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How a Yimby candidate with little experience became Berkeley’s next mayor

Posted by: Zelda Bronstein - December 25, 2024 - 7:05 PM PST

Adena Ishii has never held public office—but had some key endorsements, good luck, and perfect timing.

Berkeley’s new mayor, education consultant Adena Ishii, is a Yimby with scant experience in the town’s governance and politics.

To be sure, Berkeley has had a Yimby mayor for most of the past eight years. But Jesse Arreguín’s Yimbyism was an acquired taste. He was first elected mayor in 2016 on an anti-Yimby platform.

Shortly after taking office, he jumped onto the antidemocratic, “pro-housing” bandwagon. And before becoming mayor, Arreguín served four years on the city’s elected Rent Board and then eight years on the Berkeley council.

By contrast, before entering the mayoral race, Ishii had never run for public office. Nor, as former Planning Commissioner Rob Wrenn pointed out in early October in the Daily Planet, had she served on any of the city’s major commissions—Planning, Zoning, Housing, Rent Board, Transportation and Infrastructure (except for the Rent Board, all are appointed positions). She co-chaired the Berkeley Soda Tax Commission and the Berkeley Unified School District Reparations Task Force.

In 2016-2018, she was president of the local chapter of the League of Women Voters. She ran for mayor on a Yimby agenda, stating that she’s supports missing middle housing, upzoning, and building on the city’s BART stations. Her top campaign pitch, bannered across her campaign website, was “Let’s fight our problems, not each other.”

My sense is that what Ishii means by fighting problems is squelching opposition to Yimbyism both inside and outside City Hall. I base that impression on my post-Election Day email exchanges with her and her campaign manager about whether she supports a referendum on Berkeley’s controversial Missing Middle Housing program; her take on the unruly, late October public meeting about that proposal; and her dismissal of opposition to more housing in the fire-prone Berkeley hills.

Based on her endorsements from Assemblymember Buffy Wicks and State Senator Nancy Skinner, as well her position on the expansion of UC Berkeley, I also expect Ishii to continue the practice of Arreguín and before him, of Tom Bates, whereby Berkeley mayors front for the imperialist campus.

In short, behind Adena Ishii’s campaign persona—the congenial newcomer who eschews “politics” in favor of a “nonpartisan” style—are signs of an operator with a deeply partisan agenda, one whose outsider image belies her solidarity with the Yimbyfied political establishment.

How that foreboding figure remained almost entirely hidden during her yearlong campaign is the most important untold story about this election. Its obscurity reflects the factors that led to her win:

The story of Ishii’s win is complex. As such, it’s best told in parts. I begin with her good luck, her campaign’s skill at using that luck to her advantage, and her joint endorsement from Wicks and Skinner.

Good luck and campaign savvy

In mid-October, 2024, the Daily Californian asked Ishii why she was running for mayor instead of for the District 3 council seat in South Berkeley, where she lives. In reply, she “noted the history of redlining in her neighborhood, sharing her belief that the district should have a Black representative.” The incumbent District 3 Councilmember, Ben Bartlett, is Black.

Ishii told the Daily Cal that she thought “the mayor’s role of facilitation, meeting management, and communication between cities best align[ed] with her roots and skill set,” particularly given the unsettled nature of the current council.

By “her roots,” Ishii, who’s Japanese-American, meant her family’s history of racial discrimination. Her campaign website noted that her family “was incarcerated in concentration camps during WWII.” That “defining moment” taught her “the power that governments can hold, and what can happen when that power is abused,” and informed “her belief in standing up for what’s right.”

Regarding her skill set, Ishii told the Daily Cal:

"The mayor’s job is running council meetings, and my background is in facilitation and bringing people together across differences….I really think we need a reset a city hall. We have had two City Council members resign, stating that our city government has become broken and toxic, and if we are too busy fighting each other, then we’re not focused on our problems. My background is in nonpartisan politics: this radical idea of bringing people together around common-sense solutions."

She didn’t provide any examples of her experience in “bringing people together across differences,” and apparently Daily Cal reporter Chesney Evert didn’t ask for any. Remarkably, during Ishii’s eleven-month campaign, neither did anyone else.

She capitalized on that piece of good fortune with another: the increasing evidence that Berkeley desperately needed a mayor with the leadership skills that she claimed to possess. When Ishii declared her candidacy on November 18, 2023, the council had been roiled for weeks by conflict over demands that it pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

As indicated by her reply to the Daily Cal, in arguing that “city government has become broken and toxic,” she didn’t cite the uproar over the council’s stand—more precisely, its refusal to take a stand—on the Israeli-Palestinian war.

