Fremont councilman to challenge longtime supervisor
FREMONT >> Fremont City Councilman Vinnie Bacon is planning a 2020 run for Alameda County Supervisor in District 1, offering a challenge to longtime incumbent Scott Haggerty, who hasn’t faced an opponent for nearly two decades.
“If you want someone new, here I am,” Bacon said Sunday in an interview with this news organization.
“We need debate,” he said. “It’s just wrong for anybody to go into office without a challenger.”
District 1 includes Livermore, Dublin and most of Fremont — where Bacon has served since 2012 on the City Council, and will be termed out in 2020.
The district also includes much of the unincorporated area of the Livermore-Amador Valley, and a portion of unincorporated Sunol.
Bacon said he’s hoping to win over voters with a platform focused on evening out the jobs-housing imbalance and limiting what he called overdevelopment, which he said have led to cascading effects of untenable traffic congestion and school overcrowding.
“I think my ability to argue for better planning and devel-
opment that doesn’t lead to all the traffic problems we have, I think that is my experience in Fremont, and it is applicable to a more regional office like that,” he said.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, of which Haggerty is a commissioner and former chair, is “supposed to be doing regional planning such that we don’t have this huge problem of people having to commute 50 or 60 miles into their jobs,” Bacon said.
“Obviously, something has been done wrong with transportation planning so far if we’re in this situation where we have these horrible commutes and people can’t afford to live here,” he said.
He’s also concerned the commission’s CASA Compact — a long-term regional planning effort to address the housing crisis — gives developers too broad a license to build mostly market-rate housing, without securing enough guaranteed funding for creating more affordable units.
Bacon wants to hold developers accountable to build more office and commercial space into or near their housing projects, and work with major area employers to sell the idea of spreading job centers around the district.
“Look at the commute in
the morning,” Bacon said of Interstate 680’s consistent and predictable gridlock.
“Everybody is going over to Silicon Valley, and in the evening everyone is coming back and the reverse commute is pretty mild. So clearly, we have a real problem there,” Bacon said. “You really need to bring those job centers here.”
Bacon also hopes to tap into what he said is a growing interest in people supporting candidates who don’t take special interest money.
While he admits he has taken money in past election cycles from the Sierra Club and some trade unions, he said he’s never taken developer money, and plans to take no political action committee, or PAC money during this campaign.
Haggerty faced an opponent in the 1996 primary election, his first year running for the seat, but has run unopposed ever since, according to Shawn Wilson, his chief of staff.
Bacon said he thinks his platform, which he will hone in the coming months, will resonate with voters, giving him a shot at Haggerty’s seat.
“If he’s this big powerhouse, and everybody agrees that kind of level of power is OK, then I will lose,” Bacon said.
“But I think you do also have a big sentiment of people wanting to see change in politics, and wanting to see new candidates and new ideas come,” he said.
“And clearly, I have the huge advantage over Scott in that regard.”