June 3, 2014 election recommendations: See Landau's Guide June 2014

I did not do my own writeup for this election, because I didn't do my normal level of due diligence on this election. 

But my good friend and fellow political junkie Nathan Landau did. I normally agree with his analyses, and this election is no different. You can download his recommendations from http://goo.gl/Wz3luQ.  He covers the competitive state offices, state & East Bay propositions, and Berkeley-relevant elected offices.

The one place where I was unsure is Assembly 15th District. 

Nathan endorses Elizabeth Echols, who is terrific. I'd be happy with her as my Assemblymember. If I were doing my own writeup, I would've wanted to look more deeply into Tony Thurmond's background to understand if I'd be just as happy with him. But as Nathan suggests, that question is probably moot, as the November general election will probably be a "top two" race between the two of them. So we'll probably get to decide between them again. From what little I know, I tend to agree with Nathan's assessment that Sam Kang has the right ideas but not enough legislative/political experience to make a big difference in the legislature. But I'd love to vote for him for lower office, see him get that experience. 

Happy voting!

November 2012 Summary of Recommendations

Here's my summary of recommendations for the November 2012 election. I've tried my best to put these in the order they'll appear on your ballot, based on how they show up in mine. If there's a race missing that you want more info on, post a comment!!

Federal & State

• President, Senator, Congress, State Senate & Assembly: I'm voting the Democratic ticket. I like some of them (Obama, Lee, Hancock, Skinner) more than others (Feinstein).They're all going to win California or their respective districts, so I won't spend any time here debating their relative merits.

Nonpartisan Offices

• Berkeley Rent Board (up to 4): not satisfied, but probably voting the 'progressive slate', Dodsworth, Shelton, Soto-Vigil, and Tregub.
• Berkeley School Board (up to 2): Beatriz Leyva-Cutler, Judy Appel
• AC Transit Director, At Large: Chris Peeples
• AC Transit Director, Ward 1: Yelda Bartlett
• BART Director, District 3: Rebecca Saltzman
• BART Director, District 7: Maria Alegria

State Propositions
Most important to me are Yes on 30 (fix the budget!), No on 32 (don't silence our voices), and Yes on 34 (replace the death penalty with justice that works!). Here's the full summary:

• Yes on 30: Temporary State Budget Fix
• No on 31:  Poorly Worked-Out Budget Reform
• No on 32: Don't Silence Our Voices
• No on 33: Billionaire #1: Manipulating the Insurance Market
• Yes on 34: Justice That Works
• No on 35: Human Trafficking Penalties
• Yes on 36: Reform Three Strikes Law
• Yes on 37: Support our Right to Know What We Eat
• No on 38: Billionaire #2 with inadequate education funding
• Yes on 39: Close Out-of-State Corporate Tax Loophole
• Yes on 40: Approve Redistricting by Citizens Commission

Alameda County Measures:

• Yes on A1: Zoo Improvements
• YES!! on B1: Crucial Transit Improvements

City Nonpartisan Offices:

• Berkeley Mayor: Tom Bates
• Berkeley City Council District 2 (Southwest): Darryl Moore (1st), Denisha DeLane (2nd)
• Berkeley City Council District 3 (South Berkeley): Max Anderson
• Berkeley City Council District 5 (Thousand Oaks): Laurie Capitelli
• Oakland City Council, At-Large: Rebecca Kaplan
• Oakland City Council, District 1 (North Oakland): Richard Raya #1, Amy Lemley #2, Dan Kalb #3
• Oakland City Council, District 7 (Deep East Oakland): Sheryl Walton

City of Berkeley Measures (I put these all together in one long post): 

• Yes on M: Berkeley Streets & Watershed Bond
• Yes on N & O: Berkeley Pools Bond & Parcel Tax
• Yes on P: Raise Gann Limit
• Yes on Q: Modernize language for Utility Users Tax
• Yes on R: Rational Redistricting
• No on S: Wrong solution to a real nuisance
• Yes on T: Approve city's Rezoning for West Berkeley
• No on U: the Berkeley political gridlock ordinance
• No on V: More gridlock, financial reporting style

Oakland City Council District 1: Raya #1, Lemley #2, Kalb #3

This is an interesting race. North Oakland's District 1 has been Jane Brunner's seat for 16 years. She's stepping down to run for City Attorney, so it is an open seat. There are seven candidates, no obvious front-runner, and a lot of good ideas from good people. I don't get to vote in this race, but if I did, here's the three I would vote for, using the ranked-choice voting to the limit. I think any of these candidates would be a good councilmember and I'd look forward to working with them. See the bottom of this post for a summary of some links about the whole race.

#1 Richard Raya: Richard is a smart guy with a long track record in North Oakland and in pushing for effective change. He's got great background as a budget analyst, working both in local government and within public interest groups influencing local and state governments. He has a compelling personal story: parents were farmworkers, he got his life on track through California schools, and he's raised two sons (partially as a single dad). He is my kind of environmentalist: he wants to protect the environment and make sure that low-income families and people of color, who often are hurt the most by environmental problems, benefit from the solutions. He has good ideas and expertise on crime-prevention ("Operation Ceasefire" has been effective in other cities -- he wants to bring it to Oakland). He was a PTA President. And his spouse (Marisa Raya) is a smart urban planner. Full disclosure: Richard sits on the Board of TransForm, the organization where I've worked for 14 years. He brings a great combination of that green eyeshade budget-watching mentality as well as sound analysis and a great heart for the political decisions.

