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<h1 itemprop="name headline">Crude But Not Effective</h1>
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<h2><em>Steve Early</em></h2>
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<div class="capdate" itemprop="datePublished">Published 6
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<p>Big oil’s “air war” fails to sink Richmond progressives</p>
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<p><strong>Richmond, California, United States. </strong>Election
day, 2014, was not ending well for Nat Bates, a mayoral candidate
in this largely non-white city of 100,000 long dominated by
Chevron. The small crowd of supporters gathered in his storefront
campaign headquarters on Macdonald Avenue was beginning to look
rather glum. The big box cake, with white icing and lettering
proclaiming Bates to be "Our Mayor," remained unwrapped.</p>
<p>The 83-year old African-American Democrat, who has been Big Oil’s
best friend on the city council, had every reason to expect early
returns much better than the numbers his campaign manager was
posting on the wall by 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening. </p>
<p>For many weeks, Richmond voters have been bombarded with
full-color brochures touting Bates’ four decades of business
friendly leadership. His final mailer listed more than fifty local
ministers as campaign supporters. They were joined by U.S. Senator
Dianne Feinstein, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Contra
Costa County Building Trades leaders, Richmond police and
firefighters’ unions, and the Chamber of Commerce.</p>
<p>Nat Bates gazed down on the citizenry from countless billboards,
like a ubiquitous successor to “Big Brother” in George Orwell’s
dystopian novel, <em>1984</em>. His ads popped up on the
inter-net, on local TV and radio stations; large numbers of
Richmond voters got YouTube videos featuring his homilies. On
election day, the Bates campaign—or Moving Forward, Chevron’s
PAC-- deployed paid canvassers and sign-holders, plus free rides
to the polls. An impressive number of Richmond residents sported
“Bates for Mayor” signs on their lawn.</p>
<p>Most helpful of all, Moving Forward spent much of its $3.1
million budget attacking candidates fielded by the 10-year old
Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA). (For details on Big Oil’s
carpet-bombing of the electorate with green-and red-baiting
mailers, see <a
href="http://www.beyondchron.org/chevron-sounds-alarm-east-bay-anarchism/">http://www.beyondchron.org/chevron-sounds-alarm-east-bay-anarchism/</a>) Banding
together as “Team Richmond,” termed-out Mayor Gayle McLaughlin,
Vice-Mayor Jovanka Beckles, and Planning Commissioner Eduardo
Martinez urged voters to create a stronger progressive majority in
city government by electing their slate, Tom Butt for mayor, and
Jael Myrick to a fourth open council seat. RPA refuses to accept
any donations from business, large or small. While frequently
allied with RPA members on key council issues, like making
Chevron’s Richmond refinery safer, Butt and Myrick have yet to
take that pledge.</p>
<p><strong>A Richmond Rattlesnake</strong></p>
<p>The scale of Chevron's own spending--to defeat low-budget
municipal candidates--was so jaw-dropping that it drew national
media attention. From Bay Area newspapers and <em>The L.A. Times</em> to
Bill Moyers and Rachel Maddow and a visiting U.S. Senator from
Vermont, Bernie Sanders, everyone agreed that Richmond was ground
zero for corporate-funded negative campaigning in the
post-Citizens United era. Maddow, among others, feared that Big
Oil’s unrestricted spending here would be “crude but effective.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as they have done in previous election cycles, friends
of Nat Bates in the Black American Political Action Committee
(BAPAC), the Richmond Business PAC, and a group called Black Men
and Women (BMW) joined the hit-piece pile-on, in more low profile
fashion. One of their mailers derided the RPA slate, Butt, and
Myrick as the “Richmond Plantation Alliance”—even though 3 of the
5 candidates so described are black and/or Latino. BAPAC urged
voters to elect the "independent thinkers" financed by Chevron
instead.</p>
<p>This same pro-Bates coalition sent out a brochure, with a coiled
and hissing snake on the cover; it warned Richmond voters to
“Beware of this Arkansas Rattlesnake” (aka the Arkansas-born
Butt). Pre-election website postings by BAPAC strongly implied
that Butt, a local architect and Vietnam veteran, was a white
racist who cares little about poor people and only looks out for
himself and "his elitist, wealthy friends"</p>
<p>By October 30, Butt’s mainly small donors had raised about
$60,000 for him. Even with an additional $25,000 in local public
matching funds, his total campaign spending will be one-thirtieth
of what Chevron spent on Bates & Co. Based on Richmond’s
projected overall turn-out, Chevron’s failed investment in
re-taking city hall works out to about $72 per voter. That’s a
drop in the bucket for a global company with $21 billion in
profits last year. And when it comes to “wealthy, elitist
friends,” I bet that Chevron CEO John Watson, a Richmond native
but current resident of San Ramon, has many more than Tom
Butt--just based on Watson’s total compensation of $24 million
last year.</p>
<p><strong>A Martyr Like Malcolm?</strong> </p>
<p>By 11 pm on election night, neither Bates nor Corky Booze, Nat’s
city council ally, were pleased with the way things were trending.
They each faced humiliating defeat, by growing margins, in their
respective races with Butt and Myrick. With half of Richmond’s
precincts reporting, other council candidates backed by Big Oil or
real estate interest groups were also losing to “Team Richmond.”
