Politics
Richmond city government operates under a council-manager system with 9 members (including mayor and vice mayor) elected to alternating 4-year terms. Politically, the city is a Democratic stronghold. By the early 1990s, not a single Republican remained on the council. The city council has four African Americans, four whites and two Latinos.
The position of Mayor rotated between members of the Richmond City Council until 1981, when the office became an elected position. George D. Carroll, who was voted by the City Council to become Mayor on July 6, 1964, was described at the time as "the first Negro mayor in California and first in America with the exception of small, scattered all-Negro communities in the Deep South,". George Livingston Sr. was the first elected African American mayor. He served from 1985 to 1993. Rosemary Corbin served as the mayor from 1993 to 2001. In the early 2000s Gayle McLaughlin was the first Green elected to the council, with the support of the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA), a coalition of liberal Democrats, progressive independents, and Greens. In November 2006, McLaughlin was elected mayor, defeating incumbent first-term Mayor Irma Anderson.
In 2006 the city implemented a computer program that it had ordered from a German firm that provides the city with statistical interactive maps. These maps cover such areas as signage locations, streets, crime hot-spots, and zoning information. In 2007 the city won a contest in which its previously substandard website was upgraded and improved to make it more modern and functional. The prize includes 2 years of free webmastering.
There has recently been controversy regarding appointments of councilpersons Sandhu and Thurmond who were not elected at-large or were appointed to the ballot on a Yes/No basis.
Recently Mayor McGlaughlin and Councilperson Butt have opposed Chevron's Renewal Project that would replace their 1950's era Hydrogen Manufacturing plant with a newer more efficient plant would increase pollution by using dirtier, thicker, but cheaper crude oil.
The city of Richmond has eight community centers which are located within city parks. Many of the city's community centers were closed in the early 2000s following budget miscalculations and financial difficulties. In the 2006 city elections many candidates ran on platforms promising to reopen these community centers, most of which had been closed due to budget cuts. That election also featured a city sales tax increase, Measure Q, which failed.
There are 53 voting precincts in Richmond. During the regular election on November 7, 2006 21,575 of 37,605 (57.37%) registered voters cast their ballots.
Richmond has formerly been home to black culture and activist movements, most notably the Black Panther Party.
Read more about this topic: Richmond, California
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self- Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Man made one grave mistake: in answer to vaguely reformist and humanitarian agitation he admitted women to politics and the professions. The conservatives who saw this as the undermining of our civilization and the end of the state and marriage were right after all; it is time for the demolition to begin.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)