Dusting off the old blog as a go-to spot for anyone interested in what I have to say about the upcoming midterm elections. Though this is specific to California, Alameda County, Oakland District 4 - you may find some useful tidbits of information if you don't meet this hyper-specific residential requirement.
I'm just pulling all of this from my facebook posts, which I suspect have been algo'd out of a lot of peoples' feeds - although maybe slightly easier to sift their way to since Ukraine bombed a Russian data center known to be farming all those god damned bots.
Now then, I'll start chronologically, with my first post last Thursday:
All right folks, it's election time! I got the notification that the ballots are about to arrive in the mail so I'll start local - with the D4 School Board Election since that's our district:
If Yogi Berra were alive today and had to sit through one of those nine hour school board meetings for OUSD, he’d have this to say about incumbent D4 Director Mike Hutchinson:
“MIke is only happy when he’s angry.”
Kathryn Camp is endorsed by all the proponents of the old, pro-charter (also known as trojan horse for privatization, or the artist-formerly-known-as-vouchers) agenda that, once upon a time, Mike galvanized the rest of us against with his vitriolic attacks on the public commenter side of the podium in the period leading up to the 2019 Teachers’ Strike. Oh how good it seemed to feel back then to hear him rant. A little later Mike finally got elected to the board, first for D5, and then for D4 after the districts were redrawn, and during his brief time as Board President seemed even more miserable trying to be “for” something before he settled back into the old Groucho Marx song, “Whatever it is, I’m against it.” The only thing MIke is really for is himself.
Long story short: leave both Mike Hutchinson AND Kathryn Camp off the ranked choice ballot entirely. Sylvia Pfeiffer Williams seems to have the humility and temperament that is needed in 2026. Vote for Sylvia in the #1 slot and leave the other choices blank. Or you can always write in Yogi Berra and Groucho Marx.
Today’s election topic - all those judges.
Got my ballot, voted, and dropped it off at the nearest official dropbox. For those of you with mail in ballots - don’t send it back in the mail if you can avoid it, unless you want your signed ballot in the hands of a department being run by a Trumpanzee. Don’t forget to sign the back of the envelope and then print out your name and residential address on the lines indicated below that.
Now then, today I want to talk judicial candidates. They’re all yes/no votes. Spoiler alert - I voted yes for all of them, after looking them up, one by one, and not finding any controversies. I didn’t dig too deep, admittedly.
For you lefties - they were all appointed by a Democratic Governor for their current job, the longest serving one by Gray Davis. A small handful of them were appointed by Schwarzenegger in previous jobs, but then appointed by Jerry Brown or Gavin Newsom for their current role.
All of these ballot choices for the judiciary are what’s called Retention Elections (see here: https://ballotpedia.org/California_judicial_elections). These are all appointed incumbent judges who served out a remaining term previously vacated who are now up for a yes-no vote to extend them for another term. In a weird way, it’s
kind of like a recall. But not really. If the noes win, then the position becomes vacant, and in California the Governor would then appoint a replacement.
For you righties - voting no on anyone is likely an exercise in futility. Be careful what you wish for. Hoping Steve Hilton, the long shot Republican nominee for Governor on this very ballot, wins and is then in office when it comes time to nominate his own candidate for Judge is your only hope. A hail mary, you might say. Unless you’re friends with Elon Musk and know something we don’t.
Point being, it’s extremely rare for a retention election to have a majority of “no” votes. Governors don’t just appoint judges from the wilds, it’s a fairly long and drawn out process : https://ballotpedia.org/California_intermediate_appellate...
And - well, most of us don’t pay that close attention to all of these down ballot, nonpartisan races.
So unless you have time to do a super deep dive and look at caseloads - or if the term of any of these candidates exceeds the length of time you feel that a term limit should be applied to all judges at all levels on principle, your yes vote is a safe bet here.
Speaking of term limits - after long having been opposed to them generally in the legislative and judicial branches, I am now leaning on 18 years for the US Supreme Court and an age limit of 80, but that’s because the Supreme Court is the final law of the land and super highly partisan nowadays due to an enormous amount of wedge issues that haven’t been passed as amendments to the constitution and so on. And I think it’s also time we consider that for the US Senate as well. Sens Thurmond, Feinstein, McConnell and Grassley are strong reasons why. Oh, and let’s not forget about Susan Collins, who said in 1996 that she’d not run for more than two terms.
I don’t feel as strongly about this at the state level. On this ballot, the guy appointed by Gray Davis was appointed in 2001. That’s 25 years. Justice Clarence Thomas, by contrast, has been on the Supreme Court for nearly 35 and counting.
