Berkeley Election Update - Next Update Monday

Vote counts released today (Thursday) by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters

City Council District 1

Kesarwani - 1232 49.4%

Mikiten - 1067 42.8%

Freeman - 193 7.8%

Incumbent Council member Rashi Kesarwani’s margin over Elisa Mikiten grew from 112 votes to 165 votes as the County Registrar of Voters reported more results. Kesarwani now has 49% of the first choice votes to 43% for Mikiten. In the ranked choice voting report, more of third-place candidate Michai Freeman’s votes went to Mikiten than to Kesarwani, but enough went to Kesarwani to put the incumbent over 50%



Measure L - the $650 million bond

YES - 9528 56.2%

NO - 7434. 43.8%

This measure has no chance of getting the two-thirds required for passage. Support has dropped slightly from votes counted on Election Day night when the YES percentage was 56.3%. A record amount for support of a City of Berkeley bond measure was spent by supporters to no avail. The Daily Californian reports contributions totaling as of last Friday; the final total will no doubt be higher.

Measure M - the Vacancy Tax

YES- 10,261 61.3%

NO- 6491 38.8%

This measure has definitely passed as it only requires a majority, not two thirds

How Many Ballots remain to be Counted?

Perhaps the Registrar of Voters knows but nothing has been posted on their Web site. They did report earlier today that 36,628 Vote by Mail ballots had been returned in Berkeley; there are also 539 military and overseas ballots. These are not the final numbers. This may have been a relatively low turnout election for Berkeley, even for a non-Presidential election year. The number of registered voters in Berkeley is 71,663, substantially lower than the 79,154 who were registered for the 2018 midterm elections when turnout was quite high in Berkeley. The Registrar will release more results next Monday. (Friday is Veteran’s Day.) -more-

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Well, the crunch is upon us. At our house, the unopened ballots are still on the dining room table. We’ve heard on the grapevine that they contain the usual assortment of pointless or harmful proposals, including some that in principle we might not object to.

Some are easy. No to gambling in all forms. No to regulation-by-initiative of kidney treatment, which should be done by experts. Etc.

Also in the pile are endless glossy mailers paid for by vaguely named PACs. There’s a whole lotta’ money sloshing round.

But one of these giant color postcards claims that it “contains all .. and only” the endorsements of The Democratic Party of Alameda County. It features a great big red white and blue button: “Official Democratic Party VOTER Guide”.

Really? I first registered as a Democrat in Berkeley in 1960, and have been one ever since, here and in Michigan, but I don’t think they asked me who they should be endorsing. The all-aboard primary system means that everyone’s some sort of Democrat, which means that party makes little difference in my decision as a voter.

In theory, Berkeley has always had non-partisan elections, but since California’s turned into a one-party state the Newsom Dems are putting their heavy thumbs on the scale here too, telling us Berkeleyans who and what to vote for. And I don’t like it.

Berkeley used to be considered a progressive leader, whatever that meant. But no more. This mailer suggests that as a good Democrat I should vote for the old White guy whose main qualification is that he’s been a 20 year homeowner in my district. The Democratic Party of Alameda County has endorsed him instead of the middle-aged POC woman who’s been a long-time tenant activist around here and a staunch advocate of building only deeply affordable housing on public land, especially on BART parking lots.

But what’s worse, the Alameda County Dems tell me to vote for Berkeley Measure L, a poorly drafted and pricey ($650 million) slush fund which promises much yet requires nothing. It won’t be paid off until I’m 100 years old, god willing I should live so long,.

The Planet’s op-ed space has as usual been open to all opinions, but articulate opponents of Measure L have strongly outnumbered its advocates here. South County Democrats, who presumably dominate whatever endorsement process has taken place if any, seem to have missed the memo, however.

