Jesse Arreguín (born September 4, 1984) is an American politician serving as mayor of Berkeley, California. He served on the Berkeley Housing Commission and Rent Stabilization Board from 2004 to 2009 and represented District 4 on the Berkeley City Council from 2009 to 2016. He is the first Latino elected Berkeley's mayor and one of the youngest mayors in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mayor Arreguín is the president of the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Bay Area's regional planning agency.
Arreguín has described himself as an "unapologetic progressive" and said he wants to "restore Berkeley to the forefront of progressive leadership on the environment and social justice."
Early life
Arreguín was born in Fresno, California, and grew up in San Francisco, California. His parents and grandparents were farmworkers. At age 9 Arreguín became involved in the campaign to change the name of Army Street to Cesar Chavez Street in the historically Latino Mission District of San Francisco. Arreguín continued to be involved through efforts against reversing the name change in 1995, described as having "campaigned tirelessly to keep one of the Mission's main thoroughfares named after his idol, Cesar Chavez."
Arreguín was the first in his family to attend college, and attended the University of California Berkeley. While at UC Berkeley he served as the City Affairs Director for the Associated Students of the University of California and was elected to the Berkeley Rent Stabilization board in 2004, serving as chair until 2008.
Arreguín has also served on the Housing Advisory Commission, Zoning Adjustments Board, and Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee.
Berkeley City Councilmember
From 2008 to 2016 Arreguín served two terms as a Berkeley City Council member representing City Council District 4. On the council Arreguín drafted and passed over 300 pieces of legislation.
He helped increase the city's minimum wage to $15, co-wrote the Downtown Area Plan, passed the Affordable Housing Mitigation Fee used to build affordable housing, created police reform after Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and worked to save the historic Main Post Office.
Mayor of Berkeley
Arreguín announced his candidacy for mayor of Berkeley in October 2015. He faced seven candidates for the open seat, and was endorsed by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the Sierra Club, and the Alameda Democratic Party.
Arreguín won 51% of the vote after ranked-choice tabulation. At age 32 he became the second-youngest mayor in Berkeley's history. Prior to his swearing-in, Arreguín vowed as mayor-elect alongside City Council members that "Berkeley would remain a sanctuary city and continue to shield its undocumented residents from deportation." Arreguín was sworn in on December 1, 2016, and in his inaugural address said that "in light of the national election, Berkeley, now more than ever, needs to lead."
In January 2017, following the release of Donald Trump's executive orders calling for the construction of a border wall, and enforcement of immigration law including the withholding of federal funds from sanctuary cities, Arreguín released a statement along with other progressive mayors in the region opposing the "hateful and harmful policies."
When a talk by controversial "alt-right" commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was announced on the University of California, Berkeley campus in February 2017, Arreguín said, "Bigotry is unacceptable. Hate speech isn't welcome in our community." After violent protests caused UC Berkeley to cancel the talk, Arreguín said, "we as a city do not make a decision about inviting a speaker. We do not make a decision to cancel a speaker. This was a decision of the university."
In response to the same incident, Arreguín referred to Yiannopoulos as a "white nationalist," but later retracted this characterization, and instead described him as an "alt-rightist." Arreguín reportedly began receiving death threats from Yiannopoulos supporters across the country after his statements were covered by right-wing news website Breitbart News, Yiannopoulos's employer at the time.
With Arreguín's backing, the Berkeley City Council voted in March 2017 to divest from companies involved in constructing the proposed border wall with Mexico, becoming one of the first cities in the country to do so. The council also passed a resolution calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump, co-sponsored by Arreguín, who said, "Every day there’s a new ethical problem that warrants impeachment."