Almost final City Council questionnaire

So a couple of weeks ago I asked folks to help crowdsource a questionnaire for City Council candidate. Ooh, speaking of City Council candidates, yesterday I received some info that one of the City Council candidates might be out of the running:

Word is that Beverly Johnson may be dropping out of #Alameda City Council race

— Lauren Do (@laurendo) August 27, 2012

That’s right, it’s not official official yet (aka there have been no press releases out of the campaign yet) but it appears that — from the rumors around town — that Beverly Johnson is dropping out of the race.   So, if true, it could be that she simply realized that she was done with the City Council.   Early rumors had reported that she was no longer interested in serving.   But now with the wrench thrown in with her appointment to the Office of Administrative Law, perhaps it has something to do with that.  I mean, the commute would be pretty hellacious.

Anyway, back to the crowdsourced questions.

Finding Memo

Josh Harkinson from Mother Jones magazine is my new hero for the moment.   If the name sounds vaguely familiar, he is the journalist for Mother Jones that wrote the article about environmentalists and density, but used Alameda Point as sort of the poster child for the disconnect between liberal environmental groups and their desire to rein in sprawl, but yet fight in fill higher density projects as well.

The article is now fully on-line in all it’s cut and pastable glory, but the neat thing is that Josh Harkinson has anticipated that his article might cause a bit of a deluge of angry comments and so has written this blog post in advance of the virtual finger wagging. He mentions that critics (I bet he got a lot of pissy emails) will probably contend that he didn’t drill down deep enough into the specifics of Measure B to truly see its flaws, but he does go into more detail on his blog post. Excerpt:

In fill ‘er up

At the last City Council meeting toward the end of the meeting when the City Council gets its requisite SunCal/Alameda Point updates, Mayor Beverly Johnson goes on this huge tear about not understanding why SunCal has yet to put out a “transportation plan” yet and how she doesn’t understand how a development can be “transit oriented” if  there is no transportation plan.

Sigh.

That is literally what I did when she said that.

These are the times when I really, really, really wish that the City Council had access to Google on the dais.

Bored of boards?

I just realized that today is April Fool’s day, I could come up with a satire post, but have decided not to.   Sorry!

While folks seem to be relatively meh about the race for Alice Lai-Bitker’s vacated Board of Supervisor seat I have been trying to find out as much information as possible.    If folks got a chance to watch the Hayward Democratic Club’s endorsement meeting you will have noticed that there is not just two candidates: Wilma Chan and Beverly Johnson, but three.   Harold Lowe rounds out the list of contenders.

Here’s the thing, he’s not going to win, but you know what, if he’s a great speaker and has some fairly good ideas.   This is a great way for him to get some easy name recognition even if he doesn’t make a huge impact on the final vote.   I was really impressed by his closing statement he made to that club.

But other than Harold Lowe’s strong showing, this struck me about Beverly Johnson’s closing statements:

Flip flops: not just beachwear

For those still following along with the Alameda County Board of Supervisors race knows that the candidates are busy making the rounds for their endorsements of various people and groups that can provide a little extra push.    I wrote about the little oopsie moment in Beverly Johnson’s campaigning that was reported by the East Bay Citizen, but he has given more juicy details on how the the Tony Santos endorsement error went down:

The Johnson camp had reached out to Santos as early as Feb. 19 to secure his backing over the likes of Wilma Chan or even at time Lena Tam or Shelia Young. Johnson told The Citizen a colleague of Santos informed her of his endorsement just before Tuesday’s event. The next day, Santos responded quizzically to news of his endorsement for Johnson. It actually was something like this: “Whaaaat?!” Johnson said she spoke to Santos Wednesday and apologized for the misunderstanding and still hopes to secure his endorsement soon. For his part, Santos appears conflicted on whom to endorse, but mentioned his work with Johnson on various regional boards as a plus. “I am staying neutral for time being,” said Santos. “I must say I work with Bev on number of agencies, so I do need to stay on her good side. I know them both and like them both, so it is a real dilemma for me.”

It’s ladies night

I don’t follow San Leandro or San Lorenzo politics, so I generally rely on the East Bay Citizen who does a great job covering that region.   But what the East Bay Citizen has been covering thoroughly  is the race for the Board of Supervisors, District 3.

As folks probably know, Alice Lai-Bitker has decided to not run for re-election which means that there was a brief feeding frenzy where folks started throwing their hats into the ring left and right.   But now that the filing period is over and the political calculus has been performed, the race has now been whittled down to two (major) candidates.   There are actually three but the third guy is not as politically “known.”  So the two candidates that are going to collect the lion’s share of the votes are Wilma Chan and Beverly Johnson.