In the Covid world we live in today, it’s difficult to host the type of candidate forums that we’ve become used to.  Instead of gathering in a big room with the candidates sitting at a row of tables with an audience perched in front of them, we have the dreaded Zoom meetings.

Instead of hearing from the speakers with a “good morning” what we hear so often is a “can you hear me?”

And then there are the myriad of technical glitches.

This is the world we live in today.

The West Contra Costa Chapter of the League of Women Voters partnered with the West Contra Costa Unified School District to host a series of candidate forums.

Because voters now elect their representatives based on the wards that they live in, the WCCUSD now has five wards. 

To better see the boundaries of these wards and to see which ward you reside in, there is a very useful interactive map:

https://ndcresearch.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=fd53001ddd3741f996e3542e28b845d0

A smaller printable map can be seen here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rG88Kt1fwOha79biaQcm2QQuGHizkLi5

Each ward held its own forum.

The candidates are:

WARD 1

HERCULES/PINOLE/TARA HILLS/RICHMOND

Estela DePaz     Jamela Smith-Folds

WARD 2

WEST RICHMOND/SOUTHSIDE of RICHMOND

Lupe Enllana     Otheree Christian     Audra “Golddie” Williams

WARD 3

SAN PABLO/RICHMOND

Mister Phillips

WARD 4

HILLTOP TO CARRIAGE HILLS and down to Garvin

Demetrio Gonzalez Hoy     Matthew Trujillo     Y’Anad Burrell

WARD 5

KENSINGTON/EL CERRITO/RICHMOND ANNEX/MARINA/EAST RICHMOND

Tom Panas     Carolyn Wysinger     Leslie Reckler

Because Mister Phillips is running unopposed, he was not invited to participate.

Questions were sent in by voters and ten were selected to be asked of each candidate.

As we might expect, candidates expressed their views on defunding school resource officers, charter schools, the budget, equity and a host of other subjects.

Radio Free Richmond thanks Robert Jordan from the WCCUSD for providing videos of the forums.  For brevity’s sake, the four and a half hour video was split into the four individual forums and the social banter amongst the LWV volunteers was removed.

The links below provide YouTube links as well as GoogleDrive links.  The videos can be downloaded directly from the GoogleDrive links.

Ward 1

https://youtu.be/JPMrFyUOJB8

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RlUwCZuC5XjWgTsHaHTX-v8Q8RAZT6_j/view?usp=sharing

Ward 2

https://youtu.be/JwNzqCR488g

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-xsy8RMdxaVhJG5u6aNvBdQuPKu72KA2/view?usp=sharing

Ward 4

https://youtu.be/ZesB-JswReg

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XYLvU6-lr4rSS9cXcdCTunh-On8NkhnJ/view?usp=sharing

Ward 5

https://youtu.be/m6glbrNWRW8

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CzZvnoyHmJSSNyKarD5Znt8y4OmjEy8B/view?usp=sharing

[Instead of showing headshots of the candidates, these videos largely show a full screen version of the clock with a thumbnail headshot of the speaker in the corner.]