Shirek Reaches a Nader in Her Career

The ifornian reports today that longtime Berkeley City Councilmember Maudelle Shirek failed to gather enough valid signatures to get on the ballot in November. This right on the heels of Ralph Nader's failure to gather enough valid signatures to get on the California statewide ballot for the same election. With no small help from Republicans, Nader collected roughly 75,000 valid signatures, about half the number he needed; Shirek only needed 20 valid signatures, but 14 of the 25 she gathered were from voters outside her council district. A recent rule change dictated that all signatures had to come from voters in a candidate's district. SFist, which is pretty good at math, notes that each candidate gathered the same proportional number of required signatures, for what it's worth, but we do acknowledge that it really shouldn't have been that hard to get 20 valid signatures for a progressive candidate in Berkeley, of all places. Should have been so easy, in fact, that the implies that rumors are circulating that perhaps the councilmember and/or her longtime aide subverted the campaign themselves. Regardless, the paper quotes fellow councilmember Kriss Worthington as saying, "She had a legendary political term. This is not a very dignified end to 20 years of dignified service.” Too true.