If you didn’t have a chance to check out John Wildermuth’s spread in the SF Chron article on Dec 29, Ex-Richmond mayor looks to bring a Bernie Sanders approach to Sacramento, it’s worth a read!
Ex-Richmond mayor looks to bring a Bernie Sanders approach to Sacramento
December 29, 2017
For former Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, it’s time to take her city’s progressive politics on the road.
McLaughlin, a former Green Party member, is running for lieutenant governor in 2018 as an independent candidate, confident that California is ready for the type of all-in liberal politics that her Richmond Progressive Alliance brought to the East Bay city.
“I decided that at a certain point I had to do a statewide race,” said the 65-year-old McLaughlin. “If I ran statewide we could spread the Progressive Alliance farther and move it to a larger stage.”
The Chicago-born McLaughlin was one of the founders of the Richmond group, which ran a slate of progressive outsiders in 2004 to replace City Council members they said were both ineffective and too closely tied to Chevron, the city’s most powerful business.
After two years on the council, McLaughlin beat an incumbent mayor by 242 votes in 2006. She held that office until 2014, when she was elected again to the council, where members of the alliance now hold five of the seven seats. She resigned her seat this year so she could campaign to replace termed-out Democrat Gavin Newsom as lieutenant governor.
“We want to show the rest of the state how we did it, how we reduced crime, raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour and put in new rent control rules,” she said.
To read the whole article, click here.