#2 Amy Lemley: Amy is another smart candidate, the only woman in the race (what's up with that!), and has a very strong background on youth and schools. She started First Place for Youth, a nonprofit that finds affordable housing for youth out of foster care. She brings a keen analytical eye to a wide variety of policy issues and she's got strong training in policy analysis. Like Richard, she's got a smart spouse (Justin Horner), Brunner's former chief of staff and a savvy environmental advocate. Full disclosure: I have lots of friends and colleagues who are backing Amy.

#3 Dan Kalb: yet another really smart candidate (3 for 3!). Dan is an experienced public interest and environmental advocate, a policy analyst, community service volunteer, and a progressive reformer. Most of his professional experience is on environmental issues (Union of Concerned Scientists, Sierra Club), and a lot of that was at the state level. But he also has experience bringing those concerns down to the local level, and he wants to make Oakland a hub for clean tech. Full disclosure: I have served on the Board of the League of Conservation Voters of the East Bay for the past few years (Dan stepped down when he began his run for this seat), and I've known him as a committed environmentalist through that.

If you want more info, here's a few other resources:

• East Bay Express article (of course it simplifies some of the candidates, but whaddya expect!).
• District 1 City Council candidates take questions from Oakland residents -- short blurbs from all 7 candidates' responses
• Okay Contra Costa Times article (not as much info as East Bay Express)

Yes on 39: Close Out-of-State Corporate Tax Loophole

This one is complicated but definitely worth support.

First, it does one thing that is absolutely positive: it closes a loophole that costs California $1 billion/year from out-of-state corporations. There's no question that loophole should be closed -- the loophole serves no public policy purpose, it just costs us money. The loophole got into the 2009 budget deal and it allows out-of-state corporations to choose between two different ways of calculating what taxes they owe the state. Crazily, they can game the system by switching back and forth each year. The LAO estimates that costs us $1 billion per year. So half of this measure is completely great. And it appears to be something that needs to go through the initiative process: there have been several attempts to fix this in the Legislature, but they haven't been able to get past the 2/3 requirement (arrgh!).

On the spending side, it is mostly good. For the first five years, Prop 39 would put about half the money towards the clean energy projects. The other half, and all the money beyond the first five years, goes towards the state's General Fund (which desperately needs the money -- see Prop 30). I like clean energy, but I'm not thrilled by ballot-box budgeting. That is why I greatly appreciate that Prop 39 only puts that clean energy spending in place for 5 years.

Close a stupid loophole, use half the money for probably-good stuff (clean energy) and the other half for definitely-good (General Fund), and don't tie our hands with permanent spending requirements in the future. Yes on 39.

If you want details, see the California Choices website on Prop 39, including their in-depth info.
If you want super-gory details, see the California Budget Project's brief on Prop 39.
And see the Yes on 39 website for campaign info.

Yes on 37: Support our Right to Know What We Eat

When I finally sat down to read the facts, this is a pretty easy one. Prop 37 simply requires that if food is made from plants or animals which have had their genetic material altered, they must be labelled as "Genetically Engineered." The measure would also prohibit marketing genetically engineered food as "natural". That seems pretty simple. It works in dozens of other countries around the world. It doesn't ban any sales of any foods. It doesn't increase costs (ok, ok, Kellogg's probably has to revise their cereal boxes, but I'm not too worried about that). Right to know is an American value.

This is one where I've really seen how much influence advertising can have. As I've watched the baseball playoffs over the past few weeks, I've seen hundreds of the ads engineered by Monsanto and the other agri-businesses who seem to be afraid to let the public know what's in their food. And the ads were effective -- they got me to question my support. But now that I actually read the measure and some of the analyses, I'm voting Yes on 37. I particularly appreciate that the initiative has a rational approach to how it should be implemented: it puts the CA Department of Public Health in charge of regulating the labeling requirements.

If you're wondering -- as I was -- about the no campaigns claims about exemptions, then you might find it useful to read this letter to the editor in the Napa Valley Register or a portion of this LA Times article about the impact of the opponents' advertising. Basically, the exemptions are there to keep Prop 37 focused on a single-subject and are in line with how other countries implement their labeling requirements.

For more info, check out the non-partisan California Choices website: pro/con, in-depth info.
You can also find info at the Yes on 37 campaign website.

Yes on 40: Approve Redistricting by Citizens Commission

This is an easy one. We approved Proposition 11 in 2008 to reform how California does redistricting. The independent Citizens Redistricting Commission did their difficult work and set new districts. Part of the Republican Party has been trying to challenge a few of the State Senate districts. They were trying to use this initiative to influence the CA Supreme Court's hearing of their case; they failed. They've since decided to stop their campaign to oppose the districts Prop 40, but we still have to vote for it because they qualified it for the ballot.

Vote YES on 40 to retain the new State Senate districts that were put in place by the Citizens Redistricting Commission.If you're still confused, here's the League of Women Voters' summary.

No on 38: Billionaire #2 with inadequate education funding

Billionaire iniative #2. This one is from Molly Munger, whose good intentions are trying to save funding for California's schools. Prop 38 would increase income taxes across the board (more on higher-income, less on lower-income, but still raises across the board) and use all the funding for K-12 education. Nothing for community colleges or universities, no help for the rest of the state budget. That's ballot-box budgeting (bad), but it is for schools (good). In another year, I might be voting for this.

But if Prop 38 passes and gets more votes than Prop 30, its provisions would go into effect and Prop 30's would not. That means that we'd still have the huge potential cuts to everything besides K-12 education. Sorry, but I think community colleges and mental health services and all the other functions of state government are also important.