Donate to Andrew for Berkeley Council 2024

I'm pleased to announce that I'm applying for a position with the residents of District 5, to represent them on City Council!

For the past several weeks, as the beauty of spring has unfolded, I've been fortunate enough to have many meaningful conversations with District 5 neighbors and local government, non-profit, small business and public safety leaders.

The hope and enthusiasm they have for the renewal of our city is inspiring!

Like me, many of them believe we're off track. That some of our elected and appointed officials are looking out more for themselves and their ideologies than they are for us. That the political revolving door, where public service positions are too often viewed primarily as a springboard for higher office, poorly serves the rest of us and our city.

It is from this common purpose of renewal that I'm launching my campaign.

Please donate $60 if you can, and forward this link to others.

If you are a Berkeley resident, be sure to complete a matching contribution form. We are participating in City of Berkeley public financing, and you can multiply your contribution SIX TIMES.

To maximize your impact, please also identify at least five other individuals in District 5 and Berkeley who are ready for change. You can forward this link to them, or send their names and email addresses to Andrew4Berkeley@gmail.com.

Your contributions will lay the foundation for us to communicate with District 5 voters, and win in November. Thank you!

Find out below why I'm running, my principles and priorities, my plan to win, and my bio.

WHY I'M RUNNING

We have so much to work with in this beautiful city, so much potential!! To the west, the waterfront, the marina, and the Bay. To the east, the hills, parks, and awe-inspiring vistas. In between, some of the smartest people and best food and amenities, and one of the most revered institutions of higher learning in the world.

Yet it is undeniable: Our city government has squandered too much, and made too little of our potential. Too often, we have fallen short of our ideals, and failed to help the people we're trying to help. Our quality of life has suffered.

Over and over, I hear this from residents and community leaders in District 5 and Berkeley, and I'm eager to collaborate on solutions.

I'm running to be a part of the solution, fulfill our potential, and renew our city.

Please donate $60 if you can, and forward this link to others.

MY PRINCIPLES & PRIORITIES

Many of you are quite familiar with my principles of transparency and integrity, my collaborative approach to problem-solving, penchant for evidence-based solutions rather than ideology, and empathy for the underdog.

These are the bedrock principles and values I bring to bear in my service to the community, and that I will bring to my service on Council.

Many of our neighbors and community leaders believe we can best accomplish our common purpose of renewal by refocusing our city government on its core responsibilities, including:

• your safety and that of your loved ones from fires, natural disasters, criminal behavior and vehicle crashes;
• funding and repair of our streets and other critical infrastructure;
• sound stewardship of our public funds

Through my years of policy work, city meetings, and experience on the Homeless Commission and Solano Avenue BID Advisory Board, I have gained a broad working knowledge of City government. This strong foundation is the basis of the meaningful discussions I'm having with community members and leaders, and will enable me to have an immediate impact on our priorities when I'm sworn in in December.

I intend to earn the voters' support through rock-solid principles, policy substance, and hard work. 

Please donate $60 if you can, and forward this link to others.

IN IT TO WIN IT!

As the campaign progresses, our plan to win this race is to:

• maximize public financing, which will give us about $57,000 to work with
• develop messaging material, including a website, mailers, ads and other literature, that is consistent with our principles and District 5 priorities
• obtain the endorsements of other like-minded public officials, individuals and organizations
• have direct conversations with as many District 5 voters as possible, through tireless door-knocking and issue-based gatherings
• sign up volunteers to help spread our message -- in person and online

You can help now by contributing $60, and by spreading the word to your contacts in District 5 and throughout Berkeley.

Very shortly, there will be other opportunities to get involved, and we'll be sure keep you in the loop. In turn, please feel free to reach out to me any time.

With humility and gratitude.... Thank you for all that you do.

Forward together,

Todd Andrew (he/him/his)

Andrew for Berkeley Council 2024

District 5 / FPPC #1468064

MY BIO

I moved to Berkeley from Oakland in October of 1999, to a house at Cedar and California, to get married and start a family. The kids' mother and I were proud to raise our daughter and son through Berkeley public schools, and to coach their youth sports and encourage other extracurricular interests like music and art.

My kids are the loves of my life, and I'm grateful for the opportunity Berkeley offered to raise well-rounded, thoughtful, justice-oriented children.

Being good co-parents but not good roommates, the kids' mother and I split in 2006, and I have lived in a rent-controlled apartment on Hopkins at Monterey since October 2006.

