This story by Nico Savidge was originally published by Berkeleyside.
The candidates competing to represent Richmond in the state Senate each base their campaigns on an argument that they will be the most effective champion for the East Bay’s progressive values in Sacramento.
Both Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín and AC Transit Director Jovanka Beckles are Democrats who support progressive goals such as a single-payer healthcare system, changing California’s Proposition 13 to generate more property tax revenue from businesses, expanding rent control and providing more funding to build affordable housing. In prior elections, each has been endorsed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
But they disagree on many of the topics that tend to divide Democratic voters in this deep-blue district, such as what role police should play in addressing rising anxieties over crime and whether California should make it easier to build all kinds of housing — including market-rate development — to address its affordability crisis.
Arreguín describes himself as a “pragmatic progressive,” who wants to provide more funding to hire police officers and further streamline housing construction. He has been endorsed by termed-out state Sen. Nancy Skinner, who held the East Bay seat for the past eight years, as well as Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and unions in the building trades. He holds a large fundraising lead.
Beckles, a Democratic Socialist backed by the Richmond Progressive Alliance, argues more police are not the answer to crime and says more market-rate homes won’t improve affordability. She has Sanders’ endorsement in this race, as well as that of Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, the California Teachers Association and progressive groups such as the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club and California Working Families Party.
In the spring primary that set the field for this fall’s election, Arreguín finished first among the six contenders with 32.8% of the vote, while Beckles won second place over several better-funded opponents with 17.5%.
Diverging ideas for crime and police
The first point on the public safety platform Arreguín shares on his campaign website is a pledge to work as a state senator to “secure the funding we need to help cities recruit, retain, and train” police staff. In an interview, he said that would include both sworn officers and civilian personnel, though the exact amount of funding would depend on what kind of shape the state budget is in. Arreguín said, “there is a significant need” to hire more officers.
Beckles disagreed — she contends Richmond, where she was a city council member, has demonstrated that a progressive approach to crime, including investments in community violence prevention programs instead of conventional law enforcement, can improve public safety.
“More police is not the answer to reducing crime,” she said, “we have been able to show that in Richmond.”
As for other criminal justice topics on this November’s ballot, both candidates said they oppose Proposition 36, a state initiative to toughen penalties for some theft and drug crimes that has split California Democrats.
Beckles also stridently opposes the campaign in Alameda County to recall Price, calling it “a right-wing strategy to circumvent our democracy.” Arreguín, meanwhile, says he has not yet decided how he will vote on the recall, because he opposes the recall process but believes Price has “failed” as district attorney.
“I share the concerns that families of victims and law enforcement and people throughout Oakland the East Bay have around the lack of accountability from our district attorney,” he said.
How they would approach the insurance crisis
With homeowners throughout California — and especially those in fire-prone communities such as the East Bay Hills — struggling to find affordable home insurance as companies cancel policies or pull out of the state entirely, the candidates had different ideas for how the Legislature should address the growing insurance crisis.
Saying the “insurance industry is running amok,” Beckles called for California to impose financial penalties on the companies to deter them from reducing coverage.
“Fine them when they do these really unscrupulous things, like kicking people off their plans,” she said, “and then if they decide they want to leave the state, then they’re fined for that as well.”
Arreguín said he supports many of the efforts already in the works to change insurance regulations to keep companies in the state, including allowing insurers to raise rates for certain customers based on their risks — so long as the increases aren’t “exorbitant,” he said — and use tools known as “catastrophic modeling” to account for climate change. But, he said California’s Department of Insurance is taking too long to enact those changes, and the Legislature needs to step up to stabilize the market.
“There’s been this kind of impasse right now that is unacceptable, all while people are struggling,” Arreguín said. “We’ve got to do something now.”
Support for public transit funding
Beckles and Arreguín say they want to ensure the Bay Area’s public transit agencies, some of which face steep deficits after the pandemic upended commute patterns, receive the new funding bus and train operators say they need to avert a “fiscal cliff” and deep service cuts.
Arreguín said he would back a proposal to put a Bay Area-wide tax measure before voters in a future election that would provide funding for transit agencies. That kind of regional measure requires approval from the Legislature before it can go before voters, and last year a bill to authorize a tax in 2026 was derailed by disagreements among lawmakers.
“We have to finish the job and move forward with a regional measure,” he said.
Beckles said she does not want that measure to be funded with “regressive” new taxes; the prior bill would have allowed Bay Area officials to consider several options for the regional measure, including a sales tax increase, which raised concerns among some lawmakers.
“I don’t believe that we should fund [transit] on the backs of people who are already struggling,” Beckles said.
Split on housing
Skinner, the East Bay’s outgoing state senator, backed a slew of laws that reshaped how housing is built in California, speeding the process for approving both market-rate and affordable developments.
Beckles would follow a different path, saying she would not support legislation that would further streamline approvals for market-rate housing.
“I would absolutely be a champion for funding and making it easier for people to build affordable housing,” Beckles said. But, she added, “I maintain my position that building more market-rate housing is not the way that we keep rents affordable.”