Instead, she homed in on two subsequent events that neither she nor anyone else could have anticipated: the resignations of Councilmembers Rigel Robinson and Kate Harrison. Both had been running for mayor. Robinson stepped down from his District 7 (Southside) seat in early January 2024. Harrison resigned from her District 4 (Downtown) office four weeks later; unlike Robinson, she continued her mayoral campaign. Her motives for stepping down also differed from his.

Robinson, attributed his “retirement” to stress from “‘harassment, stalking, and threats.’”

Harrison denied that she had been 'harassed in any way to make this decision." Instead, reading from a prepared statement at the council’s January 30 meeting, she said she was resigning because "Berkeley’s processes are broken, and I cannot in good conscience continue to serve on this body." She would run as a critic of the body on which she had served for nearly eight years.

Harrison specified her concerns in a press release. Most broadly, she accused Berkeley of “relying on the market as the ultimate arbiter” in city policy across the board. It’s a fair criticism.

She detailed that charge:

"The impact of a focus on private profits impacts how we do everything. Proposals to require reasonable objective design standards to protect solar production, insure adequate affordable housing funding and prevent uninterrupted commercial blocks without articulation have been rejected even as they are adopted by dozens of cities that build a lot of housing—as we do—a lot of housing. U.C. continues to master lease properties, which takes them off our tax rolls. Property owners were asked to support a significant bond, while fees paid by property owners and developers of residential rental buildings are discounted without justification….The City is monetizing our Waterfront, has derailed the beloved Kite Festival and free Mime Troupe park performances, has driven recreational activities like the Chess Club off our streets and is not protecting or adding green space."

Like Ishii, Harrison flagged the quality of public debate in Berkeley. But where Ishii blamed contentiousness per se and the lack of an effective mediator at the helm, Harrison pointed to opacity and censoriousness, and she tied that charge to the council’s handling of specific problems:

"Issues are presented as a morality play with those who disagree cast in the role of villains. Resident concerns about U.C. Berkeley’s enrollment impact on housing and City services are not adequately addressed. People with legitimate demands that there be public transit to access BART stations and commercial corridors are vilified (we need to find public alternatives to the combustion vehicle, not demonize those who are right now dependent on them). People engaging in a healthy debate about which policing tools are effective at fighting crime while protecting civil liberties are derided as “ideologues” and “busybodies.”

Ishii leveraged Robinson’s and Harrison’s resignations, a feat that required her to elide their disparate motives for withdrawing. She never mentioned their names. All she said, again and again, was that two members of the council had stepped down, and that both had explained their withdrawals as responses to the “broken” and “toxic” nature of Berkeley’s “city government.”

But when Robinson resigned, he didn’t blame city government or infighting on the council. Rather, he cited “harassment from political opponents” who, he told the San Francisco Chronicle, had “followed him, told him to kill himself, and taped threatening messages to his residence.” He never named his harassers.

In a May 2024 article in Western City, which is published by the League of California Cities, he referred to “‘a very small’” but “‘very vocal minority’ of residents” who “‘were dedicated to speaking up against new housing’” and “‘don’t want to change.’” They responded to his build-baby-build, Yimby agenda with a twofold campaign: public opposition that he decried as ignorant—based, he said, on “‘a complete misunderstanding of the mechanics of the housing crisis’”—and alleged private harassment that he found unbearable

Unlike Robinson and like Ishii, Harrison called the city’s public processes “broken.” Unlike both of them, she argued that the malfunction involved a struggle for political power. Which is to say, it was ideological—specifically, a fight over Berkeley’s market-oriented approach to policy.

Ishii had no truck with ideology. Her claim that she would “bring people together around common-sense solutions” implied that the problems she cared about most—housing, homelessness, infrastructure, and public safety—had transcendent, value-free remedies. To criticize those remedies, then, would be nonsensical.

Belying Berkeley’s reputation as a bastion of the left, enough voters bought that line to help propel Ishii to victory.

The Wicks-Skinner endorsement

In politics as in other aspects of life, quality—perceived and real—can count for more than quantity.

Without knowing anything else about Sophie Hahn’s campaign, you could tell from her list of endorsers that she was running as a political insider.

