'Revitalize East Bay' PAC Selects John Bauters as their Executive Director

Former Emeryville Politician Now Working for the Private Sector; Bauters Will Serve Billionaires' Interests, Helping Bend Public Policy to Their Liking

Long Time Local Politician John Bauters
He's made the move to the private sector for
an undisclosed salary.

Breaking News

Former long time Emeryville City Council member John Bauters has accepted a job managing a crypto billionaire backed political action committee that seeks to recall insufficiently conservative politicians and pull down local regulation in order to assist real estate developers and corporate landlords.  ‘Revitalize the East Bay’ PAC recently hired the former councilman as their executive director despite Bauters’ loss in his November election for district five Alameda County Supervisor, a race the shadowy group spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on but failed to win.

Revitalize East Bay, flush with dark money from tech billionaires and Real Estate Investment Trusts, is seeking to “professionalize” their conservative agenda in anticipation of the 2026 elections and the Bauters hire indicates a high level of  confidence in the former council member’s political acumen. 

 

What Happened To Bauters?

Many in Emeryville and the surrounding community have wondered what happened to John Bauters who went quiet after his ignominious loss in the election he was believed to have a lock on, especially among his most conservative backers.  Mr Bauters had the backing of the corporate sector who went all in with him, including Revitalize the East Bay.  His Emeryville Council colleagues (save the lone progressive Council member Priforce) as well as several former anti-labor Council members also backed the seemingly unstoppable Bauters campaign, leaving some surprised and puzzled, especially at the post election silence.    

During the Supervisor campaign, Mr Bauters ran as a loud and proud ‘progressive’, keeping his conservative, pro-developer views largely hidden from the electorate.  It was a strategy Revitalize East Bay saw as a potentially effective path to power for the secretive right wing PAC in the famously left wing northern Alameda County.  Mr Bauters probably was hoping his talk of his progressive values could win the day in the November election but he lost his race to his labor backed opponent, Nikki Fortunato Bas, who revealed Bauters' anti-labor record in Emeryville to Alameda County voters, quoting Tattler stories in a controversial mailer and website.

Hedge Fund Manager 
Capitalist Philip Dreyfuss
One of the primary backers of
Revitalize East Bay and John Bauters.

Revitalize East Bay has faced criticism for not properly disclosing its donors, raising concerns about the potential influence of hidden money on local elections. The group has not shied away from using subterfuge in their efforts;  creating a new committee with a similar name, which allowed them to delay disclosing their donors.  

Donors include Philip Dreyfuss: a Piedmont-based hedge fund executive, who contributed significantly as well as YIMBY California backed real estate developers and corporate landlords as well as the energy utility giant PG&E that’s headquartered in Oakland.

Leading up to the November election, Bauters received more than $1.29 million from tech venture capitalists, real estate billionaires including Mr Dreyfuss as well as other corporate special interest groups according to the Phoenix Project, a local collective of citizen activists who shine a light on dark money flooding Bay Area elections forwarding conservative interests.  The Phoenix Project produced its near legendary and viral 'Astroturf Network Map' that chronicled the 2024 effect of dark special interest money in the East Bay election.  The influential map shone a light where the dark money was and did not spare the Bauters campaign.

Three time mayor Mr Bauters was an extremely influential Emeryville Council member during his years in power here having served as the chair of the powerful Budget and Governance Committee for all eight years, during which time he quietly shepherded a $11.8 million budget deficit, the worst in the little city’s history.  Mr Bauters audaciously blamed the Planning Commission for the red ink, a fact that likely impressed Revitalized East Bay and factored in as they moved the former City Council member into his new pricey digs as executive director for a PAC with budget of millions of hedge fund dollars and an appreciation of subterfuge looking after private interests operating in the public realm.

We reached out to John Bauters for this story but he did not respond.

 

The Phoenix Project's Astroturf  Network Map famously laid Revitalize East Bay bare.

