Adena Ishii joins run for Berkeley mayor

Adena Ishii announced her run for mayor of Berkeley on the platforms of housing and homelessness, public safety, education and aging at an event Saturday. Ishii joins sitting Councilmembers Kate Harrison, Sophie Hahn and Rigel Robinson, who announced their candidacies in September. If current Mayor Jesse Arreguín, who is running for state senate, fails to advance to the November ballot, he will still have the opportunity to run for reelection as mayor. The Daily Californian spoke with Ishii to discuss her campaign platforms. Ishii has lived in Berkeley for almost 15 years and was involved in local politics while attending Berkeley City College. She continued her work once transferring to campus’s Haas School of Business. “We were fighting against budget cuts to education, and I started to help with organizing my peers to rallies up to Sacramento and then got very involved with the civic engagement club at Berkeley City College,” Ishii said. Shortly after graduating, she started working with the League of Women Voters to help diversify the group and grow the league. Ishii has also run programs to help transfer students, as well as initiatives with BUSD to lower the voting age to 16 for people running for school board. Ishii also noted that she was on the soda tax commissions and the Sugar Sweetened Beverage Product Panel of Experts. Whilst doing that, she was involved in passing measures O and P which had to do with the housing bond and transferring tax for public service. Ishii mentioned that her experiences being housing and food insecure in Berkeley was part of why she chose to run on platforms of public safety and housing and homelessness. “I see that it’s really important for people to get involved,” Ishii said. “Representation is super important, and it’s important for people who have actually been impacted by these issues to be engaged in politics and to run for office, and that’s why I’m running for mayor.”