New Richmond council member set to push progressive agenda
By Robert Rogers Contra Costa Times
Posted:   12/08/2014 02:26:19 PM PST0 Comments | Updated:   85 min. ago

Newly elected Richmond City Council member Eduardo Martinez and council member Jovanka Beckles join hands while council member Gayle McLaughlin applauds the outcome of the election and all of the supporters in the room that helped at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts in Richmond, Calif., Sunday, Dec. 7, 2014. (Susan Tripp Pollard/Bay Area News Group) ( SUSAN TRIPP POLLARD )
RICHMOND -- A day after the biggest campaign of his life, with the outcome technically undecided, Eduardo Martinez was exhausted but "cautiously optimistic."
Despite clinging to a narrow lead over incumbent Jim Rogers for the third and final full-term City Council spot, the self-described "shy" presumptive new member of Richmond's City Council had no qualms chatting about what he'd do in his new office.
"Team Richmond has fresh ideas, and we're here to move forward on all fronts," Martinez said, choosing his words slow and careful. "Richmond will continue to be a trend setter for local, state and national policies."
It's that bold vision and élan to be in the vanguard of change that has Martinez's supporters buoyant and his detractors miffed.
Martinez, 65, is a retired schoolteacher with a mild temperament that matches his laconic gait. But his victory -- which was assured days after the Nov. 4 election when his lead widened -- is arguably the biggest power move by the city's emergent progressive coalition since it gained a foothold in city politics when Green Party Mayor Gayle McLaughlin won an improbable victory in 2006.
Martinez joined McLaughlin, who was termed out as mayor, and Jovanka Beckles as Team Richmond -- Richmond Progressive Alliance candidates who rode a groundswell of opposition against Chevron Corp.'s massive spending campaign to sweep the city's full-term council races.
Martinez will take his seat in January, and is straining at the leash to work on projects affecting Chevron, which funded the Moving Forward political action committee that maligned him with mailers, website attacks and television commercials. His victory puts the city on the fast track to accelerate its already rapid rise to the ranks of the Bay Area's most progressive governments.
The city has been a leader on initiatives including banning plastic bags at grocery stores, opening medical marijuana dispensaries, paving miles of new bicycle lanes, subsidizing residential solar panels, issuing municipal identification cards to the undocumented and setting aside swaths of protected lands.
But the biggest impact moving forward could be the council's approach to Chevron, which has already gained city approval for a $1 billion modernization. Martinez expects many more projects to come forward in the coming years and says he'll help the city use its permitting power over new construction.
"Chevron hasn't compromised; they've terrorized," Martinez said. "That's going to change after this election; they'll understand that the community will hold them responsible. They have to work with us now."

With beads representing Chevron tears, Bill Pinkham of Richmond wears a Chevron symbol mask with fake money taped to it at a party to celebrate the vote team Richmond election and its winners, including Eduardo Martinez, right, who speaks with Dennis Dalton at the party held at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts in Richmond, Calif., Sunday, Dec. 7, 2014. (Susan Tripp Pollard/Bay Area News Group) ( SUSAN TRIPP POLLARD )
The tough talk belies Martinez's reputation as a soft-spoken, gentle man described by friends and allies as "humble," unassuming and a good listener. Martinez said he has long struggled with a speech impediment, which hampered his ability to learn Spanish, even though his family spoke the language at home during his childhood in Texas.
"He's quiet and amicable," said Andrew Butt, who has served for more than a year alongside Martinez on the city's Planning Commission. "But he is sincere in his populist desires and notions."
Butt said Martinez's election is likely to embolden the council's far left wing, and it will be interesting to see how far Butt's father, newly elected Mayor Tom Butt, or Councilman Jael Myrick go with them. Four votes is enough to pass legislation in Richmond.
During his erstwhile failed runs for office, Martinez was known to putter around town in his red Mitsubishi pickup truck, toolbox on the passenger-side floor, stopping at corners and stapling up his own cheap campaign signs. He kept up the nickel-and-dime routine this year, out of both style and necessity, but this time he got over the hump.
"I'm surprised he won," said John Marquez, president of the Contra Costa Community College District Board of Trustees and a former Richmond councilman.
In a twist, Chevron's heavy spending against him may have been the difference -- Martinez happily reminds anyone who asks about his victory that he had only one campaign mailer to Moving Forward's countless brochures attacking him.
The attacks on Martinez painted him as an irresponsible debt shirker, chronically absent from meetings of commissions he sits on and an anarchy-loving, left-wing radical.
In one section of the website noeduardo.com, Moving Forward operatives posted a YouTube clip of Martinez at a 2011 City Council meeting. In the video, Martinez delivered a halting, desultory series of remarks about "anarchy" and "totalitarianism," making a tenuous argument about anarchy "at its best" working when everyone respects each other.
"Anarchy is the highest form of government," Martinez said. "I say it's the form of government because it requires the highest sense of civic responsibility."
Marquez, who first met Martinez more than a decade ago when the latter was a local teacher known for radical activism, recalled Martinez staging a hunger strike against education funding cuts and walking from the Bay Area to Sacramento. Marquez said Martinez's ticket to power in Richmond was his decision to ally with the RPA.
"He will be the go-to person on the council for the city's growing Latino community now," Marquez said. "It will be interesting to see how he takes on that role."
Contact Robert Rogers at 510-262-2726. Follow him at Twitter.com/sfbaynewsrogers.
EDUARDO MARTINEZ Age: 65
Claim to fame: Newest Richmond City Council member
Quote: "Richmond sets trends; the soda tax (of 2012) didn't pass here, but we started a wave that has landed in Berkeley and Mexico and will continue elsewhere."