Prior to Berkeley, I lived in San Francisco after graduating from Harvard in 1988. To keep my housing costs affordable, I had rommates in a few different locations before moving to the Emeryville in 1991. There, I shared a three-bedroom apartment with work colleagues before getting my own modest one-bedroom apartment in the Rose Garden area of Oakland a short while later.

I spent the first 15 years of my adult work life as an employee benefits professional. In January of 2003, I became a Realtor with Red Oak Realty, a job which I have joyfully held for over 21 years.

Regarding my childhood, I was born and raised in Iowa. My mother and father married at the ages of 18 and 20.

My mother was a union factory employee for Oscar Meyer and Firestone. My dad got kicked out of a small private college in Davenport, and went to work selling mainframes and other business equipment for a company called Burroughs.

I came along about a year after Mom and Dad married. My first brother arrived about a year later, and my second brother about five years after that.

Mom and Dad made a decent living in those early years, enough to buy a little house and some land and horses. But Dad got tired of the corporate grind, so he and Mom decided to sell everything and, with three young children, Dad went back to college.

His work was more satisfying after he graduated in 1974, and he was good at it, but the remuneration was low for a family of five. Mom and Dad had sold all of their assets, so they rented a modest home. We had a huge garden in the back yard with eight rows of green beans and many many rows of potatoes and other fruits and vegetables. My first younger brother and I spent hours helping Mom and Dad tend to the garden and pick and can the produce. We were eligible for food stamps at one point, and Mom had to use a small loan that was intended for cosmetology school for family expenses instead. Her union jobs were long gone, so she took jobs at a supermarket deli and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

That first house Mom and Dad rented after he graduated was later demolished to make room for an auto parts store. While all of my memories of our time there are not fond, I can relate to the scene from Grosse Point Blank where the John Cusack character arrives at the place of his childhood home to reminisce, only to find it has been demolished and replaced with a convenience store.

In a similar vein, the transformation of Iowa's politics has been an unwelcome development for me. I remember it as a place of thoughtful, neighborly, educated, and mostly forward-thinking, tolerant people. I still see these qualities in my friends when I visit. But frankly, it was emotionally traumatic for me to see the state flip harder for Trump than any other state in the Union after voting for Obama twice, and I'm still regularly disappointed by political developments there.

Mom and Dad struggled in their marriage. In the later years, Mom said more than once, "Money may not buy happiness, but it's a lot easier being unhappy with money." My youngest brother, still in high school, bore the brunt of the conflict. Their divorce was final shortly after I graduated from college.

Not long before the divorce, Dad started the first of a couple of small businesses. Mom retired as an Executive Assistant at Rockwell Collins. Both remarried within several years.

Like the kids' mother and me, Mom and Dad have been friendly since shortly after they split, and they host holiday and other family gatherings together. Recently, we gathered with members of both extended families for Dad's 80th birthday.

I've been told I have a "justice orientation," and I'm not sure what part of my upbringing and life experiences are responsible for that. Both sides of my extended family were concerned with treating others well, no matter who they were, and with doing the right thing. Certainly, Mom and Dad always emphasized these values. But I think it was the circumstances of my childhood, as much as the moral lessons, that gave me the empathy and sense of right and wrong I've had since I can remember.

With empathy and justice at my core, I guess it was natural that I became a liberal politically. It seems to me that a sense of justice is often accompanied by a thirst for knowledge, and this has been true for me also. Who was it who said, "reality has a liberal bias"?

I remember how appalled I was at the presidential candidacy of George W. Bush, and I sent long emails with suggestions into the void to the Gore campaign on a regular basis. That and reading, Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, by Molly Ivins, helped me maintain my sanity.

I'd rather not open old wounds with my friends on the left, but by 2016 I had become frustrated with the Democratic Party. In my opinion, certain elements in the party had ceded too much ground to Republicans and Corporate America in the previous 20 years, hurting regular people and ironically damaging the prospects of the party itself. In fact, I believe these elements of the party were complicit, to some degree, in the rise of the right-wing extremism that poses such a threat to our way of life today.

As a result of this frustration with the Democratic Party, in addition to having an affinity for many of his policy proposals, I supported Bernie Sanders for president in 2016 and 2020. I feel especially grateful that he ran from within the party instead of without.

It's all water under the bridge, I suppose, but there's no denying that Bernie's influence has been felt deeply in the Democratic Party, in the policies of Democrats in Congress, and in the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

We must do everything we can to re-elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and as many Democrats as possible in 2024.

One day, Bernie's dream of Medicare for All, robust union rights, a living wage, effective climate action, and.... say it with me now!... "economic, racial, social, and environmental justice for all" will be a reality.

Until then, the struggle continues.

With humility and gratitude.... Thank you for all that you do.