With that, I believe it is safe to vote yes to retain all of these candidates if you are a voter in the East Bay. I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this. I’ll have to take it on advisement for the next election, however, since I just turned in my ballot.
Today’s election topic: I’m gonna try and make this one short and sweet. Any proposition on the ballot that has the endorsement of the Howard Jarvis Tax Cabal or whatever Orwellian term they call themselves these days - vote the opposite.
That should check off a good chunk of them for ya. Unless you liked the passage of Proposition 13 and what it did for the funding of education among other things in this state. That passed in 1978. Howard Jarvis died before he could see the full devastation of that proposition, though it was already bad enough when he did in 1986. I’ll leave it to others in the comments should they care to elaborate. We’re busy today - getting things ready for a big ass tailgate for the Oakland Roots game - the final one in the Oakland coliseum, and indeed probably the last sporting event of any kind at the coliseum. I’ll have more to say on specific propositions on Monday.
Before I go, let me pick off some more low hanging fruit for ya: Any candidates on the ballot where it’s a Democrat v Republican - do us all a favor and vote for the Democrat. And vote for Barbara Lee for mayor and leave the rest blank.
I’ll have more to say on the non partisan candidates and Dem v Dem races early next week as well. I hope to have all of my thoughts on this stuff done and dusted so that y’all can put your ballots in the nearest drop box before Friday of next week. If, that is, you are sitting on the edge of your seats just chomping at the bit to read what I have to say next.
All for now. Go Roots! Go Valkyries! Go Brewers!
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October 12 at 3:55pm
Today's election update: Dem v Dem races.
For those of you voting in Alameda County - look to your County of Alameda Voter Information Guide that you got in the mail before your ballot. If you didn't get one - go here: https://acvote.alamedacountyca.gov/.../vig_nov2026_eng.pdf
For the physical booklet, flip about 12 pages in. For the pdf I linked above, click on page 14. You are looking for the section entitled: "Candidate Party Preference History for the Last 10 Years."
If you're a true blue Dem, look for the candidate who's been registered as a Democrat the whole time. In many cases, the opposing candidates may be "No Party Preference" at various points in time. And there are some who were registered to the opposing party (admittedly, those are mostly Republicans who at one point had registered Democrat). It will be a cold day in hell before I vote Republican, especially with the clowns in charge of today's GOP, so it's a moot point for me.
For example, the Board of Equalization Member District 2 has Sally Lieber, who's been a registered Democrat the whole time. And then there's John Pimentel, who's alternated back and forth between Democratic and No Party Preference multiple times. I voted for Sally Lieber for that reason.
For State Assembly Member District 18, there's Mia Bonta, Democratic for the last 10 years, v. Andre Sanford - Out of State 2016-2018, then Democratic, then No Party Preference in 2024. Then Democratic 2025-2026. I'm voting for Mia.
For insurance commissioner, this won't work though. It's a choice between Jane Kim (former SF Supervisor) and Ben Allen, Santa Monica based State Senator for District 24 whose term ends this year. Both have been registered as Democrats for the last 10 years. You're gonna have to dig deeper here. Find some YouTube video interviews with both candidates. Ben seems to be positioned more as a moderate and to work with the existing confines of the industry based on his answers - and is therefore, in my opinion, more conservative. Jane Kim proposes what's she's calling a publicly funded option called "disaster insurance for all." Seems like a "public option" for Obamacare, but for homeowners.
For that reason, I think the insurance industry here in California needs a bit of a shakeup. Other than that, I'll often go for the NorCal Candidate v SoCal when all other differences are negligible. For these reasons, I'm voting for Jane Kim.
Next up - all of those goddamn propositions. I propose one: get rid of the proposition system. This is what we should be electing people in the Assembly and State Senate to do. All this crap, honestly, discourages voters - especially young voters. But we will go through this tomorrow.
Last election post. This is the grand finale (which is to say hella wordy and extra long). Strap in as I talk about the propositions.
NO on:
39 - Fuuuuuuuuck NO! And Fuck Donald Trump, vexatious litigant in chief who would make the voting process subject to vexatious litigation. Creating chaos has been his MO, and the shadow he has cast over all of us for 11 years, and over New York City for much, much longer. We shouldn’t be voting for things that makes voting harder. Prop 39 would certainly do that. It’s part of a larger campaign to get people to not trust free and fair elections in the first place - that only “the right people” should vote. There are plenty of safeguards already in place in our elections. DJT is working hard in other ways to make elections less safe.
