Candidate Interview: Jamin Pursell runs for Richmond City Council District 4

Jamin Pursell is running for the District 4 seat on the Richmond City Council, seeking a rematch against incumbent Soheila Bana, and says his years of involvement in local Democratic politics and city and county commissions give him a deep understanding of how Richmond government works.

A longtime figure in local Democratic politics and civic groups, Pursell serves as secretary of the Contra Costa County Democratic Party and as a delegate on the executive board of the California Democratic Party. He also chairs Richmond Rainbow Pride and serves on the county's Hazardous Materials Commission, where he leads the operations subcommittee and participates in both the Economic Development and Fish and Wildlife committees.

District 4 covers the freeway-bisected stretch of residential hills that includes Fairmede-Hilltop, May Valley, and Carriage Hills, neighborhoods that Pursell said often feel disconnected from the rest of Richmond.

“People think that we have a little bit of what I call the quiet sibling syndrome, where if you’re being quiet, you must have all your needs met,” he said. “We still have needs. It’s just perhaps the needs are different.”

A small-business owner and artist originally from Alaska, Pursell said he and his husband bought their home in May Valley 16 years ago because it reminded them of Los Angeles, where they previously lived. He describes the area as "diverse, layered, and not stucco.”

Pursell holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy from California State University East Bay and a master of science in law from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, with a focus on statutory and regulatory policy.

“I wanted to be able to bring those skills back to help craft better policy locally,” he said. “Some of the most disastrous things government does are poorly thought-out policy, and then the consequences that echo from it, because they weren’t looking at those in a holistic manner.”

Public safety from police to streetlights

Ask Pursell what District 4 residents care about most, and the answer comes quickly: public safety, public safety, public safety. But his definition of the term also extends beyond patrol officers.

“Public safety is a noun, and it’s a feeling,” he said. “It includes police and fire, but it goes beyond policing. Good lighting, good quality streets, making sure we have ways to respond to certain issues that perhaps don’t need police.”

District 4 is split between two police beats, each assigned a single officer. Pursell said those officers are often pulled away to assist elsewhere in the city. With the Richmond Police Department’s station located in Marina Bay, response times to his district can stretch to 20 minutes or more.

He said the area also lost a police substation when Hilltop Mall closed. Residents, he added, sometimes wait months for broken streetlights to be repaired, with lighting problems reported from the Hilltop area to Carriage Hills.

On police staffing, he is blunt: the department is overstretched. He said officers are working six days a week and 18-hour days.

“It is inconceivable that we are having our employees of the city working at that kind of pace,” he said. “We talk about quality of life. That should apply to everyone.”

He supports expanding non-police response programs for lower-level calls, such as noise complaints and situations involving unhoused residents, but insists police remain essential and that the two approaches should work together rather than replace each other. He pointed to community policing as a model with deep roots in Richmond, crediting former Chief Chris Magnus as well as the Guardians of Justice organization for establishing a tradition of police accountability and community trust.

He said he also wants to address fire response times. Because many residential developments in the district were built as dead ends, fire access is constrained, and Pursell said residents are concerned about the potential for wildfire given what they are seeing elsewhere in California.

Housing and homelessness: a regional problem

On housing, Pursell said the city’s permitting process needs reform. He pointed to steps taken by Oakland and San Francisco to streamline approvals and said Richmond should study what has worked there. He said the permitting department also needs better staffing, and that high fees and slow timelines discourage residents from making basic improvements to their homes, such as adding an accessory dwelling unit or a garage.

“Perfect is the enemy of done, and that has stalled a lot of development,” he said.
He also raised concerns about toxic soil on formerly industrial land and said new housing should be concentrated along transportation corridors rather than crammed into a single location such as the former Hilltop Mall site.

On homelessness, Pursell said Richmond’s larger unhoused population reflects both the city’s lower incomes and its decision to provide services rather than push people out. He called for a more regional approach, coordinating with neighboring cities and outreach workers to serve encampments that cross city and county lines.

“Richmond has a larger unhoused population partly because we provide services. If you’re a city that doesn’t provide services and has an outright rousting policy, you don’t have an unhoused issue because you’ve erased it.”

Small business and economic development

Pursell runs a local fashion brand and makes T-shirts for various causes. He said he looked for commercial space in Richmond but found it more expensive than in Orinda, a challenge he said is common for local entrepreneurs. On the Economic Development Committee, he has proposed creating a registry of local makers and vendors to connect them with city festivals such as Juneteenth, Pride, Cinco de Mayo, and Spirit and Soul. He also said he would push to strengthen the city’s relationship with the chamber of commerce and explore ways to help businesses survive seasonal downturns.

He described walkable commercial corridors, similar to what he said is working on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, as a goal for Richmond’s downtown, and said the city needs to understand why certain commercial spaces sit vacant, whether because of contamination, absentee ownership, or speculative holding.

More broadly, Pursell said Richmond needs to stop waiting for what he called “unicorn” businesses and actively invite a range of employers, including industrial ones, to help diversify the city’s tax base beyond its dependence on Chevron. “If people want to make sure that Chevron is not a third of our budget, we need to invite other people in,” he said.

He argued that expanding the tax base would allow Richmond to deliver better infrastructure and services across neighborhoods, from street paving to basic maintenance. Efforts should start with supporting small businesses through incentives, buy-local campaigns, and revitalizing long-vacant storefronts. At the same time, he emphasized maintaining a diversity of business types, including walkable clusters of restaurants, shops, and specialty stores as well as larger industrial employers, to provide a range of economic opportunities for residents.

Running without the RPA

Pursell ran for council in 2022 with the endorsement of the Richmond Progressive Alliance. This time, he is running without it.

“The RPA was my home for a very long time, because I did see alignment,” he said. But he said he parted ways with the organization over what he described as a culture of political lockstep and a tendency to look for villains rather than solutions.

“Having a mandate of alignment, being in lockstep, that doesn’t serve democracy,” he said. “It doesn’t serve representation. And it wasn’t serving me. I couldn’t allow people to speak for me.”

He said he grew exhausted with what he saw as a dismissive attitude toward police officers and city staff among some in the organization.

“Just because you don’t agree with someone doesn’t mean you should demonize them,” he said.

Pursell said he wants the council seat to be focused on Richmond issues and to operate transparently, with no closed doors. He said council members should explain their votes, especially controversial ones, rather than letting others define the narrative.

“If you were bold enough to vote yes or no, you should be bold enough to say why,” he said.

A first term built on stability

Asked what he wants to accomplish in his first six months, Pursell turned to a single word: stability. With the city receiving revenue from Chevron, he said the priority should be investing in lasting infrastructure and staffing rather than launching new programs that the city cannot sustain once that money runs out.

“I’m not going to give false hope and promise huge investments that will never happen,” he said. “I want to build reliability and consistency so people can see the future and where they are in it.”

He said he wants residents to feel more attached to Richmond and to trust that their councilmember is focused on local concerns rather than using the seat as a platform for outside issues.

Away from politics, Pursell said he loves to sing and can frequently be found at karaoke night at the Factory Bar. He plays several instruments, by his own admission, poorly, with a flute repertoire consisting mainly of six or seven songs that lean heavily toward Legend of Zelda and Star Wars. His deeper passion, he said, is storytelling, particularly folk tales and the archetypes that run cross-culturally through them.

"Why is the owl wise? Why is the fox cunning?" he said. "They can come from so many different angles from all over the world, and then sometimes there are these moments where everything has a synchronicity, and they all have the same interpretation of that one animal. I find that really fun."

In the coming weeks, Grandview Independent will publish interviews with candidates running for Richmond City Council and mayor.

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