Berkeley voters have chosen a political newcomer as their next mayor.
Civic organizer and nonprofit education consultant Adena Ishii will succeed Jesse Arreguín following her narrow victory in the Nov. 5 election.
It has never held political office before. But voters weren’t looking for experience in this election. They were looking for change.
“My message in this campaign was that we needed a reset at City Hall, that we had had two City Council members resign, citing that city politics had become broken and toxic,” Ishii told KQED. “We needed someone who was going to be focused on the issues.”
Ishii had some star supporters, including State Sen. Nancy Skinner, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, and Tom Bates, who served as Berkeley’s mayor from 2002 to 2016. Those endorsements boosted what initially seemed like a long-shot campaign, especially after the January resignations sparked new perceptions of chaos.
Ishii, who will be the city’s first Asian American mayor, ran a campaign focused largely on homelessness and housing. The housing crisis is one she understands personally. After moving from Los Angeles to Berkeley for college, she was forced to couch surf because of a lack of housing. She eventually found stability, earning a business degree from UC Berkeley and a law degree from Santa Clara University. She worked in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office and headed the League of Women Voters’ Berkeley Albany Emeryville chapter.
Read more about Berkeley’s next mayor and her ideas for the future here.