Richmond City Council District 1 candidate Mark Wassberg’s political strategy is simple: He’s just going to speak his piece and let the chips fall where they may.
“Other people will try and satisfy the people,” he said. “They’ll use all this fancy language that’s going in one ear and out the other. Sometimes I think ‘Maybe I should do that’ but I couldn’t. I just have to speak from the heart and let the people know what’s really going on in the city.”
This is his third run for a seat on the council — this time attempting to oust Richmond Progressive Alliance-backed incumbent Melvin Willis in District 1, which represents the Iron Triangle and Belding Woods.
District 1 Richmond City Council candidates
WHO: Mark Wassberg
PLATFORM HIGHLIGHTS: Oust candidates supported by Richmond Progress Alliance, hire more police officers, support big businesses.
WHAT HE SAID: “I just have to speak from the heart and let the people know what’s really going on in the city.”
OTHER D1 CANDIDATES: Read about Wassberg’s opponents: Jamelia Brown and incumbent Melvin Willis.
This is among a series of profiles of the seven candidates running for seats in three Richmond City Council districts. Visit our local elections hub for more stories.
“Telling it like it is” has been a constant theme for Wassberg. A constant fixture at city council meetings, he often sports a “Make America Great Again” hat, a slogan popularized by former Pres. Donald Trump, while using the public comment portion of the meeting to direct tirades using terms many find offensive toward RPA-affiliated council members or other public speakers whose views he doesn’t share.
He now even hosts his own show, “Tell It Like It Is,” on a Comcast station each Sunday at 10 p.m., according to a candidate statement.
The crux of his campaign is that the RPA needs to be ousted from political influence in Richmond if the city is to improve. He calls the group a “Bernie Sanders” government that tries to steal from big businesses such as Chevron, which he says provides residents with good paying jobs.
“The bottom line is that we have to get the RPA out,” he told Richmondside multiple times during an extensive interview at Richmond’s Civic Center.
“I kinda enjoy pissing people off a bit.”
Born in Oakland and raised in San Pablo, Wassberg said after graduating from Richmond High School he spent most of his life working in warehouses around Richmond. He said he eventually spent some time working as a Chevron maintenance mechanic before doing filmmaking during the early-2000s.
A self-professed police scanner chaser, Wassberg said he took hours of crime scene footage while hanging out in his 1966 Chevy truck at Macdonald Avenue and Fourth Street. There, he connected with local Black politicians and religious leaders who were dealing with homelessness and calling for an end to gun violence in the area.
“We had Tent City, the Black-on-Black Crime Summit, the (Richmond) State of Emergency, Operation Richmond in late 2004,” he said. “I said ‘Man, this is happening in my backyard,’ I couldn’t believe it.”
In 2006, Wassberg found himself homeless and was living out of his truck in front of an El Sobrante church, but he said he continued to pursue filmmaking while compiling Richmond crime scene footage. He also worked on Nat Bates and Corky Booze’s city council campaigns.
Once a Democrat, Wassberg said he left the party after what he called an “open border” policy during the Obama Administration.
He was inspired to become active in local politics when that issue came to his front doorstep in 2012 when then-Mayor Gayle McLaughlin de-prioritized driver’s license checkpoints for the Richmond Police Department and limited the department’s interactions with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. He ran for an at-large council seat that year but lost.
“That was not going to fly with me,” he said, adding that he was staunchly opposed to the city creating a municipal ID card for undocumented residents.
He unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2022, losing to Eduardo Martinez and finishing last behind Shawn Dunning and Bates.
If you ask Wassberg, he’ll tell you he knew he was going to lose in 2022. Yet, the outcome doesn’t seem to bother him much as long as he is able to speak his mind.
“I really laid it on Eduardo, man,” he said, chuckling while reminiscing about his campaign. “I kinda enjoy pissing people off a bit.”
He’s been in the thick of controversies due to his public comments at council meetings. He used homophobic language aimed at former council member Jovanka Beckles and her partner, brought signs depicting a Mexican caricature wearing a sombrero as the council debated the Municipal ID program and called Palestinians “terrorists” during a meeting where the council adopted a resolution calling for a Gaza ceasefire in late 2023.
When asked if he thinks that his comments could hurt his ability to be elected or to work with council members he doesn’t agree with, he said he doesn’t care.
“As long as I get the point across, that‘s all that really matters,” he said.
Public safety and big business platform
During an interview with Richmondside, Wassberg questioned a number of city-related issues, including the legitimacy of the $550 million Chevron settlement with the city, the pollution emitted by Chevron’s refinery and the city’s Measure U Gross Receipts Tax ballot measure, which was passed by voters in 2020. All of these actions were wins of the RPA-dominated council.
When asked how he would address the concerns of big business if he was elected, he said they would have someone to advocate for them inside the council chambers.
“I wouldn’t even do anything, you know. I would just speak my piece at the cIty council and tell them they are destroying Richmond,” he said, referencing the current council’s policies. “Big businesses bring big money and they bring a lot of jobs but the city council has this stupid idea that all the small businesses pick up the difference.”
Wassberg also said that if he is elected, he would address not only public safety by advocating for more officers to be hired to the police department but also increase the quality of officers who get hired while getting rid of “bad” cops — pointing at the recent incident involving Kwesi Guss and Richmond Police Sgt. Alexander Caine.
“He has to go. You just don’t walk up to somebody and throw him to jail for filming,” Wassberg said. “But see the cops, they have that ego trip that they have the right to push their weight because they have the courts on their side or the DA (district attorney) on their side.”
He also referenced his recent expulsion during a city council public comment session after Martinez said he was using the time to campaign, which isn’t allowed. A Richmond police officer escorted him out of the chambers, Wassberg says this violated his civil rights. He said he plans on suing the department.
But by hiring more police, Wassberg said, the city would stop paying so much in overtime, giving officers less of a chance to make a mistake. He also wants to create a program for officers to get professional stress relief.
“They would have someone to say ‘Hey, I know what you’re going through,’ and it would give them a chance to have meetings so they could talk about any problems they are going through,” he said.
Admits he’s ‘doing it for the notoriety’
Wassberg is feeling good about his chances of winning though he said if he loses he doesn’t know how many more election attempts he’ll make given that he’s 67 years old.
“I might try for mayor one more time,” he said. “I’m just doing this for the notoriety. I know I’m fighting against big money and a lot of professional people.”
Money for his campaign has been hard to come by, Wassberg said, adding that he has only had one $500 donation from a local Richmond real estate association, which isn’t enough for him to have to report any contributions filing. He said he is planning on using the money to send flyers to Richmond voters sometime in October.
He said that if he is elected, he will create district forums where the residents can voice their problems, and he would encourage them to attend city council meetings. He added that because he is retired he would dedicate all his time to the job.
Although Wassberg admits he is polarizing, he doesn’t consider himself an outsider because he has had people tell him they agree with his conservative values — though they don’t participate or broadcast those beliefs like he does.
“I just consider myself as somebody that’s trying to do good for the public and the city,” he said.
