Influencing San Leandro's election

San Leandro councilmember's re-election campaign gave $3,000 to a self-described Oakland media influencer to muddle the facts in last fall's District 2 election

☕️MORNING BUZZ

—After San Leandro Councilmember Bryan Azevedo engaged in a scuffle with a former councilmember at the city’s main library last September, the incident put his re-election at significant risk.

The brief confrontation was captured on surveillance video, but was not released to the public pending an investigation by the Alameda Police Department. (APD later found no laws were broken during the incident.)

The absence of the video, amid a news desert in San Leandro, fueled wild speculation among residents on various social media networks, including Nextdoor, about what exactly happened on that Saturday afternoon.

To fill the gap and shape public perceptions about the incident and Azevedo’s role, his council campaign hired a self-described media influencer, formerly from Oakland, named Zennie Abraham.

Azevedo’s campaign paid Abraham $3,000 to serve as a consultant, according to finance records released last month. Abraham’s role was to use his web presence to influence San Leandro’s District 2 council election last fall.

—Abraham’s stories and YouTube videos made no secret that Azevedo’s campaign was paying him to influence San Leandro voters.

A note was soon attached to the bottom of some posts published on Abraham’s website that detailed the arrangement. Abraham claimed Azevedo’s opponent, Ed Hernandez, was doing the same thing, paying bloggers to diminish Azevedo’s campaign.

“Zennie62Media was commissioned by the Campaign to Reelect Councilmember Azevedo to reveal the truths about the election campaign,” Abraham wrote on Oct. 4, “and because the staff was concerned that the opponent Hernandez supporter Lee Thomas, reportedly hired a well known East Bay Blogger who he’s friends with, and telling a one-sided story.”

—Azevedo’s campaign got its money’s worth from Abraham’s convoluted yarns and conspiracy theories that generally placed Azevedo as the victim.

When it came to confrontation at the San Leandro Library, Abraham recast the incident as Azevedo protecting his mother from being antagonized by Lee Thomas, the former San Leandro councilmember who tussled with Azevedo at the library.

Throw down in the 'Dro town

In one curious article, Abraham accused Thomas of elder abuse against Azevedo’s mother, even claiming to know Thomas’s intent. Accompanying the commentary was a link to the state’s elder abuse law.

“Shockingly Mr. Thomas sees nothing wrong with violating California Elderly Abuse Law in trying to cause emotional distress to Councilmember Azevedo’s mother, but his actions were against the law,” Abraham wrote.

In another version, Abraham claimed Hernandez was behind the incident, even though he was nowhere near the confrontation. Azevedo, as Abraham framed it, was baited into the confrontation by Thomas, Hernandez, and San Leandro school boardmember Leo Sheridan.

In another article, Abraham claimed Sheridan was the ghost author of consistently negative postings about Azevedo on social media.

In yet another article, San Leandro Mayor Juan Gonzalez III, according to Abraham, was making moves behind the scenes to investigate Azevedo following the incident at the library.

The real reason, according to Abraham, was Gonzalez’s secret plans to redevelop the San Leandro Marina with a developer that donated to his campaign, in addition to Hernandez’s campaign. In this new reality, Azevedo was the roadblock to Gonzalez’s plans.

—Abraham’s local click-bait and content mill has been well-known to Oakland politicos for nearly two decades. But he’s rarely veered outside city lines to influence public perceptions.

There are very few known ties between Azevedo’s campaign and Oakland political figures to suggest who was the go-between them and Abraham, who now plies his trade from Georgia.

What is known is that spending $3,000 for this type of media influence peddling is extremely rare for San Leandro politics, where political campaigns are still relatively inexpensive to run.

—Did Abraham’s interjection of false or tilted narratives influence last fall’s council election? It’s hard to say.

Azevedo won last November’s council race by 455 votes over Hernandez out of 28,755 votes. In close races, the margin of victory could point to a number of factors.

But what is certain is the election influence campaign waged in support of Azevedo whipped up his sizable number of loyal supporters into a frenzy. When the furor began to wane, Abraham posted his articles directly to Nextdoor to reignite indignation against Hernandez.

Azevedo has nurtured steadfast support since his first run for the city council in 2016. His consistent attention to everyday San Leandrans has more than made up for his lack of legislative chops over the years.

It’s a reason why Azevedo appeared bulletproof during last fall’s campaign even after the confrontation at the library, in addition to clear video evidence that he removed Herndandez’s yard signs from a front yard in Washington Manor.

Similarly, when FBI agents descended on Azevedo’s home on Jan. 7, many of his supporters rushed to social media to urge against a rush to judgment. Nevertheless, significant headwinds are gathering against Azevedo that will soon test the mettle of even his most vigorous supporters.

—More inside:

• Three Oakland councilmembers have a plan for reopening fire stations temporarily closed due to the city’s ongoing budget woes. The proposed legislation also seeks to “rescind the authority granted to the city administrator to take all actions necessary to preserve the fiscal health of the city.”

• A 25-year-old county policy prohibiting new drive-in establishments in a section of unincorporated San Lorenzo is likely going the way of plastic straws, and a carve out was made to aid the family of the area’s founding father.

• Oakland special election campaign finance data for Wednesday.

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