No Contra Costa supervisor works more durable than John Gioia. No supervisor is a stronger advocate for social and environmental fairness and for legal justice reform. No supervisor higher represents the political values of his district and is extra obtainable to his constituents.
Gioia is in search of his seventh four-year time period on the county Board of Supervisors. He has earned it. West County voters within the June 7 election ought to reelect him.
What he and residents don’t deserve is the threatening, disruptive and offensive conduct from his opponent, Hulan Barnett, an eighth-grade math trainer who's misinformed in regards to the authority of county authorities and unfamiliar with many of the work Gioia has completed for his district.
Gioia represents essentially the most liberal and racially numerous of the county’s 5 supervisor districts. In his place on the board and his appointments to the Bay Space Air High quality Administration District and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Improvement Fee, he has been a tireless advocate for his district’s progressive politics.
He has pushed efficiently for stricter rules to cut back air pollution from refineries and different West County trade. He was the driving pressure behind a brand new county well being heart and separate psychological well being heart in his district. He helped launch twoapplications in West County for at-risk youth.
He was a pacesetter of the push for the Measure X half-cent gross sales tax in 2020, which supplies new income for well being care, psychological well being providers, hearth and different emergency response, and childcare. The cash additionally helps new psychological well being disaster response groups in order that professionals can reply with or with out police, relying on the scenario, and the upcoming reopening of a Pinole hearth station that had been closed for 10 years.
He efficiently pressed his board colleagues to create a brand new county workplace to broaden racial fairness and social justice throughout all county departments. And he's a robust advocate for preservation of the county’s City Restrict Line, the expansion boundary that has helped rein in suburban sprawl and can expire in 2026 if voters don’t renew it.
Gioia’s robust management and constituent communication has been on full show through the pandemic. He pushed the county to shut the racial hole in vaccination charges by focusing on efforts in lower-income communities of coloration. He was a robust supporter of Bay Space counties’ early sheltering mandates and vaccination efforts and Contra Costa’s necessary vaccinations for county staff.
As he notes, “Our robust efforts saved lives, resulted in less-serious sickness from COVID and prevented our hospitals from changing into overcrowded, thereby protecting hospital mattress and ICU capability obtainable for individuals who grew to become sick from different sicknesses.”
In the meantime, Barnett questions the worth of vaccines and doubts, regardless of overwhelming proof, whether or not they have been efficient in controlling the severity of sickness, variety of deaths and hospital impacts. “I’m unsure if that’s correct” is one of the best he can say.
He opposes vaccine mandates, says he has not been vaccinated and calls those that advocate for necessary vaccination of college youngsters Nazis. It’s an offensive and reckless comparability to the demise of 6 million Jews throughout German-occupied Europe throughout World Battle II — the magnitude of which, by the best way, Barnett didn't know.
Barnett is thought for his disruptive conduct. In public remark on the West Contra Costa College Board assembly in December, he stated he considered Jan. 6 “as a day the place folks stood up and I’m saying particularly for our youngsters.”
He referred to as for storming the board. “Allow them to understand how we really feel. We are able to come proper in there and have a celebration and that’s what I feel we have to do. Have an enormous previous shindig with them in there and see how they really feel when their board assembly erupt.”
It wasn’t an remoted incident. In October 2019, Barnett was requested to depart, and departed after police approached him, after he repeatedly disrupted a city corridor assembly hosted by Rep. Mark DeSaulnier.
In sum, Barnett just isn't temperamentally suited to main Contra Costa’s largest public company. In the meantime, West County residents have a wonderful incumbent who has earned one other time period. Voters ought to reelect John Gioia to the county Board of Supervisors.