Courtesy Robert Raburn

Campaign Ad for Raburn criticizing the Oakland Airport Connector

Robert Raburn’s campaign for BART board got off to rocky start.

At a rally against the $500 million Oakland Airport connector in September, Raburn’s bike and laptop were stolen after he left them leaning against a news van.

But in yesterday’s election, Raburn upset incumbent Carole Ward Allen in what he characterized as a referendum on the controversial airport connector – a project that Ward Allen had pushed for years.

“The Oakland airport tram was on the tip of many people’s tongues – I heard the word boondoggle used by citizens very often,” said Raburn who criticized the project as a waste of money, calling it the “gold-plated tram” in campaign ads.

Ward Allen, an Oakland native, had represented her district in Oakland for 12 years. Raburn got 46 percent of the vote while Ward Allen collected 35 percent.

Across the Bay, the longtime president of the BART board James Fang cruised with 48 percent of the vote. Fang, the pugnacious and well-connected son of the prominent Fang family, remains the only elected Republican leader in San Francisco. 

Thor Swift/The Bay Citizen

Fang at a recent BART meeting

Fang’s main challenger Bert Hill, who dumped around $75,000 of his own money into the race and was endorsed by the local Democratic Party, got just 26 percent of the vote. A third candidate, Brian Larkin, who spent almost no money campaigning, got 24 percent of the vote.

Hill and Raburn had campaigned on similar platforms: spending less money on big projects like the airport connector and extensions into the suburbs and more on the core system.

BART held a groundbreaking for the connector, a tram that will carry passengers from the Coliseum BART station to the Oakland airport, in the weeks leading up to the election. Fang scheduled numerous events and the BART public relations department was busy on his projects in the weeks and months leading up to the election.

It has been an eventful few years for BART with the Oscar Grant shooting, the controversial connector and the barely averted strike. All these things made the down-ballot race more visible.

Before even taking his place on the board, Raburn –an urban planner and bike advocate -- urged calm ahead of Friday’s sentencing of the BART policeman, Johannes Mesherle, who shot Grant.  

“I want to reach out to the community and let them know that there is some new leadership, and given the Mesherle decision forthcoming this is a time to reflect and keep the peace.”

Although Raburn railed on the airport connector in his campaign, he acknowledged that there would be little that he could do to turn back the decision to build it at this point.

“I seriously doubt that I’m going to be able to stop that project -- it is moving forward,” said Raburn. “However any additional spending is going to have to come to the board, and I will be a voice of financial reason because we just can’t go into debt and balance the budget on the backs of riders.”