Cryptocurrency Executive's Major Campaign Donations to Bauters & Congressional Republicans

 Connection Between Wealthy Bauters Donor and Republicans Exposed

Emeryville City Council member John Bauters and conservative Republicans in Congress.  What do they have in common?  Besides not being fans of a living minimum wage for workers, they both attract lot’s of cash from cryptocurrency executives. 

Councilman Bauters’ campaign for Alameda County Supervisor is packed with cryptocurrency cash heading into the final stretch of the 2024 election, with $40,000, the maximum legal amount, supplied by tech bro Jesse Pollak, of Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange that also is a major donor to some of the most hard right Republicans in Congress.  Mr Bauters has been unabashed in courting the right wing in the county in his run for the Supervisor position and it has paid off with lots of money to fend off his rival in the race, Nikki Fortunato Bas.  Ms Bas, a progressive who honors labor, has gotten donations from many East Bay labor unions and ordinary citizens in her race for Supervisor.

Trying to be everything for everybody, Council member Bauters has recently been attempting to soften his anti-labor reputation in the county, trying to siphon donations from progressives that would go to Ms Bas but he is alone in the race in attracting conservative donors.  To the extent he has been successful casting himself as a pro-labor progressive across the county, it is attributable to the fact that Mr Bauters’ work as a politician has been in tiny Emeryville, outside the glare of the Oakland/Berkeley political spotlight.  In this way, many progressives in the county are unaware of Bauters' anti-labor record, specifically when he led a drive to cut the wages of the poorest working poor people in Emeryville in 2019.   The flood of cash from the right side of the spectrum to Mr Bauters’ campaign coffers, especially from tech bros, demonstrates the extent they have been paying attention however.  

Attempting to expose the Bauters' anti-labor record, staffers at the Nikki Bas campaign have produced a website, ‘The Truth About Bauters’ to reveal the things he doesn’t want us to know about him.  Things like the time when he attempted to roll back Emeryville’s Minimum Wage Ordinance and the people that appreciate that.  People like the cryptocurrency whiz Jesse Pollak of Coinbase who took some time off donating to Republicans in Congress to give the maximum legal amount to Emeryville’s John Bauters.  

From the website 'The Truth About Bauters' produced by the campaign for 
his rival in the Alameda County Supervisor race, Nikki Fortunato Bas.

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.  

Bauters Comes in 2nd, Will Face Nikki Fortunado Bas in November

 Breaking News

Bauters to Face Run Off Election in November

Tonight, with 74 of 74 precincts reporting, Emeryville City Council member John Bauters will be heading to a November run off in his Alameda County Board of Supervisor’s race, having failed to secure enough votes to win the election outright.  Mr Bauters needed to win more than 50% of the vote in northern Alameda County to become the next District 5 Supervisor but he only was able to garner about 20% according to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office.  Oakland City Council member Nikki Fortunato Bas will also be in the run off election with Mr Bauters, having secured approximately 27% of the vote today.

The November run off election will now become a do or die for Mr Bauters’ political career as a loss today to secure a greater than 50% victory means he will not be allowed to run for re-election to the Emeryville City Council in November , a race he had announced he planned on making back before Keith Carson, the current District 5 Supervisor suddenly announced last December he would retire upon completion of his current term in November 2024.

The failure to win tonight highlights a real gamble Mr Bauters took when he threw his hat into the ring last December.   If he loses in November, he loses everything and he will go back to just being citizen John Bauters, stripped of all his official political power.  At least until the next election.

Bauters' Gaffe Means No Endorsement From Alameda County Dems

John Bauters' Gaffe Causes Loss of Critical Alameda County Democratic Party Endorsement

Seeking Alameda County Supervisor Position, 

He Now Waffles on Gaza Issue

After a very public gaffe about the war in Gaza, Emeryville City Council member John Bauters and his surging campaign for Alameda County Board of Supervisors failed to secure a critical endorsement from the Alameda County Democratic Party, a major misfire on his path to secure what he has characterized as the next big step in his political ascendancy.  

