[Peace-discuss] Crude But Not Effective

Fri Nov 7 14:25:37 EST 2014

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  Crude But Not Effective

(archive)

    /Steve Early/

Published 6 November 2014
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Big oil's "air war" fails to sink Richmond progressives

*Richmond, California, United States. *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.

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.

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.

Nat Bates gazed down on the citizenry from countless billboards, like a 
ubiquitous successor to "Big Brother" in George Orwell's dystopian 
novel, /1984/.  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.

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 
http://www.beyondchron.org/chevron-sounds-alarm-east-bay-anarchism/)  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.

*A Richmond Rattlesnake*

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 /The L.A. Times/ 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."

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.

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"

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.

*A Martyr Like Malcolm?*

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."

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."

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."

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%."

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."

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."

*A Bash in The Baltic*

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.

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: www.cocovote.us <http://www.cocovote.us/>)

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."

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:

             "/*I am 'The Arkansas Rattlesnake,' living in your town.*/

/*I'm just trying to shop Chevron from burning the whole place down.*/

/*I am 'The Arkansas Rattlesnake,' doing the best I can, trying to help 
the folks in Richmond get over that Nate Bates man.*/

/*I am 'The Arkansas Rattlesnake,' crawling on the ground cause those 
folks from Chevron are trying to put me down.*/

/*I know the good folks of our city won't let that deal go down.*/

/*You got 'The Arkansas Rattlesnake,' you got the best around!*//"/

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.

/(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 Lsuport at aol.com 
<mailto:Lsuport at aol.com>)/

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