Police and labor groups have funneled nearly $1.2 million into the election for the only open seat on the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors election this November, according to campaign filings reporting 2024 transactions through Sept. 21.
Mike Barbanica, who was elected to the Antioch City Council in 2020, is a retired Pittsburg police lieutenant and owner of a real estate property management company, which he said oversees more than 200 properties in the region. Shanelle Scales-Preston is a sixth-year Pittsburg City Councilmember who has worked for California’s 10th Congressional District since 2001, currently serving as District Director for Rep. Mark DeSaulnier.
Both candidates are fighting to replace Supervisor Federal Glover, who represents the county’s northern waterfront, encompassing Martinez, Hercules, Pittsburg and a sliver of Antioch, as well as a dozen other unincorporated communities. Glover announced his retirement in December after serving on the board for 24 years — the first African American elected to the highest county office, who remains the only person of color in the board’s history.
A little more than a month before the November election, the election is awash with independent expenditures — an unlimited spending mechanism separate from a candidate’s own campaign, which advocacy groups frequently use to bolster their influence in policy-making.
This financial support, in part, illustrates the starkly different ways Barbanica, 55, and Scales-Preston, 46, are campaigning to govern these diverse communities, which contend with different needs for public safety, homelessness, industry regulation and development.
Barbanica is waging a campaign that is based in law-and-order priorities — emphasizing the need to crack down on crime, homeless encampments, urban and rural blight and what he sees as mismanagement of the county’s $5 billion budget. Highly critical of the way the county has historically spent taxpayer dollars, he said he would advocate to craft more cost-effective solutions, such as collaborating with existing landlords and temporary housing programs to help residents find stability.
Scales-Preston is running on a platform that prioritizes collaboration to bolster affordable housing production, transportation access and youth and job programs to support residents, especially marginalized communities. She highlighted the necessity of tackling both big, systemic projects alongside “everyday” issues, pointing to her success funding roof repairs at a local homeless shelter and organizing ceasefire initiatives to quell gun violence in Pittsburg and Antioch.
A political action committee in support of Barbanica collected more than $433,000 by Sept. 21, funded primarily by groups representing hundreds of police officers, dispatchers and law enforcement officials across the Bay Area, according to campaign filings. Subsequent ads, mailers and a website backing Barbanica, who earned 38.7% of votes during the March primary election, were largely financed by the Contra Costa County Deputy Sheriff’s Association, on top of support from the county’s firefighters union, police associations in six Contra Costa County cities and luxury residential developers boasting projects in Antioch, Danville, Livermore and Pleasanton.
Those hundreds of thousands of dollars don’t take into account individual, capped donations that police PACs and individuals, including prosecutors …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