41 - Poison pill 1 if Prop 40 (One time Billionaire tax) wins
42 - Poison pill 2 if Prop 40 wins
If you vote for Prop 40 and then also vote for 41 and 42 - well, that's like taking amphetamines and barbiturates at the same time. One to get high, and one to come down. And why the hell would you want to do that?
43 - A legislative constitutional amendment to limit voters’ ability to raise revenues for local government services by requiring 2/3rds majority rather than simple majority? You got me fucked up. NO.
44 - The details of what defines "program services" is the problem here. A ballot measure to restrict any enterprise, much less a health clinic, should probably not be 90% when the definition of what those "program services" are this much up for debate.
45 - I voted no, despite our personal experience with red tape getting a permit approved to improve our own property by adding an additional bedroom to our house. We ended up abandoning the project. But when it comes to changes to the California Environmental Quality Act, I’m not sure those should be put in the hands of a ballot measure. My no vote was one of caution. I might have been persuaded to change to a yes vote though, after having talked it through more with my family - AFTER I already turned in my ballot. Oops.
Have I mentioned that there are too many fucking propositions and ballot measures? We need to seriously reform this process. We have the state assembly members and state senators whom we already vote for and trust to do the job and read the legalese already. And they’re term limited. How many limits do we really want here?
That said, the rest of the propositions I voted yes for. These are...
Yes on:
40 - I support the billionaire tax. We need to push back against the movement in this country to defund our tax base by lowering and lowering taxes more and more on the wealthy, who don’t really need it. Prop 40 is a tentative start in that direction. But it’s still a start. Most of the asshole billionaires against this prop have already left the state, honestly. Gavin's voting No because he's gonna run for president. And I guess he'll probably need their campaign contributions. Or something.
3 - Our public schools need all the help they can get. If you want to find someone to blame, blame Howard Jarvis, though he’s dead (see my earlier post). Spoiler alert: he was the co-author of Prop 13 in 1978. Google it.
4 - I didn’t know there was a prohibition against public funding of election campaigns in the first place. We should repeal that. More importantly, there needs to be a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision, which equated money with free speech and opened the floodgates for dark money campaign contributions which, of course, favors the party that favors the wealthy, which favors oligarchy and - well, you know the rest. This yes vote is a tiny droplet in a very large bucket that will probably take decades if not centuries, or ever, to fill, to tip the balance in favor of campaign finance reform in this country at this point in time in our arc of History. The country might need to split up. It's that bad.
5 - Recall election change - schedule a separate election for a replacement candidate. For every recall election that happened to end up being the right call (Sheng Thao - whose recall I voted against in my distaste for the proliferation of recall elections in the first place, before we all knew she was going to be indicted by the FBI for bribery and corruption), we have the Gray Davis debacle (why was he recalled again?) who brought us Arnold Schwarzenegger among a ballot flooded with unserious candidates like Gary Coleman, may he rest in peace.
In cybersecurity, there is a phrase called “practice the pause.” Bad actors are more likely to get you to click on something if they can successfully create a false sense of urgency for you to click on that thing NOW. Having a recall election that simultaneously forces you to vote in someone else with literally no time to properly vet the list of candidates that would replace said candidate, is not ideal. Oakland got lucky because Barbara Lee decided to run, but it very well could have been some other person with name recognition, and someone notorious, not to be celebrated like, say, one of the Kardashians. Luckily they don't live in Oakland.
EE - Strong Mayor. Read and decide https://oaklandside.org/2026/10/01/measure-ee-oakland-strong-mayor-city-charter-reforms/�I believe the Mayor, not a city council appointed city administrator, should have the ability to pick department heads and have veto power over city council decisions. The council can still veto under this plan. It seems to me that today’s structure for Oakland is confusing in terms of who owns what. There needs to be more of a separation of power between the executive and legislative, with checks and balances. While it is true that there will not always be a Barbara Lee as Mayor and many more potential Sheng Thaos or Libby Schaafs, the city can’t really move forward effectively with the way things are now.
FF - Large banks, hedge funds, and mega-investors will now have to pay the city’s standard real estate transfer tax when they foreclose on commercial properties or large multi-family buildings. Everyday homeowners, community banks (under $10 billion in assets), and buyers who convert foreclosed offices into affordable housing or homeless shelters are the ones that will remain exempt from this tax.
RTM - We need to make sure public transit doesn’t go under after what happened in the pandemic. The taxpayers associations may have a point about how these agencies have been managed, but we don’t have time to quibble when they could go away thanks to the impacts of a once in a century pandemic and its devastating impacts.
There's another abbreviation for RTM - or as I like to use, RTFM: Read the fucking manual. That is certainly the case for this election. I hope my posts helped in some small way.