Richmond loses moderate council member Jim Rogers
By Robert Rogers Contra Costa Times
Posted:   12/08/2014 12:00:00 AM PST0 Comments | Updated:   about 24 hours ago
RICHMOND -- When the new City Council is sworn in next month, a name that has been there for more than a decade will be conspicuously absent -- and the lingering question for many is whether the loss of perhaps its most mild-mannered and evenhanded conciliator will be a costly loss of pragmatic moderation.
"I'm sitting on the edge of my seat, wondering what will this new council will do," said longtime resident Charles Smith.
Without a ground game and lacking the anti-Chevron bravado that propelled his competitors to victory, Jim Rogers fell 816 votes short of third-place finisher Eduardo Martinez in the November election. He will be out of office for the first time since 2001.

Jim Rogers. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Rogers' electoral loss brings to an end a stint in which he had come to be both reviled and praised for his role as a middle man seeking compromise between diametrically opposed council wings. His long-winded, vacillating answers frequently infuriated his more conservative, Chevron-supporting colleagues, Corky Boozé and Nat Bates. At the same time, his refusal to throw his support behind some controversial policies drew the ire of the progressive wing, which urged its supporters to not vote for him this election.
Rogers' insistence on remaining independent of either polarized side was probably his undoing and could pave the way for a more unified council -- with all the promise and pitfalls that brings.
"Jim is somebody who was always willing to have a productive discussion about policy," Councilman Jael Myrick said. "That's a perspective that might be missed."
The tipping point this cycle was probably the eminent domain mortgage-rescue plan that the progressives threw their weight behind. The program, still in limbo because Rogers broke away from the supermajority coalition required to move forward -- but with renewed hope now that he's gone -- seeks to seize underwater mortgages from banks to keep owners in their homes.
The Richmond Progressive Alliance distributed a "No on Rogers" statement in its campaign mailers just before the election, blasting him for not doing enough to help struggling Doctors Medical Center, being too friendly to Chevron and attempting to carve exceptions out of the city's minimum wage hike.
"(Rogers) favors banks, casinos, poverty wages and backroom deals," the statement read.
Rogers' ouster could revive the push to move ahead with eminent domain; Martinez has signaled his firm support.
The direct attack was an unusual experience for Rogers, a lanky exercise buff with a mop of curly hair whose style has been to skate by the Richmond political donnybrooks. Even now, after the RPA helped sink his campaign, Rogers has nary a word of criticism. In fact, he considers himself part of the council's "progressive majority of different shades."
"The progressive majority belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Richmond," Rogers said, calling the past four years a "time of successes."
Rogers has a legacy of accomplishments on the council, including freeing up city money to avert the closure of Kennedy High School and leading the successful campaign for the Measure U sales tax to fund road repairs.
He also used his swing vote status to help curry support for a five-minute limit on council members' remarks in public meetings -- which drastically reduced the interminable talkfests -- and proved a tough negotiator in helping wrest $90 million from Chevron as a condition of its $1 billion modernization project at the local refinery, though he was criticized for not earmarking any of that money for Doctors Medical Center.
When the progressive majority made the controversial decision to clear the public from a raucous council chamber, Rogers voted to let them back in. While the progressives staunchly opposed any talks about building a casino at Pt. Molate, Rogers said he was open to weighing proposals and having an up-or-down vote on a specific plan. The casino was rejected by voters in 2010.
A former county supervisor, Rogers also built a reputation locally as "The People's Lawyer" in the 1980s and '90s with his late-night television ads. His political career survived after he surrendered his law license in 2006 amid a slew of complaints pending against him and after the State Bar Association had concluded he was excessively charging clients, most of whom he represented in minor auto-accident cases. Rogers still insists his practice helped thousands of clients receive settlements for injuries.
This year, the longtime councilman could not overcome the shifting sands of Richmond politics, where money and name recognition have been overcome by tireless grass-roots efforts to get people to the polls.
In advancing his agenda, Rogers has always been more lone wolf than coalition builder. Mayor Tom Butt once remarked that Rogers "drives him crazy" because of his lawyerly proclivity for hedging.
But Myrick, whose own appointment to a vacant council seat in 2012 was engineered by Rogers' shrewd positioning, said Rogers deserves high praise for his recent work.
And Rogers, 59, may have another life as an elected leader.
"Jim has shown a willingness to put what he thinks is the right policy above his personal political considerations, and that's too rare in politics," said Myrick, who benefited from Rogers' support when he was appointed to the council last year. "I doubt we've seen the last of Jim Rogers."
Jim Rogers Age: 59
Background: Richmond city councilman since 2001, lost in November election; also was briefly on the council in the early 1990s before serving as a county supervisor from 1994-98. Former attorney who built a reputation as the "The People's Lawyer" in local television ads in the 1980s and '90s.
Quote: "I felt that a lot of the attacks on me during the campaign were off target."

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