Nikki Bas Declares Victory in the County Supervisor Race Over John Bauters

Breaking News

Tonight Oakland City Council member Nikki Bas has declared victory in the race for Alameda County Board of Supervisors district 5 against Emeryville City Council member John Bauters.  The pro-labor Bas made the announcement after the Alameda County Registrar of voters released the latest tranche of votes in the hotly contested race that placed her against the anti-labor Bauters.  The County has said there are a few straggling votes that still needs to be counted.  However it is extremely unlikely Mr Bauters will make up the 415 votes to overtake Ms Bas.  Mr Bauters has not conceded the vote as of 6:40 pm tonight. 

The tally after the 5 pm release is: 

Bas 50.15 % at 71,135 votes

Bauters 49.85% at 70,721votes

Ms Bas mounted an extraordinary comeback from election night when at 1:00AM the County released the “unofficial final results” of the race showing Bauters ahead 53.4% (26,005 votes) over Bas at 46.6% (22,676 votes).  Ms Bas performed well in the poorer areas of the district while Mr Bauters, appealing to conservatives, did well in the affluent hills and Emeryville. The race spells the end of John Bauters' political career, barring some future comeback as he bet it all on this race, giving up his City Council seat as a consequence.

Ms Bas released the following statement:

One year ago, I answered the call from community-based advocates and Labor leaders to advance a vision of an equitable, prosperous and healthy future for every Alameda County family. Today, it appears that District 5 voters have selected me as their next representative to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. I will bring an unflagging commitment and engage the community to serve every resident by expanding affordable housing and effective solutions to homelessness, accessible healthcare, good jobs, and safe communities. During this consequential moment, I am thrilled and humbled to join what will be our County’s first majority-female Board. Let’s get to work!

Council Member Bauters Deceived Dems on Police Funding

 Democratic Party Endorsement Hopeful John Bauters Hides $2500 from Police PAC

"I Have Not Taken Any Money" He Falsely Asserts

Emeryville City Council member John Bauters has upped the ante in his push to win a seat on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors by deceiving the Alameda County Democratic Party about his campaign’s funding sources the Tattler has learned.  Mr Bauters and his rival for the 5th District Board of Supervisor’s seat, Oakland City Council member Nikki Fortunato Bas, both attended the County Democratic Party’s September 14th endorsement meeting and both responded to the same question about police funding the same way.  They both said NO, they had not received any such funding.  Using Councilman Bauters’ own FPPC Form 497, the Tattler learned his answer can only be described as deceitful. 

The meeting featured many prospective candidates vying for a coveted Dem endorsement in the heavily Democratic Alameda County and ultimately, neither Ms Bas nor Mr Bauters received an endorsement.  Perhaps Ms Bas might have gotten an endorsement had the selection committee known at the time the candidate from Emeryville had not told them the truth.  The committee has been informed about this matter in the interim we learned but they have issued no statement about it we know of. 

The straight question from the Democratic Party of Alameda County put to both candidates at the September 14th meeting was, “Are you endorsed by or taken any money from law enforcement?”  Ms Bas stated she had not and Mr Bauters said unequivocally, “The answer is NO, I have not taken any money.”  What Bauters failed to report was the $2500 taken from the Oakland Police Officer’s Association PAC on August 13th, payable to the FPPC registered committee, ’Bauters for a Safer East Bay’.

The Tattler reached out to the Councilman for comment but he did not return our multiple requests.   

The meeting can be viewed here:

https://www.facebook.com/acdemocrats/videos/494147616764347

Please go to 26:00 to 26:35 to hear candidate Bauters' incriminating claim. 

From candidate Bauters' Form 497 file, registered with the State of California:

John Bauters: Donations Reveal An Embrace Of His Conservative Side in Supervisor Race

John Bauters' Funding Machine Quietly Milks the Alameda County Right Wing

Corporate Lobbyists, PG&E, Developers, Police, Tech Entrepreneurs Tapped for Donations

Wareham Development Corporation Unloads $15,000 After Favors Granted

News Analysis

November’s Alameda County Board of Supervisor District 5 race has come down to Emeryville City Council member John Bauters, a white male lawyer with law enforcement and corporate backing, pitted against Oakland City Council member Nikki Bas, a woman of color with labor backing.  A conservative white man versus a liberal woman of color; it’s a dynamic that might be seen outside of Emeryville as so normal as to be considered not newsworthy.  But for Mr Bauters, his revelatory list of campaign donors recalls this political campaign stereotype he wants no part of, regardless of its inconvenient truth.  

