Candidates for California state Senate district 7, from left, Kathryn Lybarger, Jesse Arregu’n, Jovanka Beckles, SandrŽ Swanson and Dan Kalb. (Courtesy photos)
A competitive race among five East Bay Democrats to replace termed out Berkeley Democrat Nancy Skinner in Senate District 7 will narrow down to two candidates following Tuesday’s primary election.
Early results showed Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín leading, with three candidates neck-and-neck for second place behind him: Oakland Councilmember Dan Kalb, AC Transit Board member Jovanka Beckles, and California Labor Federation President Kathryn Lybarger.
Former Assemblymember Sandré Swanson and real estate investor Jeanne Solnordal, the sole Republican in the race, trailed not far behind.
The district, previously called District 9 and assigned a new number for the 2024 election, represents 847,000 residents in Contra Costa and Alameda counties along the I-880 corridor, including Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond and Alameda.
Two candidates were leading in terms of money spent on advertising: Lybarger and Arreguín. Campaign spending by outside interests — including Uber, landlord associations, and University of California unions — totals over $4 million, making this the most expensive state Senate race so far this year.
An independent expenditure committee called Fighting for our Future also spent nearly $120,000 to support Beckles last month. The committee’s donors include the California Association of Realtors, California Building Industry Association and business and agriculture associations — groups that don’t seem likely backers of a candidate who has vowed to fight “corporate greed.”
Some of those groups — specifically, the Realtors and the Building Industry Association — have also backed Arreguín, suggesting that they may have supported Beckles in order to split the vote between her and Lybarger so that neither of the two progressive candidates would gather enough votes to make it to the general election in November.
Arreguìn, 39, has served as Berkeley’s mayor since 2016. He has become a vocal supporter of building new housing in the city, despite his initial anti-development views, and has made his pro-housing stance a central part of his senate campaign.
Kalb has served on the Oakland City Council since 2013, and is an advocate for environmental protections. As a council member, he has written legislation to ban ghost guns and divest city funds from fossil fuel companies.
Lybarger has never held public office, but has served as president of the 2.1 million-member California Labor Federation. She is currently president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents more than 30,000 University of California system workers and has spent over $1.7 million in the race to support her.
In deep blue District 7, Skinner has been a progressive leader in the California Legislature since she was elected to the California Assembly in 2008 and later the Senate in 2016, focusing on criminal justice reform, building more housing, and reducing the state’s carbon footprint.
Final election results may not be tallied for several days.
Check back for updates.
Originally published at Kate Talerico