Assessing East Bay DSA’s electoral work
EBDSA-endorsed Caroll Fife was reelected to the Oakland City Council.
Alongside dozens of other chapters across the country, East Bay DSA engages in electoral campaigns as a means of effecting political change, building coalitions with aligned organizations and labor unions, and engaging and recruiting members as we work to grow our membership, capacity, and influence. In total, we endorsed ten candidates running in seven elections (four candidates were part of a slate for the same office) this cycle, with five emerging victorious. The races we endorsed in ranged from state legislature to school board and spanned several cities in the East Bay.
Our campaigns
At our June convention, members chose Jovanka Beckles’s campaign for State Senate as one of the chapter’s priority campaigns. This resulted in the campaign’s work being housed primarily outside of but still working closely with the Electoral Committee. With California’s state senate districts being larger than congressional districts, averaging a million residents per district, this was by far the most difficult electoral challenge the chapter has taken on. Facing a well-funded opponent with widespread political and labor support, Beckles lost, receiving 43% of the vote in the two-way general election, but the chapter’s efforts in the campaign were nevertheless impactful, particularly in helping Beckles progress to the general election, and were successful in activating and bringing in new organizers.
At the local level, we endorsed candidates in Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond. Most of our members live in Oakland and Berkeley; the two cities are home to the highest concentrations of DSA members in the state and therefore benefit the most from volunteer capacity. All three cities have existing grassroots progressive local political infrastructure, but Berkeley’s “moderate” wing has taken control in recent years, and conservative forces and moneyed interests mounted a powerful attempt to wrest back control of Oakland and Richmond from their respective progressive majorities as well.
In Oakland, we endorsed Sasha Ritzie-Hernandez for Oakland School Board District 5 and Carroll Fife for Oakland City Council District 3. Ritzie-Hernandez is an active chapter member who ran for the same seat in a special election last year, being endorsed by the teachers’ union, the Oakland Education Association, in both campaigns. Unfortunately, while the chapter played a pivotal role in her 2023 campaign, our greater number of endorsements this year led to chapter capacity being spread thinner. She ultimately came up short, receiving 46% of the vote in a two-way race against a charter-backed opponent, though this was an improvement from her performance in 2023, when the district had a slightly more conservative profile.
Fife a winner
Fife, an incumbent councilmember whom the chapter endorsed in her 2020 victory, approached and was endorsed by the chapter late in the cycle, so we were not able to play a meaningful role in her campaign, but we nevertheless supported her because she has been a reliable ally and faced unprecedented attacks from the right, being one of the four elected officials targeted as “priorities” this cycle by the conservative Empower Oakland group.
Despite being outspent and heavily targeted, Fife emerged victorious, winning with a comfortable 58% of the vote after ranked-choice voting (and nearly winning outright in a six-candidate field before ranked-choice). Her win can be attributed in large part to the deep canvassing carried out both during and outside of election season by the Care 4 Community organization that came out of Fife’s 2020 campaign, a model DSA should certainly take lessons from, as well as her strong backing from labor unions.
RPA majority in Richmond
Richmond is the only city in the United States where a majority of city councilmembers are DSA members and endorsees. This is thanks to the groundbreaking work of the Richmond Progressive Alliance, a local party-like organization founded 20 years ago that develops and runs candidates and supports them while in office, a model DSA should strive to emulate. While local elections are non-partisan, RPA includes Democrats, members of other parties, and independents; its first elected official, Gayle McLaughlin, was elected mayor in 2006 while a member of the Green Party, though she has since become an independent (see interview with McLaughlin by Steve Early in this issue of California Red). RPA has successfully taken on powerful interests, in particular Chevron, which operates a refinery in Richmond, is the city’s largest employer, and has spent millions of dollars in its attempts to defeat RPA candidates, including $3 million in 2014 alone. While East Bay DSA does not have a large membership base in Richmond, we are allied with RPA, support their candidates, and seek to develop a stronger relationship with them and greater involvement in Richmond politics.
We endorsed two RPA candidates this cycle, both of whom were incumbents we endorsed in 2020: Melvin Willis and Claudia Jimenez; a third RPA candidate, Sue Wilson, who was running to succeed the retiring McLaughlin, did not seek our endorsement due to logistical issues. Jimenez won with a whopping 61% of the vote, but Willis lost with 40% to his opponent’s 49%. We still have more to learn about the reasons behind this loss, but we certainly must grow in Richmond in order to play a more impactful role and help secure victories in future elections. Nevertheless, with Wilson’s victory, RPA maintains a majority on the Richmond City Council, including the mayor’s office, held by Eduardo Martinez, whom we endorsed in 2022.
A unique Rent Board in Berkeley
Only one other elected body in the country also has a DSA majority: the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board, a unique body that has produced unique opportunities for the left, the tenant movement, and DSA. Berkeley’s is one of only two elected rent boards in the US, alongside Santa Monica’s. For decades, a coalition of progressive organizations, tenant groups, and labor unions has come together every two years for the Berkeley Tenant Convention, a primary-like nominating process in which a progressive, pro-tenant slate is democratically determined ahead of the general election. In recent years, DSA has joined and contributed to this process.
This year’s slate of four candidates entirely comprised DSA members, two of whom are active members, and we supported their campaigns alongside City Council candidate Jenny Guarino. The slate also ran alongside a ballot measure, the Tenant Protection and Right to Organize Act, which would strengthen protections for Berkeley renters and make it easier to form tenant unions, for which DSA members gathered signatures to place on the ballot. Three out of four slate members were victorious; the fourth seat was taken by an incumbent who was not renominated at the Tenant Convention but chose to run anyway in violation of its rules. We hope to work with the elected and existing Rent Board Commissioners to continue to protect tenants’ rights in Berkeley.
Acceptable results
On the whole, the results of East Bay DSA’s endorsed races are acceptable. Our candidates mostly won where they were favored and lost where they were underdogs. Looking beneath the surface, our experiences this cycle raise strategic questions we should ponder over the coming year. There is clearly an abundance of left-wing candidates for office in the East Bay who want our endorsement, outpacing our chapter’s current capacity for electoral campaigns. The chapter’s prioritization of one race above all others was successful in engaging members but also hurt our capacity to support local candidates where we could have been more impactful.
As we plan for the 2026 cycle, look at reworking our endorsement structure, and recruit more members into DSA and the chapter’s Electoral Committee, we must tackle questions like these and build a stronger organization and electoral program that can achieve even greater successes.