The race for Supervisor this year is a race between corporate power and working people despite Mr Bauters’ denials against that framing.  Councilman John Bauters loudly says he's a true progressive.  But his actual record on the Emeryville City Council notwithstanding, consider who’s putting up the money in the hotly contested Supervisor race.  On Mr Bauters' side it’s virtually all corporations with a material interest in having a friendly voice on the Supervisors Board.  Them and right wing lobbying groups, tech entrepreneurs, police officer’s associations and the sheriff’s office, as well as corporate Democrats and Republicans.  Ms Bas has the backing of mostly regular Alameda County people (a few wealthy supporters) and labor unions.  With donor lists like those, not surprisingly, the backers of John Bauters have given their candidate more money (over $500,000 so far) than have supporters of Ms Bas.

Emeryville City Council Member
John Bauters

Despite his list of backers, Council member Bauters says he's a liberal.  But the campaign donors know better.  And they know a good investment when they see one.  That’s why Bauters has gotten major donations from PG&E and the pro-developer lobbying group YIMBY California as well as Sacramento’s corporate right wing California Real Estate PAC.  Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs also have given generously to Mr Bauters’ campaign (expecting nothing in return if you believe them) as well as East Bay politicians; the controversial former mayor of Oakland, Libby Schaaf and Emeryville’s current mayor Courtney Welch, a corporate Democrat who generously gave her Council colleague $1,100 (so far).  

Mr Bauters strongly endorsed and supported Ms Welch for Emeryville City Council despite her only having lived in town for one month when she filed papers to run for the Council in 2021.  Ms Welch is running for re-election to the Council in November and incidentally, some supporters report she is considering seeking higher political office like Mr Bauters is doing instead of a third term on the Council four years from now.

Trolling for law enforcement money, Bauters is framing himself as the law and order candidate in the race and to clinch the deal, he set up an independent expenditure committee called ‘Bauters for a Safer East Bay’ that is independent from his campaign cash and has net almost $60,000 so far.  Bauters has called to lock up criminals with more jail time, a perennial favorite in the law enforcement community.  He has not said how this would be considered progressive.

Oakland City Council President
Nikki Fortunato Bas

But perhaps the most illuminating campaign donation so far this season is the $15,000 given to candidate Bauters by Wareham Development’s CEO Rich Robbins who was granted a major political favor by Councilman Bauters recently.  Robbins applied for a permit to build a major new bio-tech facility on Overland Street in Emeryville but the City Council had earlier certified a General Plan overlay district called the 'transit center transportation hub zone' around the Amtrak station that restricted the number of parking spaces for proposed developments in the zone.  The idea is the City of Emeryville has an interest in getting people to use alternative transportation rather than everyone just driving.  

The Council vote to implement the transportation hub zone was unanimous but Mr Robbins of Wareham said didn’t want to be constrained by the law.  He wanted to maximize profit for his project and he said future tenants at the Overland bio-tech project would all want to be able drive to work and his new building would be worth more money with more parking available.  So overturning the vote of his own handpicked Planning Commission who thought the new law should be obeyed, Councilman Bauters led a drive to give permission to Rich Robbins to build all the extra  parking spaces.  Councilman Bauters never said why Emeryville's new law should be overturned to help a single developer and he refused requests from the Tattler about it.  

In responce (but not officially because that would be illegal), Mr Robbins gave Mr Bauters $15,000 for his County Supervisor race.  The money for Bauters and parking spaces for Robbins was a win-win for Bauters and Robbins but a loser for the people of Emeryville who have a reasonable expectation their city planning laws not be overturned so casually.

In addition to that and more blatantly showing his anti-labor conservative side, Council member Bauters led a drive to roll back the wages of the poorest workers in Emeryville when he attempted to amend Emeryville’s hard fought Minimum Wage Ordinance in 2019.  The Alameda Labor Council successfully pushed back against Bauters' pushing down the minimum wage by rushing a signature drive of Emeryville citizens just in time to stop the Bauters juggernaut.  

That was back when and now, it appears labor groups across the Bay Area have not forgotten John Bauters and they’re actively supporting the candidacy of Nikki Bas in the Supervisor's race.  

Workers don’t have the financial resources of tech billionaires and giant corporate lobbying groups of course and not surprisingly Bauters has raised more money than Bas.  But Ms Bas has the backing of average people and the race is very tight according to polls.

This campaign season, Mr Bauters is attempting to run as a conservative but also not as a conservative and it's been tough for him to clearly message himself, trying to be everything to everybody.  He is trying for the entire Republican voter base, centrist Democrats and if he can pick up some progressive Democrats, so much the better.  