I don’t think I’ve ever voted against a Berkeley revenue measure in the 50 years I’ve lived here most recently, but it’s time for a change.
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I've had a number of queries about local election results. These days there's no staff to write articles about events, but I can do something even better. I can empower readers to get their own information. Just go to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters' excellent web site for all the latest:

https://www.acgov.org/rovresults/248/
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I play Wordle in the New York Times every day. It is a word game with six chances to guess the five letter word of the day. By my second try I had four of the five letters R-E-A-D. The answer was DREAM which I got on my fourth try. My third try was DREAD which tells you everything you need to know about how I feel about the election. I am worried.

The big news of the week is the filibuster by Councilmembers Wengraf and Droste with help from Councilmembers Taplin and Kesarwani and the maneuver by LaTanya Bellow, Deputy City Manager and Dee Williams-Ridley, City Manager to block passing the Fair Work Week Ordinance. -more-

As of November 1, 2022, the Yes on L committee has reported raising over $350,000.

While our coalition has been outraised 10-1, we have approximately ten times as many donors as the Yes campaign.

The coverage of campaign money has been accurate but not highlighted the politically problematic donations solicited by the Yes committee. These donations:

• The Yes on L committee accepted $3,000 from the Northern California Chapter of the National Association of Electrical Contractors on October 19, 2022 according to state records. On the same day, this group contributed $1,000 to right-wing, anti-choice State Assembly candidate Juan Alanis.
• The Yes on L committee accepted $15,000 from 2274 Shattuck QOZB, LLC on October 5, 2022. This entity is controlled by locally prominent developer Patrick Kennedy. As Berkeleyside pointed out, Kennedy has several projects in various stages of approval before the City Council.
• The Yes on L committee accepted $9,750 from Martin Marietta on October 21, 2022. Martin Marietta is the corporate parent of Berkeley Asphalt. The Berkeley Asphalt facility is highly contentious and has generated significant opposition in West Berkeley.
• The Yes on L committee accepted $10,000 from Sutter Health on November 2, 2022. Sutter Health has announced its intent to close Alta Bates hospital.

This may seem out of order, starting out my Activist’s Diary with a book review, but as you keep reading you will see how it all pulls together with this last week’s meetings.

Our book club choice for October/November was A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, by Scott Weidensaul, published in 2021.

Even though I have been pleading for many months for dark skies, bird safe glass and native plants at the Design Review Committee and the Zoning Adjustment Board, and for the Planning Commission to approve the Bird Safe ordinance with the latest science, my appreciation of the importance of these actions is so much deeper after reading A World on the Wing.

In the chapter entitled Big Data, we learn how miniature GPS tracking devices, so tiny they can be put on the backs of even little songbirds, have changed what we know about migration, habitat stopovers, winter and nesting locations and how many miles birds travel without stopping. Because of one of those GPS devices on the back of a juvenile (5-month old) bar-tailed godwit, known only by its satellite tag 234684, there is a new record flight. This little bird, around 10 ounces, flew without stopping from Alaska to north-east Tasmania, 8,435 miles in 11 days and one hour. -more-

Following my second psychotic episode, in the 1980's, I attended electronics training, and then I had employment in which I repaired analog televisions and video cassette recorders. Off and on, I did this as a business. I was often good at it, but I had physical health problems (I contracted mononucleosis), and I had difficulties with the amount of effort that was needed. -more-

Rats Are Overrunning the Berkeley Marina

It’s difficult for people to see what so painfully controls their – our – lives/minds. It’s so integral and so supported by our neighbors, our social institutions, our myths, our Owners’ armies. My campaign is about this fierce alienation from actuality, looking toward us becoming more and more able to deal with it, thereby overgrow the constant constructs forbidding our understandings, with our increasing knowledge not only of what actually goes on, but of how to figure out how to come out from under its horrible oppression, abuse of us all. -more-

Worth Noting:

I think I caught all the city meetings and city related webinars, but my email inbox is filling faster with campaign ads and donation pleas faster than I can delete them. Do not forget to check https://berkeleyca.gov/ for meetings posted on short notice. The November 15 Council 6 pm meeting agenda is posted - see additional comments at the end of the list of meetings by day of the week.

