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Casino and Environment Key Issues in Richmond City Elections

Posted on September 12th, 2010

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The elections in November are gathering full steam all over the country. In the city of Richmond in California, the mood is speculative, as different sides are championing causes that seem to be testing what the city’s residents hold dearer – the environment or jobs. The current mayor of the city is Gayle McLaughlin of the Green Party. Her toughest may prove to be Nathaniel Bates, a former parole officer, who at 78, seems poised to unseat McLaughlin because of his platform that is big on jobs and less on the environment. The Democrat Bates claims that employment generation should be the priority of the city government, not the environment, especially currently that the city is faced with a 20 percent unemployment rate. Thus, the current councilor, in his campaign this week, stressed that the incumbent is only for green jobs and as for him, “Well, my perspective is that I don’t care if the job is green, purple, yellow or polka dot. A job is a job.”

Aside from deciding on who will be the mayor on the elections in November, the Richmond City electorate, who coincidentally lives in the largest city in the US (at 103,000 plus residents) with a Green party mayor, will also have to decide on Proposition 23, which, if voted in favor of, will freeze AB 32, or the global warming law of California. Many believe that the law is a main cause of unemployment in the state, so voting to hold its implementation would bar a further ballooning of the unemployment rate. Several candidates for the election have come out in support for Pop 23, including Republican senatorial candidate Carly Fiorina, a former HP executive, who calls AB 32 a “jobs killer.” Another Republican candidate, Meg Whitman, another former executive of a technology company, eBay, who is running for governor has said that she will suspend AB 32 for a year of she gets elected.

One project that may finally see a green light should Mayor McLaughlin be unseated and AB 32 be suspended is the construction of a Las Vegas-style casino on San Francisco Bay, estimated to cost $1 billion. James D. Levine, the project’s developer claims that 17,000 jobs will be created with this project. The casino plans have been thoroughly rejected by the current mayor, who said a casino will be creating more problems such as drug sales, theft, prostitution, crime in the area of Point Molate, where the casino is projected to be built. While she recognizes that the area does need a good dose of development, she also is for the healthy kind, and a casino is obviously not one she considers as such. She added, “We need the kind of development that will bring about a legacy for Richmond that we can be proud of.”

Mr. Bates, meanwhile, has tied his entire candidacy to the casino project, which translates to him championing jobs. He debunks the incumbent mayor’s claims that the casino would only add problems to Richmond by saying that crime has already been a problem in their city, citing that the area has one of the highest homicide rates in the state, something that the Green Party has not addressed with its pro-environment stand. Mr. Bates also happens to be the first African-American city councilor in 1968. He described the casino issue as something connected to class. He said, “A lot of the people who don’t want this and don’t want that, they’re already secure in life. They’re not concerned about jobs.”.

The casino issue has, indeed opened a can of worms about the situation of Richmond. The median income of $61,000 in the city’s white households is substantially higher than the $42,000 for blacks. The city’s outlying areas of Point Richmond and Richmond Annex also house a more affluent population, and these areas also have higher real estate rates, causing economically deficient Hispanics and African-Americans to stay in Richmond, which have also caused higher crime incidences. Another candidate for the city’s mayor, John Ziesenhenne claims he will not divulge his position on the casino until the end of the elections. Mr. Ziesenhenne also served the city council and was also a president o the Richmond Chamber of Commerce. His campaign is also based on job generation for the city’s unemployed.