In February, Richmond residents received a text asking them to fill out a survey about the city’s relationship with Chevron and more. But who sent it and why wasn’t disclosed and remains unclear.
The multiple-choice survey, which is still accepting responses, has “city of richmond” in the URL, but it wasn’t commissioned by the city, sources told Richmondside. It states that the Richmond City Council might try to “gradually” shut down Chevron’s Richmond oil refinery, but that isn’t something the council has publicly discussed in recent years and it wouldn’t be legal, a lawyer said.
“Hi, I am Ada with US Speaks,” the text stated. “We are polling Richmond voters. Can you answer a quick poll?”
US Speaks is run by a New York City-based company called Survey 160. According to its website the company doesn’t conduct its own surveys but rather “does public opinion surveys on behalf of various clients.” The company says its clients include “academic, non-profit, governmental, political, and corporate.”
Richmondside reached out to Survey 160’s CEO and founder Nathaniel Lubin multiple times and asked who hired them to send out the survey, but he hasn’t responded.
The text was sent a few months before Richmond’s first ever primary, held June 2, where several incumbents, including Mayor Eduardo Martinez, were running for reelection. The survey asked what residents thought about Martinez and city government, offering the following answer choices: “very favorable,” “somewhat favorable,” “somewhat unfavorable,” “very unfavorable,” “no opinion,” and “never heard of.”
Martinez’s director of communications, Tony Tamayo, told Richmondside that the mayor’s office didn’t write the survey, and he didn’t know who created it. Richmondside also asked the city for records related to the survey but was told that no records exist because it’s not a city survey.
Richmondside also asked Martinez’s opponents in the primary election if they had commissioned the survey. Ahmad Anderson and Claudia Jimenez, the top two finishers in the primary who are competing in the upcoming Nov. 3 election, both told Richmondside they hadn’t written it and didn’t know who wrote it. Primary mayoral candidates Demnlus Johnson and Mark Wassberg also said they didn’t write it.
Richmondside asked all of Richmond’s city council members if they had written the survey. None of them said they had a hand in it.
The survey had a few questions asking residents about labor unions, including whether responders were part of a union, and asked about organized labor in general and buildings and trades unions specifically. One question asked for their opinion on first responders.
Survey focused on city’s relationship to Chevron
Most of the survey, however, focused on Chevron. Of the 33 questions, 23 were about Chevron’s relationship to Richmond or the oil industry in general. Caitlin Powell and Brian Hubinger, who are both spokespeople for Chevron, told Richmondside that the oil company did not send out the survey, nor did it hire anyone to do so.
Richmondside also asked Eric Zell, a consultant who specializes in public opinion surveys and whose consultant company lists Chevron and the city of Richmond as clients, if he created it. But he said he wasn’t aware of it.
Several of the questions dealt with the $550 million settlement that Chevron agreed to pay the city over a 10-year period to remove a ballot measure that would have imposed a tax on refined oil if passed. These questions asked respondents about the settlement in general, whether they trusted the city to use the funds properly, the degree to which the public should participate in deciding how the funds are allocated, and how the funds should be allocated in general.
The question of how to spend the money remains unanswered more than two years after the settlement was reached, with city staff recently warning the council that some of the money may need to be spent to reduce the city’s operating deficit. Some council members were skeptical of the staff’s financial projections and is moving forward with a consultant to find out how residents would like to see the money spent.
Richmond is heavily reliant on revenue from Chevron. In response to a records request from reporter Brian Krans last year, the city inadvertently released records showing that almost a quarter of its general fund dollars came from the oil company in the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
At the same time, the city and many residents have a contentious relationship with the oil company. It was fined more than $15 million by the Bay Area Air District between 2015-2025, the second highest total of all companies, largely for polluting Richmond’s air. The air district recently announced that residents living near the refinery have a “significant” cancer risk due to Chevron’s oil refinery operations, and it estimates that emissions cause between 5.1 to 11.6 premature deaths per year. Residents in Richmond and across the Bay Area regularly protest outside the company’s Richmond based refinery.
Several of the survey questions ask residents about Chevron’s environmental impact in Richmond, and one question asked what residents thought about Richmond-focused environmental justice groups.
One group that unites local environmental organizations, the Bay Area Anti-Chevron Coalition, which operates online from a website branded Anti-Chevron Day, seemed like a good place for Richmondside to identify who sent the survey, but because it’s a coalition it doesn’t have a public-facing centralized office or spokesperson. Its key member groups include:
- Bay Resistance
- Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)
- East Bay Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
- Oil and Gas Action Network
- Chevron Out of Palestine / Palestinian Youth Movement
Richmondside asked representatives from most of these groups if their organizations had written or distributed the survey, and those we were able to reach said they hadn’t.
Co-director of the Oil and Gas Action Network Matt Leonard and Clio Soiffer, communications director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), both said their organizations didn’t write or distribute the survey. Shiva Mishek, program director for Communities for a Better Environment, and Kerry Guerin, an attorney for that organization, both said they don’t know anything about the survey.
BK Williams, who is on the steering committee of the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA), told Richmondside that the RPA didn’t author the survey. Richmondside reached out to a DSA source but didn’t hear back as of publication time.
Survey asks: Would you support ‘ending refining’ at Chevron? Lawyer says this wouldn’t be legal
One of the survey questions states that “because of California’s decreased reliance on fossil fuels, the Richmond City Council may consider a proposal to gradually end refining operations at the Chevron Richmond Refinery” and then asks respondents if they would support such a proposal. More than half of the survey questions related to Chevron ask voters about different aspects of this theoretical proposal, including: “How important is it for your council member to support it, and how long should the refinery be given to phase out operations.”
It’s unclear what this assertion was based on. Richmond’s city council has not discussed shutting down Chevron during any public meeting since Richmondside started covering them in June 2024.
According to Deborah Ann Sivas, an environmental law professor at Stanford University and a practicing lawyer with expertise in air pollution and land use law, a city doesn’t have the legal ability to shut down an oil refinery such as Chevron.
“Local governments don’t really have the authority to do that,” Sivas said. “They can come in and try to make life hard for a company, but there’s no inherent authority in a local or even a state government to shut down an oil refinery.”
Of course Chevron, which has been in Richmond for about 124 years, could leave if it decides to do so, and there have been some indicators that such a scenario could eventually happen. Decreased demand for oil due to advancements in non-fossil fuel technologies, such as electric vehicles, could lead to such a company shutting down operations. And Andy Walz, an executive with Chevron, stated earlier this year that due to the state’s unfavorable tax and regulatory environment, the oil company could leave California.
The oil company Phillips 66 shut down its refinery operations in Southern California last year, while Valero shut down its refinery operations in Vallejo last April.
Sivas said she thinks the city should address the possibility of Chevron leaving with the company so their exit can be as beneficial as possible for the people of Richmond.
“Local governments could think creatively about ordinances relating to contaminated soil and ground water, like forcing testing,” Sivas said.
She also said the city could discuss with Chevron its transition responsibilities, such as cleanup and environmental remediation, so the land can be usable in the future.
Did you receive this survey? What did you think about it, and did you fill it out? Tell us in the comments below.
