by Elise Craig/BERKELEY

The Berkeley mayoral race was such a blowout that Tom Bates gave his acceptance speech with less than 45 percent of precincts reporting his victory over Shirley Dean.
“It’s still early, but you know what, I think the tide is turning in our favor,” he said.
Though the campaign had no polling numbers going into the election, initial absentee results showed Bates with 58.8 percent of the vote to Dean’s 39 percent.

Mayor Tom Bates watches election returns at the Berkeley UDC office.

“Here in Alameda County, we have a very high percentage of absentee voters—maybe 60 percent or even higher. It’s usually a pretty good indicator,” said Terri Waller, United Democratic Campaign volunteer and district director in state Senator-elect Loni Hancock’s El Cerrito office.

By midnight, Bates’s lead had grown to 61 percent to Dean’s 35.6, with 80 percent of precincts reporting. Final tallies show him with 61.5 percent.

In their speeches, both Bates and Hancock recognized the importance of the national victory, and Bates even ended his speech by saying, “Go Obama.”

“From Barack Obama down to Tom to City Council to School Board. I guess we say what, it takes a village to change a planet?” Hancock said.

They also echoed the message of Obama’s speech: that the real work is about to begin.
Hancock reminded the audience that the economic crisis and new state budget would seriously affect her district in the new term. She also said she planned to work on repealing “the two-thirds vote that holds us hostage in passing a state budget that meets the needs of our people.”

In his speech, Bates said he would continue to work to make Berkeley “the greenest city in America,” as well as work with the school board on his 2020 programs, and fight to bring more jobs to Berkeley. He said that the next few years will be tough, but he would work to ensure “ that the people that work in Berkley can actually live in Berkeley.”

Though the speeches and celebration were spirited, the real party was already over. By the time results from the mayoral race started to flow in, it had gotten so late that all of the high-school students who had worked as interns on the campaign had already received certificates of appreciation and gone home before Bates even got there. When he arrived at the UDC office, Barack Obama had already been president-elect of the United States for more than two hours. The hugging and the tears had stopped, and more than half of the crowd had cleared out. The bigger party was outside the office on University Avenue, where drivers honked their horns and yelled for Obama.

Inside, campaign workers and Council members waited for more concrete results from their own races. Bates was glad that his own race was over.

“It was actually very difficult, because it was very personal. Shirley Dean had a lot of information about the city, and a lot of times it was skewed. I feel like I never really got to answer questions the way I wanted,” he said.

With the election behind him, Bates will face the same problem as politicians across the country: providing community services on a very tight budget. “Our fiscal problems the city is going to face are going to be the number one issue,” he said. “Some of this is going to take money, some of it is just going to take creativity.”

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