2 begin runs for East Bay state Senate seat
The race is on to replace state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who will vacate her seat because of term limits in 2024.
Two East Bay leaders are early contenders for the seat. Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín announced Wednesday that he plans to run, and Oakland Council Member Dan Kalb confirmed to The Chronicle that he is also planning to make a bid.
Skinner first won the seat in 2016. Her coming departure opens the race up to local politicians eyeing their next political steps. Both Arreguín and Kalb are giving up their current positions to run.
Skinner’s district includes Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, Piedmont, Emeryville, Richmond and other parts of the East Bay. Skinner hasn’t made any decisions on her next move, according to a spokesperson.
The news comes a day after Rep. Barbara Lee announced plans to run for the U.S. Senate — which will leave her East Bay congressional seat open as well.
Arreguín, 38, the son of migrant farmworkers who was elected as Berkeley’s youngest mayor in 2016, said he has shown leadership on the East Bay’s most pressing challenges — housing affordability, climate change, public safety, transportation and homelessness. He was elected to the City Council in 2008.
“My years of experience as a mayor, as a regional leader, and my lived experience as somebody who grew up in poverty and who faced housing insecurity and displacement … (who) was able to overcome those odds and achieve the California dream, makes me uniquely qualified to be the next state senator,” Arreguín said.
Kalb, 63, was elected to the Oakland City Council in 2012, representing parts of North Oakland. He is a longtime environmental and social justice advocate. He cited his experience in drafting legislation as an important qualification for the job. Kalb’s platform will focus on environmental sustainability, climate justice, clean energy and affordable housing.
“Being a state legislator … is a lot of good, hard, often tedious work on complex public policy matters, and that’s the kind of work that I’m very good at,” Kalb said.
Both politicians have led their respective cities during tumultuous times — from the global coronavirus pandemic to a national reckoning on police violence after the 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Both Berkeley and Oakland undertook major efforts to reimagine the role of police. Last year, the Berkeley City Council voted to approve Arreguín’s plan to staff up the Police Department and create more violence prevention programs — the first of which, a mental health crisis team, will launch this summer.
In 2021, Kalb voted to invest more in violence prevention programs so the Oakland Police Department can focus on violent crime. He previously authored a City Charter law to create the city’s Police Commission, one of the strongest such commissions in the country; it has the authority to fire the police chief.
In addition to public safety, both politicians said they plan to prioritize climate change and environmental issues if elected. In 2019, Arreguín voted to ban the installation of natural gas lines in new homes. That same year, he also introduced a law banning single-use plastic, which passed.
Kalb said his environmental commitment stems from his background as an advocate in Sacramento prior to his election to the Oakland City Council. He previously worked for the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
As an Oakland council member, Kalb authored the ordinance that banned the handling and storage of coal in Oakland in 2016. He also wrote a law that banned the use of gas leaf blowers.
Housing is another key issue in the East Bay, and across California.
Arreguín was part of the shift toward a pro-housing attitude in Berkeley and said he plans to prioritize building more housing, protecting tenants and preserving existing housing. Under his leadership, the city has approved more than 800 affordable housing units. He is negotiating with BART about building housing at the Ashby BART Station and the issues of affordable housing and preserving the flea market that has been held at the station’s parking lot for nearly
50 years. Growing up in San Francisco, Arreguín said he experienced the impact of the housing crisis firsthand when his family was evicted.
“I know firsthand how scary and how difficult it is to lose your home and not know where you’re going to live,” he said.
Arreguín also said he wants to ensure that cities have consistent access to state funding to address homelessness. Last year, Arreguín, Kalb and other East Bay leaders joined to urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to include more flexible homelessness funding in the state budget.
Berkeley, which saw a decrease in its homeless population at the most recent point-intime count, has prioritized moving people into hotels, Arreguín said.
“What we’ve been really focusing on in Berkeley is housing first, and really focusing on what we know are the long term solutions that will make an impact on ending homelessness,” he said.
While the state just rejected Berkeley’s housing element, Arreguín said he’s confident city staff will make the necessary changes to gain compliance. Arreguín is the president of the Association of Bay Area Governments and was in charge of developing a plan to create more than 440,000 units of housing throughout the region.
Arreguín’s other priorities include establishing universal single payer health care statewide and building the public education system.
Kalb, for his part, helped write Oakland’s eviction moratorium and a law to expand sick leave for city workers during the early stages of the pandemic. He also authored the Tenant Protection Ordinance in 2014, which protected thousands of renters from rent increases and strengthened anti-displacement laws.
In the most recent election, Kalb authored numerous ballot measures that ultimately passed. Those measures include giving noncitizen parents or legal guardians of Oakland schoolchildren the ability to vote in local school district races; and democracy dollars, a program that gives every Oakland adult — whether they are registered to vote or not — $100 in vouchers to spend supporting a candidate in city or school board elections.
“I like and am good at getting into the details of the legislation and what the legislation does and how to get something passed,” he asserted.