To bolster her case, Beckles cited data she said she accessed by querying the AI program ChatGPT, which stated Berkeley — where there has been a surge of primarily market-rate construction — had larger rent increases between 2007 and 2023 than Richmond, which allowed fewer market-rate homes but came closer to meeting state targets for affordable housing.
However, the chatbot text Beckles cited, which she later shared with a reporter, did not provide a direct link to the source of its data, saying it came from unspecified “market and housing trend analyses.” And for much of the time period Beckles cited, Berkeley was building relatively little new housing; production began picking up steam in 2015 and peaked in 2022.
Arreguín and groups aligned with the “yes in my backyard” political movement that supports him point out rent levels in Berkeley’s older and typically more affordable housing stock have slowed their ascent in the years since the city began building more. He recently highlighted data from Berkeley’s Rent Stabilization Board showing rent levels for new tenancies in those homes are lower than they were in 2015 if you adjust for inflation.
“Anyone who says that building market-rate housing doesn’t do anything to solve the housing crisis doesn’t understand economics, and also doesn’t really understand how we are going to turn the corner on the state’s housing shortage,” Arreguín said. “At the core of it is a significant supply shortage that is decades in the making.”
Who’s supporting their campaigns?
Campaign finance records show Arreguín has raised $835,019 between the start of the year and Sept. 21, the most recent reporting deadline, well ahead of Beckles’ fundraising haul of $221,673 over the same time period.
Major donors to Arreguín’s campaign include labor unions in the construction trades — such as committees representing electrical workers, carpenters and laborers — as well as several business interest groups. The California Real Estate Political Action Committee gave $10,900 to Arreguín, while the California Apartment Association, the commercial real estate firm Wareham Development and its founder, Richard Robbins, were among those who chipped in $5,500 apiece.
Beckles’ top contributors include the Service Employees International Union California State Council, the California Teachers Association and the Amalgamated Transit Union’s California Conference, each of which gave $10,900, as well as the Progressive Era PAC, which receives funding from several Democratic mega-donors.
Arreguín has also benefitted from spending by independent expenditure committees, which aren’t bound by spending or fundraising limits but cannot directly coordinate with campaigns. Those committees spent millions of dollars on the District 7 primary, as several unions poured money into efforts to boost the campaign of California Labor Federation President Kathryn Lybarger, while business interests did the same to oppose her and back Arreguín; she wound up finishing fourth.
Spending on the race has cooled since then, but it is by no means finished. There has been $777,006 worth of independent expenditures on Arreguín’s behalf during the general election campaign, about half of which came from the ride-hailing company Uber, which spent over $360,000 on research and advertising to support him.
Beckles has benefitted from $28,367 worth of outside spending, nearly all of which was in the form of phone banking by a group linked to the environmental justice nonprofit Asian Pacific Environmental Network, one of the environmental groups the proposed putting a Chevron refinery tax on the November ballot — an action that ultimately resulted in Richmond securing a $550 million settlement from the company.
Arreguín defends campaign contributions
Beckles, who describes herself as a “corporate-free candidate,” has sharply criticized the support Arreguín draws from businesses and interest groups. She frames those contributions as a defining reason voters should support her, and argues it will play out in the decisions she makes as a legislator.
“The community can absolutely trust me to do exactly what I’m saying and what I’m promising to do, because it’s what I’ve always done,” Beckles said. “I’m only beholden to the community, I’m not beholden to any of these corporate entities.”
(There was some corporate spending on Beckles’ behalf during the spring primary, when a committee backed by real estate interest groups dropped nearly $120,000 in support of her run, however that spending appeared to be aimed at keeping Lybarger out of the general election runoff by boosting Beckles.)
Arreguín called Beckles’ criticism a “false narrative,” and said he would be independent of his donors. He cited his work as mayor of Berkeley, saying he backed pro-tenant policies and corporate regulations in the face of opposition from landlords and business groups. And while he may have some common ground with a group such as the California Apartments Association on building more housing, Arreguín said, they differ on topics like his support for rent control.
“Where we can work together, we will,” he said. “But where we disagree, I will fight fiercely — like I have as mayor of Berkeley, and city council member, and rent board commissioner — for tenants and for working people.”
Beckles says she can be effective
Arreguín contends a central reason voters should back his campaign is that he would work more effectively in the Legislature, where getting bills passed requires building coalitions with members and leaders in the Democratic supermajority. He charged that Beckles’ “far more ideological approach” would not result in real change.
“I think the people of this district deserve a state senator who is progressive but also effective,” he said. “Talk is cheap, and it’s easy to put out soundbites — but at the end of the day, what are you actually doing to get progressive things done, and to move the needle to improve the quality of life of people in this region?”
Beckles dismissed the charge that she would be ineffective, saying she reached the general election because of coalitions she has built and pointing to her work on efforts to regulate Chevron as a Richmond council member. Moreover, she said, she would tap into grassroots organizing to build support for her legislative agenda in Sacramento.
“I’m taking on this seat not as one person — I’m taking on this seat as a community, as a movement that’s greater than myself,” she said. “You think Chevron bows down to one person? Absolutely not, but they certainly will bow down when you have a whole community behind you.”
A lot of Republicans I know voted for Arreguin as the lesser of two evils.