ERKELEY, Calif., Dec. 6 — Tom Bates, the newly elected mayor of Berkeley, has admitted responsibility for throwing out about 1,000 copies of a University of California newspaper that endorsed his opponent. The newspapers were discarded last month at Sproul Plaza, the site of noted campus protests in favor of free speech in 1964.
Mayor Bates, 64, a Democrat who was one of the most liberal members of the State Assembly for two decades, was elected on Nov. 5, a day after The Daily Californian, the free student newspaper at the university, endorsed the incumbent mayor, Shirley Dean, for a third four-year term.
The university police began an investigation when copies of the newspaper were found on Nov. 5 in trash cans near the plaza. Mayor Bates, a 1959 graduate of the university, denied he was responsible when asked about the incident by a Daily Californian reporter.
The mayor changed his story on Thursday, saying: "There is no question that tossing newspapers is absolutely inappropriate and unacceptable. I apologize on behalf of myself and my supporters."
The mayor did not say whether he or his supporters threw out the papers, although students told the police that they saw the mayor discard them.
An Alameda County assistant district attorney, John Adams, said his office would decide, probably next week, whether to seek prosecution of Mayor Bates for a misdemeanor.
"There is an issue whether free newspapers can be the subject of a theft," Mr. Adams said. "We're looking into that."
The Daily Californian, which first reported Mayor Bates's admission in today's paper, demanded in an editorial that he step down for an act that it said "blatantly disrespects free speech and the exchange of ideas."
The mayor said he would stay on the job. "I won with more than 55 percent of the vote," he said today. "I deeply regret that it happened. I was tired on the last day of the campaign. I made a mistake."
The 1964 demonstrations at Sproul Plaza, which grew into what became known as the Free Speech Movement, were protests against university policies forbidding distribution of political information.
Wow! Imagine just how liberal you would have to be to be mayor of that city.
Hey, sure, dump the newspapers, win the election, then bring on the tears. win, win, win, win. Nothing else matters.
Here's some more info from the San Francisco Chronicle. Interesting how it conservative students that caught this "rat" doing the dirty deed.
Bates sorry for theft of papers
New Berkeley mayor could be prosecuted
Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer
Berkeley's new mayor, former state Assemblyman Tom Bates, has yet to convene his first City Council meeting but is reeling from a major embarrassment -- possible prosecution for stealing newspapers that endorsed his opponent the day before the election.
Bates, 64, standard bearer for the city's progressive left, accepted responsibility for the Nov. 4 theft of about 1,000 copies of the free, student-run Daily Californian from a kiosk on Sproul Plaza -- the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement -- and tossing them in the trash.
That issue of the Daily Cal endorsed incumbent Mayor Shirley Dean, an evident source of anguish to Bates, who had campaigned almost daily on campus to win critical student support. Bates defeated Dean the next day by 5,002 votes.
Bates said Friday he had made a mistake and issued an apology, although he stopped just short of admitting that he himself took the papers.
The Daily Californian called on Bates to resign in an editorial Friday, but Bates said he would "absolutely not" step down. The Daily Cal reported that Bates had denied taking the papers when asked by a reporter on Nov. 4.
Dean called Bates' behavior "reprehensible," adding, "I think it shows a basic character flaw. ... It started with lies throughout the whole campaign."
UC police are calling the case petty theft, punishable by a fine and/or up to a year in jail, and have forwarded it without a recommendation to the Alameda County district attorney's office, said UC police Capt. Bill Cooper.
"He (Bates) didn't say he did it," said Capt. Cooper. "He said he accepts responsibility for it."
Deputy District Attorney John Adams said a decision on whether to prosecute will be made "probably within the next week or so."
Four students told police and the Daily Cal that they saw Bates remove papers and throw them into a nearby trash bin.
In a prepared statement given to The Chronicle on Friday, Bates said "tossing newspapers is absolutely inappropriate and unacceptable. I apologize on behalf of myself and my supporters for our involvement in this activity."
"I MADE A MISTAKE"
In a telephone interview Friday, Bates said, "I was tired on the last day of a difficult campaign and I made a mistake." Asked if he is admitting that he personally tossed the papers, he said, "I think it's pretty clear I apologized on my behalf and my supporters."