Sunday – Daylight Savings Ends

Monday – The Personnel Board and Peace and Justice Commission meet at 7 pm.

Tuesday – Election with the City on a reduced schedule and no meetings

Wednesday – The discount program for Solar and Battery Storage is at 6 pm and the Financial incentive program for EVs for lower income individuals and households is at 7 pm. The Parks Commission, Police Accountability Board and Housing Advisory Commission all meet at 7 pm.

Thursday – The Budget Committee meets at 10 am – the mid fiscal year additional budget allocation process is starting. The e-Bike webinar is at 6 pm.

The go to meeting of the week are the presentations from the four developer candidates for the North Berkeley BART housing project at 7 pm Thursday. The meeting is hybrid and can be attended in person at the BUSD Board room or on zoom. (links below) BART will be moderating the presentations. This meeting will likely be very well attended. I am going to attend on zoom since I am concerned that if room capacity is exceeded I will miss too much in trying to get back home and online.

Friday is the Veterans Day Holiday

Saturday is the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council (BNC) at 10 am. Note that BNC has a new zoom login. BNC is my other go to meeting of the week.

Sunday, November 6, 2022 – DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME ENDS

Monday, November 7, 2022

PERSONNEL BOARD MEETING at 7 pm -more-

Drector Park Chan-Wook rightly shares for DECISION TO LEAVE, his just-released homage to Hollywood film noir, with his art director Ryu Seomg-hee. ”We scout locations…sometimes a setting gives the idea for a scene”. Among many pleasures, the film offers a dazzling tour of Seoul’s staggered roofs and zigzag streets and its surrounding landscape, a lot like northern California: cold rocky coast with granite mountains close by. These make scaling cliffs a favorite pastime of the newly rich , and an opportunity for murder. Did the victim fall or was he pushed and if so why? These are the questions for one half of this detective story/love story. The other half asks ‘Will they or won’t they, if she turns out to be the killer?’ -more-

Is she guilty or isn’t she: Is TÁR a Me Too story with a female predator? That is only one of the mysteries left behind by Todd Field’s study of a world-class conductor as she crashes and burns—a backstage drama set in the rarified precincts of classical music. Who sings the unaccompanied solo that we heard at the beginning? And what language is that? What makes those random sounds that haunt the character’s solitary moments? What southeast Asian county is she hiding out in at the end, Why is the crowd in the last scene all dressed in sci-fi costumes? And does any of this really matter? (Note: the only bedroom scene shows her with her wife.) What matters beyond a doubt , is that writer/director Field and actor Cate Blanchett together have created a character you will not forget. -more-

For all the glib talk around the Opera House about glimpsing the sublime in Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, including a note with that title by the company’s general director Matthew Shilvock at the back of the program for this opera, I find this a troubled work and a troubling one. Based in part on a true story of Carmelite nuns guillotined during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, the story was picked up by 20th century French writer Georges Bernanos who embellished the tale with a fictional young overly sensitive woman, Blanche de la Force, who occupies the center of the screenplay Bernanos created for a film, and his Dialogues des Carmélites was later published posthumously as a play in 1953. Georges Bernanos, who is often called “the most distinguished Catholic French writer of his generation,” larded his Dialogues des Carmélites with heavy doses of Catholic mysticism, abnegation, the desire (and dangers) of a wish for martyrdom in imitation of Christ, and fears of both death and life. From the Bernanos play, Francis Poulenc, himself a troubled Catholic, created his opera in 1957. -more-

A Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New International Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council added their powerful voices to the growing crisis in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. At least 120 Palestinians have been killed so far this year, including many children. Decades of unconditional U.S. support to Israel’s apartheid policies and occupation have contributed to the deteriorating situation which allows the raids to go on with complete impunity. -more-