The East Bay-- Progressive Jovanka Beckles vs Establishment Phony Buffy Wicks

In May we profiled two candidates in California's 15th Assembly District, which includes parts of Berkeley, Richmond, Oakland, Albany, Emeryville, Piedmont, El Cerrito, Pinole, El Sobrante, Hercules and Kensington. The demographics: 39.40% White, 27.1% Latino, 19.9% Asian and 16.31% Black. Only 6% of the registered voters are Republicans-- which means that if a conservative is serious about running for office there, they run as a Democrat-- the way Buffy Wicks is doing.

The two finalists from the primary are Jovanka Beckles, the working-class community organizer, queer Afro-Latina immigrant, and unabashed democratic socialist; and Buffy Wicks, the former CAP fellow, Hillary Clinton campaign operative and low-level Obama staffer. While Wicks cruised to the first spot in the top-two primary with over 30% of the vote, the second-place spot was decided by the thinnest of margins, with Beckles claiming victory over opponent Dan Kalb by just over 700 votes.

Now that the competitors for the November general election have been decided, the choice facing the voters of the 15th district couldn't be clearer.

Wicks' platform is carefully crafted to appeal to Bay Area progressives and #resistance voters. (An unreconstructed Blue Dog type Democrat wouldn't fare well in this district, no matter how many photos they took standing next to Barack Obama.) But when it comes down to details, it's clear that Wicks ran well to the center during the primary, a stance that continues in her platform today.

The first plank on her website is aimed at the housing crisis, and it's a stark reminder that Wicks stood alone during the primary in her opposition to the repeal of Costa-Hawkins, the statewide ban on local rent control ordinances that's long been the bane of renters and community housing organizers across the state. Proposition 10, a voter-initiated repeal of Costa-Hawkins, is on the ballot in November, and Beckles is campaigning heavily for its passage. Confusingly, Wicks is taking no position on the measure, despite claiming elsewhere that she opposes Costa-Hawkins repeal: "we'll see what the voters decide in November" was her only comment, when pressed repeatedly by a KQED reporter.

On healthcare, Wicks seems to understand that the Democratic base treats support for single-payer health care as a litmus test, so her platform doesn't reject the idea outright. But from the language she uses, it's clear that her support for the idea is tepid at best:


California is taking an important and necessary look at universal healthcare and creating a single-payer system. Making that happen will mean making some difficult choices in our budget and tax policies. I believe California can and should be committed to providing single-payer health care for its residents. I am ready to be bold, tackle tough spending questions, and keep California moving towards a stable single-payer health care system-- while immediately moving to protect vulnerable Californians from the Trump administration's plans to take critical medical coverage from millions.

"Difficult choices," "tough spending questions," an "important and necessary look": these are not the words of a candidate who believes that free, universal healthcare is one of the greatest moral callings of our time. Who can read this passage and seriously believe that Wicks won't reject any single-payer bill that comes up for debate on the grounds of "fiscal responsibility?" In contrast, full-throated support for SB 562, California's most recent version of a single-payer bill, is a central plank of Beckles' healthcare platform.

With Wicks' campaign benefitting from over $400,000 in independent expenditures from pro-charter PAC "Govern for California" during the primary alone, it's especially instructive to see how the two candidates differ on education policy. In her platform, Beckles advocates for a statewide moratorium on building new charter schools, and identifies them as a culprit in undermining public school quality and worsening working conditions for teachers. Wicks, unsurprisingly, only calls for more "transparency and accountability" for charters, while insisting that they "can serve a need in our community." As for post-secondary education, Beckles proposes universal tuition-free education for all of California's public school systems-- from community college to the CSUs to the UCs-- while the most Wicks can muster is making college "debt-free for low-to-middle income students."

On labor issues, the difference between Beckles and Wicks is particularly glaring. Beckles supports a broad suite of pro-worker policies, from a $20-an-hour minimum wage, to expanded protections for workplace organizing, to an end to mandatory arbitration and non-disclosure agreements, to reducing the full-time workweek to 36 hours. Wicks, meanwhile, has no section for labor rights on her platform at all.

On the right you see the Blue America 2018 legislative candidates' thermometer. Please consider chipping in what you can to help make sure that Jovanka Beckles beats Buffy Wicks in November. The California legislature is full of conservative Democrats gumming top the works and preventing progress on proposal after proposal. The last thing California needs is another one like that in the state Assembly-- exactly what Buffy Wicks has always been and, despite her desperate attempt at camouflage, still is.