The roster included dozens of elected officials, including four who had been elected to statewide offices (Malia Cohen, Fiona Ma, Tony Thurmond, Betty Yee, and Sally Lieber), as well as numerous councilmembers, county supervisors, city commissioners, three mayors, and Alameda County Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez. She had the support of five Berkeley councilmembers—besides Bartlett, Mark Humbert, Terry Taplin, Igor Tregub (who succeeded Harrison), and Susan Wengraf.

She was also endorsed by six building trades unions and the Alameda County Building and Construction Trades Council, as well as the California Nurses Association. Like Harrison, she was endorsed by SEIU, Local 1021, which represents Berkeley city staff, and the Alameda County Labor Council.

Hahn gave top billing to the coveted sole endorsement from the Berkeley Firefighters Association. Her campaign website also featured a three-minute video in which Arreguín, who was running for termed-out Skinner’s District 8 State Senate seat, said that he could only move on to Sacramento if he knew that “there was someone with the experience, dedication, love, care, and temperament necessary to be your next mayor, and that person is only Sophie Hahn.”

Harrison’s list was equally revealing. What it showed was a campaign of an insider-turned-outsider. Unsurprisingly, Harrison was endorsed by only one sitting Berkeley councilmember, Cecilia Lunaparra, who in April was elected to fill Robinson’s vacated seat.

The other local officials on her list included seven of the nine members of Berkeley’s Rent Stabilization Board, and many current and former Berkeley commissioners. She was also endorsed by the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, where she had a long history of participation and support, the Green Party, OurRevolution, and the Berkeley Tenants Union. Her labor endorsers included the National Union of Healthcare Workers and United Auto Workers, Region 6, whose members include workers at UC.

Ishii’s list of endorsers was the smallest of the three, which was to be expected, given her lack of political experience. But it included some political powerhouses, such as the Berkeley Democratic Club, the Yimby cell East Bay for Everyone, and, late in the game, the statewide “prohousing” group, the Housing Action Coalition.

She was also endorsed by four Berkeley councilmembers: Rashi Kesarwani, plus two who had endorsed Hahn—Humbert, and Taplin—and Lunaparra, who had endorsed Harrison. Former Assemblymember and Mayor Tom Bates was on Ishii’s list. So were the Asian Pacific American Democratic Caucus and Latine Young Democrats of the East Bay. The latter group is led by Taplin’s chief of staff, Rubén Hernández Story. She received no support from organized labor.

What sealed her victory was her mid-September joint endorsement from Assemblymember Buffy Wicks and State Senator Nancy Skinner. Those nods, she told the Daily Californian, "are a game changer for our campaign. Each has proven it is possible to cut through the noise and get big things done that improve the lives of our neighbors here in Berkeley and all of California." She didn’t specify what she meant by “noise” or “big things.”

Wicks and Skinner returned the favor. The consummate insiders, two Yimby icons, showered the political novice with vacuous praise. One of Ishii’s campaign mailers prominently displayed their photos, accompanied by a joint statement:

"Adena represents a new generation of leadership that the City of Berkeley needs and deserves. Adena knows that governance means not letting politics get in the way of getting the job done, and she will always put the needs of residents first. She will make a fantastic mayor, and we are proud to support her."

In another mailer, the two state officials declared, “We’re united for Adena because Adena can unite Berkeley!” Missing from these commendations were examples of Ishii’s actual success in “getting the job” done by averting “politics.” The puffery echoed the candidate’s gauzy vows to be a can-do, nonpartisan mayor.

I don’t know exactly how Ishii got those endorsements. Here’s a clue. On July 22, her campaign’s x page retweeted Taplin’s tweet thanking Wicks and Skinner for having urged the Berkeley council to adopt the Missing Middle Housing proposal, as amended by the city’s Planning Commission, which was on the council’s July 23 agenda. Taplin’s tweet included screenshots of the two state legislators’ letters, which Ishii reposted in full. Seven weeks later, Wicks and Skinner gave her candidacy their blessing.

For people who hadn’t been paying close attention to either Berkeley or state politics—that’s most Berkeley voters—the Wicks-Skinner endorsement added a thick veneer of legitimacy to Ishii’s thin resumé.

Absent their backing, she couldn’t have won.

Ms. Bronstein is a Bay Area activist and writer whose work has appeared in Dissent magazine, the Berkeley Daily Planet, BeyondChron, 48 hills, the California Progress Report, Film Quarterly, Le Monde diplomatique, Open Democracy, Dollars & Sense, and The Nation.