Clearly Councilman Bauters has some liberal ideas on social issues and before this campaign season, he would blanch at the prospects of outright being called 'conservative' or a 'corporate Democrat' but given his list of donors in the Supervisors race, Mr Bauters appears to have finally made peace with the epithets.  Thus the race for Board of Supervisors in left wing Alameda County has taken on the trappings of every other race in America; right versus left, conservative versus progressive.  And that’s a substantial change from the traditional election ruse around here where everybody's a "progressive" and the elections are 'progressive versus progressive'.  Though the conservative title is not something he has been advertising across the county, the voters' choice has been made more clear this election thanks to John Bauters' striking donor list.  

Council Member Bauters Running as Bike/Walk/Public Transit Champion: His Record Refutes That

Alameda County Voters Should Know John Bauters' Transit Record

Mr Bauters Overturned City Ordinance Controlling  Parking to Accommodate a Developer's Wishes

 

What He Says is Different From What He Does

News Analysis

Former mayor John Bauters led a drive to approve a development with 496 parking spaces, an excess of 85 spaces over Emeryville’s maximum as stipulated by a City ordinance, refuting his new official narrative of him discouraging single occupant vehicles in his candidacy for Alameda County Supervisor.  A July 2022 City Council action that highlights this disconnect came when favored developer Rich Robbins, CEO of Wareham Development, asked Mayor Bauters to overturn the City's Planning Commission who had earlier voted to enforce Emeryville’s rules on the number of parking spaces allowed for the Wareham project known as Emery Station Overland, a bio-science lab campus proposed for Overland Avenue.  

The rules on maximum allowable parking spaces are codified by Emeryville’s Transit Hub Overlay Zone, a delineated area around the Amtrak Station of which the Overland project is in, that was certified as a City ordinance in 2013 to encourage commuters to not drive but to take alternative transportation.  Limiting single occupancy vehicle use for development within the zone is central to the goal of the ordinance by limiting the number of parking spaces available.

Mr Bauters, who is running for Alameda County Board of Supervisors District 5 has been receiving donations from developers and YIMBY California (a developer lobbying organization) at a frantic clip, and he has also been telling Alameda County voters he is against single occupancy vehicle (SOV) use as a planning precept.  Developers as a default, want more parking to be made available for their tenants and that is shown by Wareham’s Overland project.  Approving the project as the developer wanted it is at cross purposes to the announcements made by candidate Bauters to Alameda County voters.

Mayor Bauters' Overland project decision allowed 20% more parking spaces than the Transit Zone allowed and would result in a minimum of extra 170 daily vehicle trips to the site.  Bauters downplayed all the extra cars massing on the site by announcing the parking garage would likely be transformed in housing at some future date.

Emery Station Overland will be located on Overland Avenue between 62nd and 63rd streets.

Emeryville’s Bike Committee unanimously urged Mr Bauters to follow the rules and deny the developer the extra 85 parking spaces and one member, Jordan Wax, also personally attended the Council meeting and spoke out, but to no avail.  

The Chairman of Emeryville’s Planning Commission, Steven Keller called the developer’s 496 parking space number “inflated”.  He told the City Council, Wareham “did not convincingly demonstrate that additional parking is needed for the project” and the Council voting to approve would be making a “precedent setting mistake”.  Although the Transit Center Overland project is located right next to the Amtrak Station, Wareham, for its part said Amtrak is no good and people don’t use it as a reason why so many private parking spaces are needed. 

Vice Mayor Ally Medina supported Mr Bauters' idea to overturn the ordinance.  Without providing evidence, Ms Medina announced, “[transportation] Mode shift does not come from denying parking spaces, it comes from infrastructure”, meaning the bike infrastructure alone in Emeryville will be enough to get people out of their cars despite the extra availability of free and easy parking spaces.  Mr Bauters concurred, hinting the extra parking spaces will sit empty.  A Wareham spokesman also agreed, calling the 85 extra parking spaces beyond what Emeryville’s General Plan allows a “win win” for residents and for Wareham.  

Mr Bauters told the attending crowd, “We would love to reduce parking as much as possible”, but Wareham is going to provide a lot of bike infrastructure he indicated.  However, Alameda County Board of Supervisors candidate Bauters, like Ally Medina, never explained to Emeryville residents how providing better bike infrastructure at the same time as an excess of free and easy parking would reduce the number of drivers.

Wareham is planning on breaking ground on their 496 space parking garage later this year.

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors District 5 election is on November 5th.

Below is the video of the City Council meeting.  The Overland project begins at 52:22.  Public comment including those from the Planning Commission and the Bike Committee begin at 1:19:38.  Council comment including those from Mayor Bauters begins at 1:27:40.