School Board Election 2012: Randy Enos

Randy Enos, the son of a teacher, the father of a teacher, a 37-year-veteran of the classroom himself, is not much of what you’d call a politician. But the candidate for the West Contra Costa Unified School District board has retired from teaching, so maybe this is the next best thing.

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City Council Election 2012: Tom Butt

Tom Butt Richmond City Councilmember

In March 1970, Tom Butt, fresh out of serving in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Vietnam, chose to be discharged there. He mainly wanted to visit Angkor Wat, an architectural wonder in nearby Cambodia. Butt then continued a long “odyssey” back to the United States through Southeast Asia, across the Trans-Siberian Railway in…

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City Council Election 2012: Gary Bell

Gary Bell was the first person in his family to go to college, a star football player, and the youngest city council member ever elected in his hometown of Wichita, Kansas. But don’t ask the Richmond City Council candidate about his defeats. “Did you just use the defeated word with me?” he asks, his eyebrows…

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City Council Election 2012: Nat Bates

In the summer of 1975, Richmond Councilman Nat Bates received a call from Ben Brown, a Democratic campaign organizer in Atlanta. Brown needed Bates’ support rallying African American voters behind his candidate, Jimmy Carter, a little known peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia who had just finished his term as governor and was seeking the Democratic…

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City Council Election 2012: Marilyn Langlois

Marilyn Langlois

“Knock! Knock!” Compared to the red door, the woman’s head and shoulders, blurry through the window, look enormous. The weather outside is ominous, dark and cloudy. “Who’s there?” The door opens. The giant (surprise!) is City Council candidate Marilyn Langlois, and this is the inside fold of a slick red and olive political flier. Don’t…

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City Council Election 2012: Bea Roberson

There’s one outcome for the City Council election that Bea Roberson says she can’t let happen, and it’s the reason the first-time candidate decided to put her name on the ballot to begin with. “We cannot let the [Richmond Progressive Alliance] win again,” Roberson said, standing near the dais in the city chambers after a…

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City Council Election 2012: Eduardo Martinez

Eduardo Martinez

Eduardo Martinez sits at the front desk of the Richmond Progressive Alliance hunched over a pile of donor thank-you letters. It’s midday and the quiet of the office is punctuated by the hum of vehicles that pass by on Macdonald Avenue and the occasional police siren in the distance. As Martinez picks up the letters…

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City Council Election 2012: Jael P. Myrick

Jael P. Myrick sits in front of students at Kennedy High

There wasn’t anything unusual or exciting about the white shirt, gray slacks, black shoes or the red, diamond patterned tie that Jael P. Myrick wore. Even the way he blended in with people didn’t make him seem out of the ordinary. Myrick is to all appearances a regular guy. But in a field of City…

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Council divided over alleged attack on Booze

Corky Booze speaking from the council dais

With exactly three weeks until the upcoming election, Richmond’s key political players were out in full swing and the council’s division on full display at Tuesday night’s meeting. The main source of tension for the evening was a recent fight between Corky Booze and Richmond Progressive Alliance member David Moore. The much-disputed incident between the…

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City Council Election 2012: Anthony Green

portrait Anthony Green

Richmond native Anthony Green spent 13 years in the Air Force – first as an Aerospace Ground Equipment mechanic, then as a loadmaster for the C-5 airplane, which he told me was one of the best jobs he ever had. “I still got to fly around everywhere,” he said. “I just wasn’t flying the plane.”…

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