Richmond City Voter Guide 2024

Richmond 3rd District City Council

Richmond DSA endorses Kenya Gibson

Kenya Gibson is running to replace Ann Lambert as the 3rd district’s representative on City Council. Public records indicate that Lambert accepts hefty donations from developers and corporations, including Dominion Energy. In contrast to the many city council members who craft the city budget at the behest of the developers behind vanity projects such as the Coliseum and CarMax Park, Gibson refuses corporate donations.

She has served on Richmond’s school board since 2017, where she has been vocal and persistent in expressing concerns about the declining student enrollment numbers in Richmond’s public schools. She argues that this reflects our city’s endemic neglect of poor, black, and brown communities in favor of wealthier white communities.

Kenya Gibson is running to replace Ann Lambert as the 3rd district’s representative on City Council. Public records indicate that Lambert accepts hefty donations from developers and corporations, including Dominion Energy. In contrast to the many city council members who craft the city budget at the behest of the developers behind vanity projects such as the Coliseum and CarMax Park, Gibson refuses corporate donations.

During her time on the school board, she has worked closely with the Richmond Educations Association to achieve many tangible victories for RPS workers. For instance, her school district became the first in the state to enable collective bargaining for workers within the school system. She also helped to pass a free speech resolution and officially added teacher retention to the school board’s strategic plan. She contributed to implementing a mandate that Richmond public school funding must be held harmless from economic development projects that have been deemed risky. 

In addition, she has consistently advocated to increase pay for teachers and school staff during every budget cycle. In her efforts to dismantle corrupt elements of the district’s budget process, she helped reform school construction procurement to maximize community input and facilitate transparency in the selection of contractors. 

During her time on the school board, she has relentlessly fought to ensure that the budget process is transparent to the public. Given that Richmond’s city council has failed to update its public records regarding expenditures since 2019 – in contravention of laws mandating public access to the database – Gibson’s commitment to budget transparency would help tip the balance toward a more democratically run city council.

If elected she plans to continue to work closely with the city’s unions to improve the working conditions and organizing ability of the working class throughout the city. She plans to tackle the housing crisis head on, ensuring investments in truly affordable options and accessible public housing. She aims to shift the city’s priorities from large developer driven projects that funnel money away from communities, towards targeted bottom up investment, mainly targeting schools and public services. Lastly, she aims to continue her work in transparency and democracy to ensure that the citizens of Richmond are well represented in city council, that their calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, a divestment from Israel, fair and transparent budgeting, well funded schools, and affordable housing don’t fall on deaf ears, but are pushed forward to the forefront of the priority list past those of developers and large businesses. 

Richmond 6th District City Council

Richmond DSA supports Willie Hilliard

Willie Hilliard is running for the 6th District City Council seat this year, going up against Tavares Floyd and the incumbent of over 20 years, Ellen Robertson. The 6th District has been devastated by the effects of gentrification and ever-rising rents. In Northside, half of the residents are unable to afford food to feed their families. The 6th will also be disproportionately affected by the oncoming climate catastrophe. Southside doesn’t have enough tree coverage due to systemic racism. The James River, overflowing with sewage, is causing floods from  Highland Street to Wright Avenue. 

Councilwoman Robertson has received over $55,000 from various businesses, over a fifth of which came from housing development companies perpetrating the same gentrification by raising rents. Meanwhile, Willie Hilliard has refused to take any corporate donations, instead running a grassroots community-based campaign. 

This isn’t new for Hilliard. As the son of a Black Panther, he knows the importance of community programs. He ran the Northside Food Access Coalition, a project designed to bring a grocery store to the food desert in the 6th district. They failed to bring any grocery store in, running up against the confines of profit-driven capitalism. So they pivoted and started the Northside Farmers Market, bringing food security to an area that desperately needed it. 

If elected, Hilliard plans to transform the way housing is built in Richmond. He wants to switch to a community-based development program where medium-density buildings will be encouraged,  zoning laws banning walkable neighborhoods will be abolished, and property taxes will be transformed from our current broken system to an equitable split-rate tax system.

He’s also pushing forward a carbon neutral Richmond by championing programs like Southside ReLeaf, which works towards correcting the inequity of Richmond’s tree coverage. He pushed to  keep GRTC permanently free, keeping Richmond a walkable city for everyone. He’s fighting for more funding for the RVA Clean Water Plan to stop the flooding of our sewer system. He wants to abolish Richmond Gas Works, which keeps our city dependent on fossil fuels. This will ensure that Richmond remains an equitable, green city for all workers.

Richmond 7th District City Council

Richmond DSA Supports Eric Sundberg

Eric Sundberg is running to represent Richmond’s 7th district, which includes historic and diverse neighborhoods such as Church Hill, Shockoe Bottom, and Fulton. Through his previous community and labor organizing work in the Richmond chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, he has cultivated a vision for city council that would serve Richmond’s working class rather than the developers that many city council members are currently beholden to. In contrast to the vague rhetoric and empty platitudes espoused by many politicians, he has proposed thoroughly researched and concrete measures to address many of Richmond’s most entrenched issues. 

For instance, to combat Richmond’s affordable housing crisis, Sundberg would like to implement a freeze on the demolition of public housing units (until Congress repeals the Faircloth Amendment) and establish rent caps and rent increase controls. He is committed to creating a city landlord registry that would hold unscrupulous landlords accountable for violating tenants’ most fundamental housing rights enshrined within the Richmond’s Renter’s Bill of Rights.

He has also proposed progressive tax reforms as an antidote to Richmond’s inequitable status quo. Since around 70% of the city’s budget is collected through real estate taxes, he aims to increase taxes on commercial and speculative land holdings to offset the disproportionate tax burden placed on low- and middle-class residents. 

Sundberg plans to redirect some of the bloated funds allocated to policing toward more direct mechanisms of combating poverty and ensuring public safety. This would entail diverting these resources toward mental health services, substance abuse prevention, and homelessness prevention rather than perpetuating approaches that criminalize poverty. He is interested in prohibiting police use of military-grade weapons such as high-powered rifles, rubber bullets, and tear gas, which was recently deployed against pro-Palestine protesters. 

Sundberg is also deeply invested in addressing the environmental issues that plague Richmond’s communities and ecosystems. To counteract the heat island effect generated by the lack of vegetation in many of Richmond’s urban areas, he aims to implement a network of green corridors and maximize green spaces that would enhance walkability, aesthetic appeal, and the health of our local ecosystems.