{"id":7352,"date":"2018-01-03T11:15:23","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T19:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=7352"},"modified":"2018-01-03T11:16:42","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T19:16:42","slug":"ex-richmond-mayor-looks-bring-bernie-sanders-approach-sacramento","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2018\/01\/03\/ex-richmond-mayor-looks-bring-bernie-sanders-approach-sacramento\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Richmond mayor looks to bring a Bernie Sanders approach to Sacramento"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nGayle McLaughlin, former Richmond mayor, is running a Bernie Sanders-style campaign for lieutenant governor as an independent.<\/em><\/p>\n

By\u00a0John Wildermuth<\/a>\u00a0(SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n

December 30, 2017<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For former Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, it\u2019s time to take her city\u2019s progressive politics on the road.<\/p>\n

\n

McLaughlin, a former Green Party member, is running for lieutenant governor in 2018 as an independent candidate, confident that California is ready for the type of all-in liberal politics that her Richmond Progressive Alliance brought to the East Bay city.<\/p>\n

\u201cI decided that at a certain point I had to do a statewide race,\u201d said the 65-year-old McLaughlin. \u201cIf I ran statewide we could spread the Progressive Alliance farther and move it to a larger stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chicago-born McLaughlin was one of the founders of the Richmond group, which ran a slate of progressive outsiders in 2004 to replace City Council members they said were both ineffective and too closely tied to Chevron, the city\u2019s most powerful business.<\/p>\n

After two years on the council, McLaughlin beat an incumbent mayor by 242 votes in 2006. She held that office until 2014, when she was elected again to the council, where members of the alliance now hold five of the seven seats. She resigned her seat this year so she could campaign to replace termed-out Democrat Gavin Newsom as lieutenant governor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to show the rest of the state how we did it, how we reduced crime, raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour and put in new rent control rules,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

McLaughlin\u2019s platform for her statewide run reads like Santa\u2019s Christmas list for blue-state progressives. She is calling for single-payer health care, free tuition at public colleges and universities, higher taxes on millionaires, statewide rent control, a ban on corporate campaign contributions and an oil severance tax high enough to make it unprofitable to pump oil out of the ground in California.<\/p>\n

The surprising support for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the 2016 presidential campaign sparked McLaughlin\u2019s independent run. The progressive senator endorsed McLaughlin\u2019s 2014 run for City Council, and she is looking for help from his backers.<\/p>\n

The group Our Revolution, which was spun out of Sanders\u2019 campaign, is one of McLaughlin\u2019s most prominent supporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been endorsed by 28 chapters from Del Norte (County) to San Diego,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t have an endorsement from Bernie yet, but I hope to get it soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even Sanders, a veteran politician who has variously described himself as an independent, a socialist and a democratic socialist, recognized the dismal record independent candidates have in national elections and sought the Democratic Party\u2019s nomination when he ran for president.<\/p>\n

The prospects for third-party \u2014 or no-party \u2014 candidates are equally dreary in California. Since California became a state in 1850, there have been only three governors and three lieutenant governors who weren\u2019t either Republican or Democrat. No one from outside those parties has been elected since 1914.<\/p>\n

Running as an independent is \u201ca daunting, daunting prospect,\u201d said Larry Gerston, a former political science professor at San Jose State University. \u201cPeople still tend to choose from one of the major parties or the other.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may not be right, it may not be fair and it may not be the way things should be, but that\u2019s the way things are in California.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even in the Legislature, the last third-party candidate to win a seat was Audie Bock, a Green Party member who was elected to an Oakland Assembly seat in a 1999 special election. She immediately changed her registration to \u201cdecline to state\u201d and ran a losing race for re-election as an independent in 2000.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state\u2019s not the least bit open to independent candidates,\u201d said Tony Quinn, a former GOP consultant who now works on the California Target Book, a nonpartisan publication that focuses on state political races. \u201cMore people are registering as (decline to state), but there\u2019s no sign they\u2019re looking past Democrats and Republicans in the elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the money question. State Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina (Los Angeles County), had $1.5 million in the bank as of June 30, the most recent statewide campaign finance reporting date. Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat and former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, reported $1.3 million cash on hand, and Jeff Bleich, another Democrat and onetime U.S. envoy to Australia, had $611,000. All three have been busily adding to those accounts in the past six months.<\/p>\n

Although McLaughlin did not file a campaign finance statement in July, she expects to report raising about $70,000 by the end of the year and $350,000 by the June 5 primary. Her campaign isn\u2019t accepting any corporate money and is raising cash through house parties across the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know we\u2019ll never have as much money as the corporate Democrats and Republicans,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we\u2019re running a field operation with key volunteers in every part of the state … which shows the grassroots support we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLaughlin is on the road about two weeks of every month, making her pitch to progressive groups and every other organization that wants to hear from her, including Democratic political clubs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know they can\u2019t endorse me, but that doesn\u2019t mean they don\u2019t want to hear my message,\u201d she said. \u201cThen their members can vote however they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

The likely prospect of a long, uphill grind to the primary isn\u2019t lost on McLaughlin, but she doesn\u2019t let that concern her. While it\u2019s a big jump from the Richmond City Council to a statewide office, \u201cwe know the tools we need,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m running to win, but not just for that,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cWe\u2019re rallying people around our message. I want to be a conduit for that (progressive) voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email:\u00a0jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com<\/a>\u00a0Twitter:\u00a0@jfwildermuth<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gayle McLaughlin, former Richmond mayor, is running a Bernie Sanders-style campaign for lieutenant governor as an independent. By\u00a0John Wildermuth\u00a0(SFChronicle.com) December 30, 2017 For former Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, it\u2019s time to take her city\u2019s progressive politics on the road. McLaughlin, a former Green Party member, is running for lieutenant governor… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7352"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7352"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7355,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7352\/revisions\/7355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}