — Carroll Fife *with Seneca Scott 2nd* — Carrol Fife is exactly the sort of person who should represent Oakland. She is a radical grassroots organizer, an executive director with ACCE, and she was a fixture within Cat Brooks campaign to unseat Schaaf as mayor. Fife believes in the decommodification of housing and that shelter is a human right and she has shown the ability to bring her radical analysis into the system, working with Elizabeth Warren on housing policy, and serving as a Bernie Sanders delegate to the 2016 convention.

Fife has been a tireless advocate for Oakland’s most vulnerable residents for more than a decade. Most recently she rose to national prominence with Mom’s For Housing, a group of unhoused West Oakland families whose direct action is providing shelter for vulnerable families and bolstering the Oakland Community Land Trust.

Fife’s politics align with a broad spectrum of Oakland’s voters and non-voting residents and her impressive campaign has brought together an equally broad coalition of supporters. Not only is she endorsed by the list of long-standing, POC-lead, radical community-based organizations one might expect, but she has expanded that coalition. Fife enjoys endorsements from the Alameda Democratic Party, an endorsement she received over mayor Schaaf’s objection, and East Bay DSA, who infamously sat out the Brooks vs Schaaf mayoral campaign.

Fife’s is running to unseat a popular incumbent. Lynette Gibson McElhaney and her family are certainly deeply-tied to the community. However, McElhaney almost always votes with the mayor’s wing of the council, and her notoriously cozy relationship with area developers actually garnered her an ethics violation in 2018. If Fife is successful, it would follow Nikki Fortunato Bas’ defeat of Abel Guillen in 2018, to begin a trend of dedicated activists taking council seats from popular, business-backed, incumbents.

City Council D5 — Zoe Lopez-Meraz with *Richard Santos Raya 2nd* — This is a longshot campaign to upset incumbent Noel Gallo. Richard Santos Raya and Zoe Lopez-Meraz are two very young activists from the district hoping to join forces and utilize Oakland's ranked-choice voting to unseat the rather mediocre incumbent. Like McElhaney, the incumbent in D3, Gallo is well-liked in his district, but not at all bold enough to meet our current moment. He has been a fairly reliable ally to the mayor. He has given every indication that he will not support defunding OPD.

Both Meraz and Raya support defunding the police, a Black New Deal, and providing rapid re-housing for unsheltered people. Meraz is explicit about decriminalizing homelessness and sex work. She also wants to make it harder for landlords to discriminate against Section 8 vouchers. According to her campaign, Meraz wants to ensure “all future development is only approved if there is an agreement to keep jobs local, construction is environmentally sustainable, employment is open to the formerly incarcerated, residential units are affordable, and tenants have the right to organize.”

City Council D7 — Aaron Clay *with Marchon Tatmon 2nd* — The D7 race is crowded and the assumed front-runner is Treva Reid, the daughter of Councilmember Larry Reid who has held this seat since 1996. The younger Reid boasts a number of strong endorsements, but the specter of generational succession and her history as a lobbyist for PG&E present more than a few conflicts between her rhetoric and what we would expect from her as a councilmember.

Aaron Clay, on the other hand, enjoys the endorsement of the Green Party, the ILWU, and the League of Conservation Voters. He is a vocal proponent of solar energy and sits on the board Youth UpRising a vital and pragmatic resource for many of East Oakland’s most vulnerable young people.

School Board — More than the specific candidates, what is critical about this year’s school board elections is that we vote to stop the billionaire-funded takeover of Oakland’s public school. GO public schools is an extraordinarily well-heeled non-profit organization whose work bolsters gentrification and negatively affects Oakland’s most vulnerable students by advocating for charter schools. By in-large Oakland’s charter institutions have failed students with unexpected closures and have not delivered the academic results they promised. The funding for GO, as well as the candidates they are advancing for school board, comes from far outside Oakland.

Both https://votewithoaklandteachers.com/ and Oakland Rising have put out school board endorsements guided by the sentiments of those who are most directly affected by Oakland’s push toward privatization. Follow their recommendations and support the following candidates in your district. The voting is ranked-choice:

• School Board District 1 — Sam Davis & Stacy Thomas
• School Board District 3 — Vancedric Williams & Cherisse Gash
• School Board District 5 — Mike Hutchinson
• School Board District 7 — Kristina Molina & Victor Valerio & Ben Tapscott

Alameda County Superior Court Judge — Elena Condes — Condes is the incumbent in this contest and she enjoys broad support from nearly every liberal or progressive group with an opinion. She is also endorsed by prominent Oakland civil rights attorney and Sanders-campaign fixture, Walter Riley.

Her opponent, Mark Fickes is a former prosecutor and counsel for the SEC who is misrepresenting himself as a civil rights attorney.

City Attorney — Barbara Parker — Like Councilmember Kalb, City Attorney Parker has been excellent on housing and lacking on police accountability. She has sued problem landlords for providing unsafe conditions for tenants and co-sponsored Oakland’s Emergency Eviction Moratorium. She has advocated for tenant protection upgrades, including making it illegal for landlords to turn their tenants or their relatives over to ICE. She supports the Fair Chance Access to Housing Ordinance which prohibits asking for or considering criminal records in rental housing applications. Like Kalb, Parker is endorsed by the Oakland Tenants Union.

Her opponent, Elias Ferran has had a rather undistinguished twelve-year career in the Oakland City Attorney’s Office and done nothing to indicate that he would be stronger on police accountability than Parker.

County

Measure V — YES — Renewal of an existing and necessary tax on utility usage in unincorporated areas.

Measure W — YES — Measure W is a half-cent sales tax that will provide funding for rapid re-housing, rent assistance, job training, mental health support, as well as hygiene stations, and other similar interventions. Although a sales tax is regressive, ultimately we can’t afford to not fund these services. Measure W also comes with an oversight committee to ensure that the funds are spent as they were described.

Measure X — YES — This is a fire safety bond. From Oakland Rising — “in the midst of increased climate crisis fires and reduced budgets, adding resources for the fire department is a good idea.”

City

Measure QQ — Yes — Oakland students should be able to vote for their school board representatives!

Measure RR — Yes — Illegal dumping is a real problem in many Oakland neighborhoods. This measure removes the $1,000 cap on civil penalties in hopes of discouraging residents from bumping trash on street corners, a practice that primarily impacts lower-income residents.

Measure S1 — Yes — Necessary to provide legitimate oversight over OPD.

Measure Y — Yes — Construction bond measure to found public schools