Roster of 2012 Berkeley candidates firms up

Acting City Clerk Mark Numainville reviews Mayor Tom Bates’ papers for the mayoral race in City Hall on Thursday, Aug. 10. Nils Moe, one of the mayor’s aides, is in the rear. Photo: Frances Dinkelspiel

Incumbent Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates will face five challengers for his seat in November, while City Councilmember Darryl Moore will have two challengers and Max Anderson and Laurie Capitelli will each have one. City Councilmember Susan Wengraf will run unopposed.

Friday Aug. 10 at 5 pm was the deadline for candidates to turn in their paperwork to the City Clerk’s office in order to qualify for the November 6 ballot. The candidates in races for mayor, City Council, and Rent Stabilization Board were finalized, but the school board race filings will be extended until Wednesday.

“It was very busy,” said Acting City Clerk Mark Numainville, who said he did not leave the office until 8 pm. “We did 16 candidates on Friday. There were a few people in the morning, but most people came in the afternoon. That’s typical.”

The five candidates who qualified for the mayor’s race include City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, businesswoman Jacquelyn McCormick, and political activists Zachary Running Wolf and Khalil Jacobs-Fantuzzi.

Four others who had taken out papers did not complete their applications: Mark Schwartz, Eric John Clyman, Cornelia Furey, and Mary Rose Kaczorowski, according to Numainville. Stephen P. Flegal failed to turn in enough qualified signatures to get on the ballot, he said. (Each candidate needs 20 signatures from registered Berkeley voters.)

Moore will face DJ and musicologist Adolfo Cabral and Denisha DeLane, former legislative assistant to Councilmember Margaret Breland, in November. David Tursi, who had taken out papers, failed to turn in enough qualified signatures, said Numainville.

Capitelli will face ZAB Commissioner Sophie Hahn. Anderson will face Dmitri Belser, the executive director for the Center for Accessible Technology,.

Fred Dodsworth, who had taken out papers for District 6, did not turn them in so Wengraf will run unopposed.

The filing period for the school board has been extended to Wednesday Aug. 15 at 5 pm since incumbent Jon Selawsky did not take out papers, said Numainville. That extension was automatic.

Judy Appel, Norma Harrison, Tracy Hollander and incumbent Beatriz Levya-Cutler will be competing for two seats on the school board.

In the race for Rent Stabilization Board, there are eight candidates running for four seats: Asa Dodsworth, Nicole Drake, Judy J. Hunt, Jay James, Judy Shelton, Kiran Shenoy, Alejandro Soto-Vigil, and Igor Tregub.

Two others who took out papers, John Nguyen and Al Murray, did not complete their applications, said Numainville.

While political campaigning will gear up in September, the shape of the mayoral campaign was clarified Thursday when candidate Khalil Jacobs-Fantuzzi called a press conference to announce his candidacy. Kriss Worthington and Jacquelyn McCormick also attended and the three announced they were coordinating their campaigns to try to defeat Bates.

Berkeley will use a ranked choice voting system in November, which means voters will rank their top three choices for mayor (and city council). If a no candidate gets 50% of the vote, the system will automatically knock off the candidate with the fewest number of #1 votes. Then every vote cast for that last-place candidate will be transferred to the voter’s next-ranked choice among the remaining candidates. This will continue until one candidate is the winner.

While Worthington and McCormick emphasized they were very different types of candidates with differing positions on the issues, they said they would encourage their supporters to cast their #2 and #3 votes for anyone but Bates.

“I am not part of a coalition,” said McCormick. “All of us are running our campaigns independently. I am working to ensure that Tom Bates doesn’t get reelected. So is Kriss. So is Khalil.”

Worthington concurred.

“We are displaying the kind of cooperation that Berkeley voters deserve,” said Worthington. “The three of us clearly have very different perspectives and experience and priorities but all of us — and many more — are ready to have a new mayor,”

Bates said that while the race may be cast as “Anything But Tom,” he plans to run a positive campaign.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Bates said Thursday after he turned in his campaign forms. “I think this is probably the last time I will have the opportunity to be elected to public service… For my case, it’s very important for me to get 50% on the first vote. I will get second votes but not to a great extent. It will be Tom versus a group of people who are disenchanted. We are obviously going to take this very seriously.”

Frances Dinkelspiel