Berkeley election roundup: Voters back bigger street paving tax, shoot down landlords’ measure

Election Day in Berkeley. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside/Catchlight

Several closely watched Berkeley elections remain too close to call, but the results in other races are coming into focus.

If current patterns hold, Berkeley voters will have backed a bigger tax increase to fund street repairs and an animal rights group’s ban on livestock farms, while turning down opportunities to make big changes on the City Council and rejecting an effort by landlords to rewrite rental housing regulations.

Alameda County officials are still counting ballots, and estimated this week that 28% of votes still have yet to be tallied, so these results aren’t final. Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis said his office plans to provide its next update Friday.

Here are a few of the notable results that are taking shape so far:

City Council unlikely to see a sea change

Berkeley was guaranteed fresh faces on its City Council as a result of this election, with Councilmember Sophie Hahn giving up her North Berkeley seat to run for mayor and Councilmember Susan Wengraf retiring. But it’s not looking like voters made a major overhaul of the body in the four district races that were on the ballot this fall.

Incumbents Terry Taplin and Ben Bartlett are both well ahead of their competitors in districts 2 and 3, respectively. Meanwhile, the candidates with comfortable leads in the two open races, Shoshana O’Keefe in District 5 and Brent Blackaby in District 6, were each endorsed by the councilmembers they ran to replace.

Shoshana O’Keefe is comfortably ahead of her opponents in the race to represent North Berkeley on the City Council. Credit: Kelly Sullivan

The City Council has already been changed as a result of this tumultuous year, in which the back-to-back resignations of two of its nine members led to special elections over the summer to seat new representatives. And the mayor’s race could bring further change if Adena Ishii, who has never held elected office before, defeats Hahn, who has been on the council for the past eight years.

Still, the results so far don’t point to a major change in the council’s political makeup.

Voters were willing to pay more for street paving and safety projects

Faced with two options to raise money for street paving, Berkeley voters embraced the larger tax measure that pledged to spend more on road safety projects.

The latest results showed 60.1% of voters supported Measure FF, which would raise parcel taxes by 17 cents per square foot of taxable space for homes and 25 cents per square foot for businesses, leading that campaign to declare victory Tuesday. Just 44.1% of voters backed Measure EE, which would have raised taxes by 13 cents per square foot for all properties. Each measure needed a simple majority to pass.

The race between measures EE and FF served as a test of how much voters were willing to pay for better roads, and of their appetite for safety projects that often devote more space on the street to pedestrians and cyclists.

The competing campaigns grew out of a split among infrastructure advocates over how much Berkeley should spend on those projects. Supporters of Measure EE campaigned in part on the fact that their measure would not provide funding for fixtures such as protected bike lanes, which some drivers complain makes getting around by car less convenient. Measure FF, meanwhile, set aside a larger share of its funding for street safety projects and garnered the support of bike and pedestrian advocates.

A city analysis also found that Berkeley would see a modest improvement to the quality of its streets under Measure FF — which is projected to raise $15 million per year, compared to $10.8 million under Measure EE — while its pavement rating would further decline under EE.

Brandon Yung, a member of the Measure FF steering committee, said both voters’ support for safety projects and their desire to meaningfully improve the condition of local streets contributed to the campaign’s success.

“We took those two issues and attempted to address them with a measure, and had faith that the voters would agree with that — which turned out to be the case,” Yung said.

Landlord measure goes down

We’ll need to wait for the final campaign finance disclosures later this year to find out whether Berkeley’s costliest campaign of 2024 was the business-backed effort to defeat Measure GG, a tax on the use of natural gas in big buildings, or the one to pass Measure CC, an effort from local landlords to rewrite rental housing regulations. But the latter is on track to be this election’s most expensive losing campaign.

Measure CC appears headed to defeat by a wide margin, with 64.9% of voters opposed in election results posted Monday. It competed with Measure BB, a rival set of changes to rent rules that were backed by tenant groups; that proposal was narrowly ahead in the latest results, with 52.4% in favor.

The joint campaign to pass Measure CC and defeat Measure BB spent $282,638 as of Oct. 19, the end of the last campaign finance reporting period before Election Day, boosted by $200,000 in contributions from the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors.

That was the most spending by any of the measure campaigns as of the end of the reporting period, narrowly beating out the campaign against Measure GG to that point. And it was far more than the opposing effort to pass Measure BB and block Measure CC, which had raised $52,069 as of Oct. 19.

The animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere brought forward Measure DD, which bans what the group calls “factory farms” from Berkeley. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside/Catchlight

Animal rights group sees ‘huge victory’ in farm ban’s success

A mostly symbolic measure to ban commercial livestock farming in Berkeley, brought by the local animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, is on track to win. But voters overwhelmingly rejected the group’s attempt to pass a similar measure in Sonoma County, where it would have had a far greater impact on dairy and poultry producers.

Measure DD bans “concentrated animal feeding operations,” a category of farm that no longer exists in Berkeley. The only facility in the city that would have been affected by the ban was the horse racing track Golden Gate Fields, which closed earlier this year.

Cassie King, a spokesperson for the Measure DD campaign, said the measure’s apparent passage — 60.3% of voters were in favor in the latest results — will ensure horse racing never returns to the Golden Gate Fields property, and that no new livestock farms can open in Berkeley.

The measure is the nation’s first ban on what advocates call “factory farms.” That’s why, even as 85% of Sonoma County voters opposed the group’s attempt to pass a similar ban there, King insisted Measure DD’s success in Berkeley marks a “huge victory,” rather than a hollow one. The roadmap for her movement’s success, she said, will be to pass bans in other progressive cities and build momentum — even if it takes losses in agricultural regions.

“The movement is not going to first win in Iowa or the Central Valley,” King said.

She compared the effort to movements for LGBTQ rights and women’s suffrage, which she noted gained ground piece by piece despite suffering occasional setbacks.

“They all contributed to getting the issue on the table and fueling the nationwide movement,” King said. “I think the same will happen with ending factory farming.”