Local newspaper:
Chevron spent big to ... defeat the "Team Richmond" candidates who are hostile to the oil giant's mammoth refinery here, but voters rejected Chevron's efforts.
This is the best news of the election cycle, for underwater home-owners (whom Team Richmond seeks to defend from abusive foreclosures, as
recognized here by New York Times), for their neighbors, their sympathizers and critics of banker fraud and other abuse of unsophisticated borrowers and other consumers and little people.
It's even good news for the theory that "all politics is local" can overcome the ability of big money to "fool most of the people most of the time":
a slate of candidates on shoestring budgets swept their oil titan-backed opponents on Tuesday night in a resounding political defeat for the company and its campaign tactics.
Longtime local politician [Team Richmond-endorsed 70 year-old] Tom Butt defeated his City Council colleague [well-funded and very well-known] Nat Bates, garnering 51 percent of the vote to Bates' 35 percent.
In the race for three full-term City Council seats, outgoing [term-limited] Mayor Gayle McLaughlin (16.9 percent of the vote), incumbent Jovanka Beckles (16.2 percent) and challenger Eduardo Martinez (14.6) -- the "Team Richmond" slate backed by the Richmond Progressive Alliance -- swept despite a flurry of negative advertising against them.
[Also, Team Richmond-endorsed] Incumbent Jael Myrick trounced [well-funded] Corky Boozé for a two-year seat.
..."It was a big win for the progressives,"