As the mounting vote totals for RPA members McLaughlin, Beckles,
and Martinez were announced, there were audible groans, gasps of
dismay, or cries of “Oh God.”</p>
<p>A man in a football jersey insisted that “it’s just half
time--we’re going to come on back in the third quarter.” With his
friend Nat slumped wearily in a chair a few feet away, looking
deflated in the harsh florescent lighting of the storefront, Booze
didn’t foresee any second half rally by Team Bates. Instead, Corky
began spin-doctoring about the RPA’s unexpected success. “I truly
believe that the amount of money Chevron spent made them
beneficiaries of a sympathy vote, “ the Richmond junkyard owner
told me. “Chevron did not play this game right. When you attack
people, they get a sympathy vote.”</p>
<p>Coming from someone much criticized for his own disruptive
bullying, city council filibustering, homophonic hectoring, and
general hostility toward female colleagues, this revelation led to
a series of other self-pitying reflections. “They made me the bad
guy—this big black man attacking the little white lady,” Corky
complained. “Gayle [McLaughlin] acts like the little old lady next
door no matter how mean she is.”</p>
<p>Booze did credit the RPA with a strong ground campaign, if one
over-reliant on volunteers he claimed were imported from Berkeley
and Oakland. “The progressive group started campaigning a year and
a half ago,” he noted. “The RPA was very serious…they played very
dirty with me and Nat. They had eight or nine people at every
polling place, handing out slate cards, with a special emphasis on
people who couldn’t speak English.” According to Corky, the net
result is that Richmond “has turned into Berkeley 100%.”</p>
<p>As the gloom deepened at Bates headquarters, Corky ratcheted up
his martyrdom routine. “There’s no place for a guy like me because
I’m too outspoken,” he lamented. “You won’t know what I’ve done
for this city until I’m gone…I kind of feel like Malcolm X. No one
will realize what I’ve done until I’m killed off.”</p>
<p>Not long afterwards, Bates himself gave a slightly more graceful
concession speech. He nevertheless managed to imply that, because
of low African-American voter turnout on Tuesday, his own
community had let him down. In the meantime, Booze was expressing
his personal sympathy for Bates, who will now be serving out the
remainder of his four-year council term as a lone voice for Big
Oil. “I feel sorry for Nat. This is his last go-round and he is
going to be miserable. They’re going to destroy him and I don’t
think he deserves that. Just remember, Tom Butt is a very
vindictive guy.”</p>
<p><strong>A Bash in The Baltic</strong></p>
<p>At Butt’s post-election bash, there was little speechifying but
the mood was much more celebratory. The news there was, of course,
good, not bad. About 1:30 in the morning, available totals showed
Butt winning with 51% of 11,000 ballots counted. Bates was running
second with 35%. And, a third mayoral candidate, Uche Justin
Uwahemu got nearly 13%--although he did not tip the election to
Butt by “dividing the black vote”--as Bates campaign critics of
Black Women Organized for Political Action claimed after BWOPA
endorsed the lawyer, management consultant, and immigrant from
Nigeria, rather than Nat.</p>
<p>As BWOPA president Kathleen Sullivan told me earlier in the day,
at a polling place where she was stumping for Uwahemu, “I’m so
tired of people trying to run the race card all the time. Folks in
Richmond just want something different.” (For final totals in this
and other Richmond races, see: <a href="http://www.cocovote.us/">www.cocovote.us</a>)</p>
<p>Tom Butt’s victory party was held in the Point Richmond section
of the city, which is the new mayor’s home turf. There under the
low ceilings of a century old tavern known as The Baltic, the
usually laconic Butt was having the last laugh—and dance—with the
help of a catchy tune concocted by several musical friends.
Entitled “The Arkansas Rattlesnake,” this campaign song cleverly
embraced BAPAC’s negative branding, added a driving snare drum
beat, and vocals punctuated by exuberant “hee-haws.”</p>
<p>The Butt campaign’s hillbilly ditty lampoons Bates for having “so
much oil on him, he can get through every doorway in town.” As
friends, neighbors, and volunteers for Butt began to drift out
after midnight, the song’s musical refrain was still booming
throughout the dimly-lit bar:</p>
<p> </p>
<p> “<em><strong>I am ‘The Arkansas Rattlesnake,’ living
in your town.</strong></em></p>
<p> <em><strong>I’m just trying to shop Chevron from
burning the whole place down.</strong></em></p>
<p> </p>
<p style="margin-left:1.27cm;"><em><strong>I am ‘The Arkansas
Rattlesnake,’ doing the best I can, trying to help the folks
in Richmond get over that Nate Bates man.</strong></em></p>
<p style="margin-left:1.27cm;"> </p>
<p style="margin-left:1.27cm;"><em><strong>I am ‘The Arkansas
Rattlesnake,’ crawling on the ground cause those folks from
Chevron are trying to put me down.</strong></em></p>
<p style="margin-left:1.27cm;"> </p>
<p style="margin-left:1.27cm;"><em><strong>I know the good folks of
our city won’t let that deal go down.</strong></em></p>
<p style="margin-left:1.27cm;"><em><strong>You got ‘The Arkansas
Rattlesnake,’ you got the best around!</strong></em><em>”</em></p>
<p style="margin-left:1.27cm;"> </p>
<p>In an email message to supporters on Wednesday, Butt professed to
be “genuinely surprised” at his victory, noting that he polled
nearly 2,000 votes behind Bates when both ran for city council two
years ago—and two RPA-backed candidates were defeated. He credited
this year’s success to a collaborative effort with the RPA that
turned out “voters turned off by Chevron, impressed with the
remarkable progress Richmond has made in recent years, and tired
of City Council meeting disruptions” aimed at discrediting that
body’s now expanded progressive majority.</p>
<p><em>(Steve Early is a member of the Richmond Progressive Alliance
and a supporter of Tom Butt for mayor of Richmond. He is the
author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches From A Movement in
Distress and other books. Early is currently working on a book
about politics and public policy controversies in Richmond. He
can be reached at <a href="mailto:Lsuport@aol.com">Lsuport@aol.com</a>)</em></p>
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