RICHMOND — A candle flickered atop a small table as Gayle McLaughlin, eyes welling, recited 25 names.
Each one belonged to a person killed in Richmond in 2011. As she’s done every year, McLaughlin was huddled in a small room in the city’s public library with a few residents to honor the lives lost to gun violence in the long crime-plagued city.
The mayor steadied her squeaky voice and delivered the kind of idealistic pronouncement that’s become de rigueur for her.
“Eventually,” McLaughlin said, “we can have a zero homicide rate in Richmond.”
Three years later, the homicide rate is not zero in Richmond, but it’s about half what it was in 2011.
And with the local economy on the upswing, her political coalition flourishing and her chief bÃ2/3te noire, Chevron Corp., reeling from a botched bid to take back control of city government, McLaughlin is poised to ease out of the mayor’s seat after eight years and look back on a string of successes.
A UC Berkeley campus project is in the works, and the city has seen crime plunge and new businesses sprout. Termed out as mayor, McLaughlin, 62, ran for City Council this year, and won as the highest vote-getter in a crowded field — despite relentless attacks by a Chevron-backed political action committee. Even many of her political opponents and skeptics are forced to acknowledge that she’s succeeded in advancing her vision.
“She deserves a lot of credit,” said longtime school district trustee Charles Ramsey, one of Chevron’s favored candidates who lost against her in a bid for a City Council seat. “She worked hard, and she’s had some success.”
When McLaughlin won a stunning election in 2006 — incumbent Irma Anderson and a popular councilman split votes — she was greeted with waves of hoopla but perhaps not the full measure of respect. She was a novelty as the nation’s only Green Party mayor of a city of more than 100,000 residents.
Her modest stature, cookie-baking-neighbor looks and unpolished speaking style sent a signal to opponents to take her lightly, especially in a bare-knuckle town like Richmond.
“She seemed very shy and meek, even as she was making hard-hitting points,” Terri Hinte, a Richmond resident and former arts and culture commissioner, wrote in a Facebook message. “I have an image of her looking down and speaking softly to her notes.”
Those days are gone. The unsteady political neophyte transformed into the city’s clarion voice of indignation against vested interests. She was aided again in 2010 by a three-way race and again triumphed. Homicides plunged during her second term, from the high-40s to 16 last year, the lowest total since 1980.
“The reduction of crime is what I’m most proud of,” McLaughlin said in a telephone interview. “Like everything else we’ve accomplished, it was a collective effort that I was part of.”
To her critics, the city has enjoyed marked improvement in recent years despite McLaughlin, not because of her.
“It’s a mistake to try and put a medal around her neck,” said longtime resident Don Gosney, who has worked on the campaigns of McLaughlin’s opponents. “Crime is down, and the economy is up, and that’s the work of people and forces much larger than McLaughlin. Meanwhile, her hatred of Chevron and inability to work with them and her insistence on traveling the world to deal with issues outside of Richmond hasn’t served the city well.”
McLaughlin’s ally on the Richmond Progressive Alliance, Mike Parker, sees McLaughlin’s battles against Chevron and other powerful interests in a different light. “Gayle challenged the power of established Richmond institutions to the benefit of residents, and she helped change the city,” he said.
Particularly successful endeavors, such as funding a novel crime-intervention program staffed by former offenders and securing the UC Berkeley project, have enjoyed McLaughlin’s unswerving support. The criticism that she traveled too much, used in Chevron-funded campaign attacks, has been roundly discredited; she only missed one meeting in the past four years.
But her detractors are quick to point out that all is not perfect in Richmond. The city dipped into its dwindling reserve fund this year to close a $7 million deficit, and reports this year revealed that the city’s Housing Authority is one of the nation’s most poorly run. The city continues to groan under the weight of an underfunded pension for retired workers.
Critics also contend that McLaughlin shares much of the blame for the city’s dysfunctional council meetings, which are marked by gavel-slamming recesses and shouting matches.
Councilman and newly elected Mayor Tom Butt, who has often been McLaughlin’s ally, stormed out of a council session earlier this year while accusing her of not knowing how to run a meeting. He’s since apologized to her.
Fresh off her November victory, McLaughlin flew to New York to reprise her role as the city’s chief spokeswoman and ambassador, appearing on the Bill Moyers news show and speaking her well-worn gospels against money and corporations.
Moyers asked her what she learned from the recent election.
“Yes, corporations can have a lot of money and influence, but that’s nothing compared to the power of people when united,” McLaughlin said with a faint smile. Moyers asked whether that idea might be “cliché.”
“That’s what has made change throughout the history of the world,” she said.
GAYLE MCLAUGHLIN
Age: 62
Claim to fame: Two-term mayor of Richmond, recently elected to City Council. First Green Party mayor to lead a city of more than 100,000 residents.
Quote: “I made the mayor’s office the most community-involved position it has ever been by being out there constantly in solidarity with the community to define our destiny; that was my real power.”
