On a Saturday evening last spring, Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) cochair Claudia Jimenez hosted a high-spirited rally and party with two hundred supporters of her reelection campaign for the Richmond City Council. Jimenez is a forty-six-year-old immigrant from Colombia, who worked as an architect and community organizer before seeking elected office four years ago in her diverse, blue-collar city of 114,000, which is 80 percent non-white.
On the seven-member council, which includes an RPA majority, she has immersed herself in municipal finance questions, public safety issues, and the long-standing challenge of making Chevron, the city’s largest employer, more responsive to community concerns about its environmental impact.
Along with Mayor Eduardo Martinez, a retired Richmond schoolteacher, Jimenez backed a 2024 ballot initiative — dubbed the “Make Polluters Pay Tax,” which pressured the giant oil refiner into making a financial settlement with the city, that will add $550 million to its treasury over the next decade.
However, at her campaign kickoff last spring, she ticked off a list of accomplishments less dramatic than jousting with Big Oil or passing one of the first city council resolutions in the nation opposing “all existing and any future military aid to Israel” because of its “collective punishment” of Palestinians in Gaza.
Instead, Jimenez reminded her audience of city council work on traffic safety, youth job creation, main library renovation, parks and recreation program improvements, pay raises for city workers, and reallocation of police department funds to pay for other public safety programs, including the creation of a “mental health response team” that can respond to some 911 calls that don’t…
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Auteur: Steve Early