Cooper said Bates declined to be interviewed directly by police and referred questions to his attorney, Malcolm Burnstein. Burnstein declined to comment Friday when contacted by The Chronicle.
Bates took office Dec. 1 and will have a public swearing-in ceremony on Dec. 10, his first council meeting. The embarrassment came as Bates had hoped to bask in well-earned appreciation for his long legislative battle to establish the Eastshore State Park on the East Bay waterfront. Culminating three decades of battles, Friday was the day the state Park and Recreation Commission convened a special meeting in Berkeley, with Bates in attendance, and gave official approval to the plan.
Three of the four students who reported seeing Bates take the papers held a news conference on Sproul Plaza on Friday to call for his resignation. All four witnesses are staff members of a conservative campus magazine, California Patriot, which had run an article more favorable to Dean than Bates before the election.
The students on Sproul on Friday -- Steve Sexton, Kelly Coyne and Andrea Irvin -- said they became suspicious of Bates on the morning of Nov. 4 because he had asked for several copies of the magazine, which they were distributing on Sproul. One of them looked in a trash bin to see if he was throwing them away and saw a large stack of Daily Cals, so they decided to watch him closely about 11:30, they said.
"All of a sudden, right before our eyes, he walked over to the stacks, picked up a large bunch of papers and just dumped them in the trash," said Coyne.
The Daily Cal said it recovered about 90 percent of the papers and restored them to the racks the same day.
Dean said she would definitely "throw my hat into the ring" if Bates resigns and a special election is called for a new mayor, but she added she hasn't made up her mind on whether to call for him to step down.
She did recall the 10-year-old case of former San Francisco Police Chief Richard Hongisto, who was fired by the Police Commission after he ordered officers to remove more than 2,000 copies of the Bay Times, which featured an unflattering caricature of him.
RESIGNATION CALLED EXTREME
Bates' political allies acknowledged Bates made a mistake with the newspapers but said resignation is too extreme.
Councilman Kriss Worthington, a member of self-described "progressive" majority on the council, called theft of the papers "immoral, illegal and idiotic."
"He (Bates) should be punished legally, or he should punish himself," Worthington said. Resignation would be like "capital punishment," he said, suggesting instead that Bates "do something to support the press or free speech."
Removing the newspapers was "a major offense," said Bruce Cain, a professor in the UC Berkeley political science department, where Bates taught for two years after term limits ended his 20-year career representing Berkeley in the state Assembly. "I think he'll be damaged goods for a while."
"He really has to come back from a deep hole," Cain said. "The first thing he's got to do is make a clean breast of this."
Cain cast the theft as a misstep by an otherwise "ethical person" and said it's a "good lesson" for students: "It's good for students to see how easy it is for good people to step over the line."
Councilwoman Miriam Hawley, who belongs to the "moderate" faction allied with Dean but who has also been friends with Bates, took a conciliatory tone: "We just have to remember people do make mistakes. I think we'll all work together and get over this."
Councilwoman Dona Spring, a Bates political ally, attributed the theft to the stress and fatigue of a particularly hard campaign, which saw Dean and Bates making around 30 appearances.
But Dean replied, "We were both tired, but I didn't go out and take The Chronicle." (The Chronicle endorsed Bates.)
Bates said he wants to focus on carrying out the mandate given to him by the voters and called attention to one of his campaign proposals that's coming up at his first council meeting Tuesday -- a new rules committee to bring order to long agenda.
"You can't have one moment of weakness in politics," Spring said. "Clinton found that out the hard way."
E-mail Charles Burress at cburress@sfchronicle.com.
Source
New Berkeley mayor Tom Bates is seen strolling with his wife, newly-elected Assemblywoman Loni Hancock. Bates admitted Friday he stole and trashed copies of the Daily Cal after it endorsed his mayoral opponent, Shirley Dean. Chronicle file photo by Brant Ward
I'm going to dissent on this one. As far as I can see, the only part of this incident that wasn't "business as usual" in Berkeley is that the mayor actually said something true. The last time THAT happened, the place was still owned by Spain.
