East Bay Express

October 29, 2008

Richmond

This election is a referendum on Chevron, and we believe that it's time the city finally stands up to Big Oil. In the city council race, we support incumbent Tom Butt, a no-nonsense politician who voted against Chevron's massive oil refinery expansion plans earlier this year. That expansion could allow Chevron to start refining dirtier grades of crude, thereby extending its ugly history of polluting Richmond. In fact, we are hard-pressed to name another East Bay politician that we respect more than Butt.

We also support challengers Jovanka Beckles, a community activist and small-business owner, and Jeff Ritterman, chief of cardiology at Kaiser Richmond. Beckles and Ritterman decided to run because of the Chevron expansion and we salute them as citizen activists fighting a righteous cause. Incumbents Nat Bates, John Marquez, and Harpreet Sandhu, should be thrown out of office for their decision to give Chevron what it wanted. These three members of the so-called "Chevron Five" also should be ashamed for trying to use a backroom deal with Chevron as a way to dole out favors and buy votes (see "This Election is About Big Oil," page 10).

Finally, we endorse Measure T, which would generate up to $26 million a year in tax revenues from manufacturers. Richmond needs the funds to lower crime and repair roads and most of the tax money would come from Chevron.

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