John Bauters
Not a fan of a
ceasefire in Gaza and
snubbed by the Alameda 
County Democratic
Party endorsement committee.

Hemmed into a corner by a question at the Alameda County Democratic Party endorsement committee meeting this month, Mr Bauters said, if elected, he would not consider voting for any resolution or proclamation calling for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza.  All the other candidates, save one, answered in the affirmative.  

Mr Bauters’ answer seemed to surprise the other candidates, one of whom, wishing anonymity, later told the Tattler, “I think that cost him [Bauters] the endorsement”.   Perhaps not as surprising was Mr Bauters later change of mind about this issue at a Democratic endorsement meeting hosted by the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club where he attempted to put the genie back in the bottle.

After the surprising answer from Mr Bauters, “[…calling for a ceasefire in Gaza] is too divisive”, the County Dems threw their support to Oakland City Council President Nikki Fortuado Bas in a 22-11 vote.  However, the Alameda County Democratic Party requires a 60% vote to affirm an endorsement of any candidate and the smattering of votes for other candidates, diluting the majority, meant they would have to defer any endorsement for the Supervisor race this election, a rarity for the Dems.

Americans, by large majorities, are in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza, with some polls showing 66% support nation-wide.  Among California Democrats, the number surpasses 80%.  Among Alameda County Democrats, in what’s been called the bluest county in the bluest state in the nation, the support for a Gaza ceasefire is considerably larger than 80%.  These kinds of numbers suggest Mr Bauters might have a problem with one or more anti-Palestinian donors.  For his part, Councilman Bauters has not responded to any questions about this issue. 

Bauters has garnered more than $100,000 for the race so far, considerably more than anyone else seeking the Supervisor seat.  

The Alameda County Democratic Party announced its official support for a ceasefire in Gaza on October 10th.  Many so called ‘corporate Democrats’ have resisted discussing the growing ceasefire movement.  A connection between corporate Democrats and donors who don’t like the idea of a ceasefire has been shown by many politicos.  

Nikki Fortunado Bas
Running for County Supervisor
and supportive of a ceasefire in Gaza,
she beat John Bauters 22-11 in the
Alameda County Democratic Party
endorsement count. 

An endorsement from the Alameda County Democratic Party has proved to be the magic elixir for those seeking political office in the county over the years.   The majority of candidates with the coveted nod from the County Dems ultimately wins the election, a testament to the power of that party. Indeed, any candidate on track to obtain an endorsement from the County Dems that loses it over a gaffe, is seen by election watchers as having committed a major blunder. 
 

After the rebuke from the County Dems, Mr Bauters tried to regroup and put the issue to rest at Friday’s endorsement meeting of the progressive Paul Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club.  The same question about supporting a ceasefire in Gaza was asked of the candidates and this time, Mr Bauters changed his answer about a Gaza ceasefire to "YES, with the appropriate language".  This answer was in direct contradiction to his admission at the earlier county party meeting and at a City Council meeting in December where he refused to even allow discussion of the issue.  At the City Council meeting, Bauters’ colleague Council member Kalimah Priforce attempted to introduce the Gaza issue using the same “appropriate language” qualifier as Mr Bauters is now using.  

The Wellstone Club has not yet announced its endorsement.*

With a large campaign war chest, Mr Bauters is being cast as the frontrunner in the race to replace longtime progressive County Supervisor Keith Carson.  As such, the failure of Mr Bauters to unequivocally tell the Democratic Party his position on a proposed ceasefire in Gaza, an issue very much in Democrats' minds, is causing doubts among some in the party about his inevitability as the new County Supervisor.  The endorsement of the Alameda County Democratic Party was arguably Bauters' to loose.  But as the candidate (wishing anonymity) at the county endorsement meeting told the Tattler after hearing Bauters’ gaffe, “I don’t see how they can endorse him after that”. 

*Update to story 2/1/24:  The Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club has since endorsed Nikki Fortunado Bas for the District 5 Alameda County Supervisor seat.