Richmond, California, where the oil giant Chevron is being accused of attempting to buy the city government. The company has spent more than $3 million to back a slate of pro-Chevron candidates for mayor and city council ahead of Tuesday’s election. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Chevron has paid for TV attack ads, purchased space on virtually every billboard in town, funded a flood of mailers, and financed a fake news website run by a Chevron employee.
The move comes two years after a massive fire at Chevron’s oil refinery in Richmond sent 15,000 residents to the hospital. It was the third refinery fire since 1989 in that city. The city of Richmond responded to the latest fire by suing Chevron, accusing officials of placing profits and executive pay over public safety. Now Chevron is attempting to defeat some of its critics in city government.
Gayle McLaughlin talking:
what’s happening in Richmond now is that we have made remarkable—a remarkable transformation over the past 10 years since I’ve been in office, with other progressive electives and a progressive community. Previous to that, over the past hundred years, we were known as a company town, with Chevron having control of the City Council, having the City Council bought out, in their pockets. We had among the highest rates in the nation of violence. We were known for widespread corruption. You know, Richmond had the refinery, with a situation of allowing it to continue to pollute, without the refinery paying its fair share of taxes, without hiring locally, without upgrading the refinery in a responsible way in terms of having safety for our residents. In fact, they have thousands of clamps holding corroded pipes together. And that’s what led to the fire of 2012.
But at a certain point, in 2003 we formed a progressive alliance, and that RPA, Richmond Progressive Alliance, ran people for elected office. We won five local elections, including my mayoral seat. And we set about making the people’s priorities the focus of our work as elected officials.
And that has led to many, many gains. We won a $114 million tax settlement with Chevron. We’ve renovated our parks, many, many urban renewal projects. And we’ve reduced our crime dramatically, a 70 percent reduction in homicides. We are continuing to put forward sustainable projects—number one in the Bay Area for solar installed per capita. So, we’re spiraling up and reversing that downward spiral. And Chevron feels very threatened by that. They want to stop us as progressives. They want to continue and get and regain the City Council in their pockets. And so, we’re standing tall and making it clear that we’re a community that defines its own destiny and will continue to do so.
a statement Chevron made to MSNBC in response to reports of it spending $3 million in local elections this year. “The amount of money we spend to inform voters must be viewed in the context of the more than $500 million in local taxes, social investment and spending on local vendors from Chevron over the past five years, and our $90 million social and environmental commitment to the city that will follow once our $1 billion refinery modernization is allowed to proceed.”
Chevron does some good things in the city of Richmond, but it comes at a price. First and foremost, they require all the money that they give to nonprofits to come with this requirement that these nonprofits utilize Chevron’s logo in their press releases, and they have press conferences where Chevron gets to do its PR campaign. So it comes at a price. Yes, we think those are good projects that they have contributed to, but it is no excuse for one domineering company to try and buy a city’s election.
the 2012 horrific fire caused great damage to our community. It was a situation where 15,000 people went to local hospitals for respiratory ailments. We had damages to our local economy in terms of our property values were lowered, and there was a slowdown in attraction of new businesses to Richmond. So we feel that there was, you know, a huge trauma and a huge impact on the health and the economic future of Richmond.
So we are taking them to court. We have a lawsuit. It’s the first-ever lawsuit that the city of Richmond has waged against Chevron. And we think we deserve a City Council that will stand strong and not drop this lawsuit. If Chevron-friendly candidates get into the City Council, we fear that’s exactly what will happen, the lawsuit will be dropped, or a very weak settlement will come about. We want to stand strong and get the kind of compensation that the community deserves. And we want to make it clear that Chevron’s corporate culture must change, that they must put the health and well-being of our community before their corporate profits.
Richmond Standard website tries to promote itself as a news website, but in fact it’s a public relations—Chevron public relations website. All the articles in there are Chevron-friendly articles. They’re articles that promote Chevron’s agenda. It is not anywhere near even a mainstream news service that pretends to be somewhat neutral. It is clearly a Chevron PR website.
— source democracynow.org
Gayle McLaughlin, mayor of Richmond, California. She is a member of the Green Party. Her term is ending, and she is currently running for Richmond City Council.