Corry 4 Emeryville Post-Election Wrap-up End of Article
Group photo of twelve of Corry's volunteers and two dogs wearing her campaign shirts and smiling at Prizefighter bar's patio
Group photo of twelve of Corry's volunteers and two dogs wearing her campaign shirts and smiling at Prizefighter bar's patio

Corry 4 Emeryville Post-Election Wrap-up

This is a verbatim copy of what I sent in my final 2026 city council campaign newsletter.

Thank you so much for your support and interest in this project. As you’ve probably seen, we placed 3rd in an election where only the top two win.

Screenshot of the Alameda County election site showing Emeryville City Council's results as of November 9th 2026. David Mourra 1,903 votes 38.5%. Kalimah Atreyu Priforce 1,427 votes 28.87%. Corry Frydlewicz 936 votes 18.94%. Brandon Soublet 677 votes 13.7%

I’ve heard a lot of people analyzing these results (which aren’t yet marked as final, by the way, but the ranking will likely hold).

  • Incumbency bias — Neither incumbent worked very hard to campaign, but won anyway.
    • To me, this indicates that residents are pretty happy with the way the city is going, which is a good thing. I am too.
    • We did well for a first-time candidate. With nearly 19% of the vote, I did about as well as Matthew Solomon did in his 2024 win and even better than Sukhdeep Kaur did in 2022.
  • Low-information voters — Canvassers and media figures have discussed that many Emeryville voters had no idea what’s going on in our city.
    • I was surprised how many people had no idea about the Sutter Project. Flock Cameras were implemented with as much stealth as possible, so I get why folks didn’t know about those, but the hospital was huge news with people hanging posters everywhere. Wild to not know about it.

This is all cope, of course.

The people talking to me about it are sympathetic to my cause or trying to make me feel better. I’m not at all upset about the election (even if I look that way). My goal for this entire project was to try my best with limited resources without losing myself or compromising my ethics, and I feel I achieved that. I also succeeded in raising awareness about issues few were talking about before.

In the end, not enough people thought I’d be better than Kalimah to sneak past him in the rankings. As he would probably put it: “The people” have spoken. I hope he’s more successful in his second term than he was in his first. As I’ve always said — I agree with most of his policy stances.

Holding Elected Officials Accountable

So now we have to unite as a city to hold our reps accountable to their promises.

We have to make sure David Mourra balances the budget, continues to push us toward building more housing, and improves street safety. 

We have to make sure Kalimah Priforce actually gets real tenant protections on the books. I still believe we need rent control to truly reduce evictions long-term, so I hope he adds that to his methodology. I also hope he continues to work on helping BIPOC small businesses.

In coming election years, I hope we’re all talking about whether they delivered on these goals. I hope our local media focuses on the pragmatic real-world impacts of our incumbents. I’m rooting for them, and all of us.

Harm Reduction

I also hope our elected officials continue to learn and grow in some of the areas I feel they’re misinformed.

David & Kalimah

I hope David is more scrupulous about data privacy and law enforcement efficacy. It’s dangerous to have a city councilmember who blindly believes anything police tell them and isn’t sufficiently skeptical of big tech salespeople.

I hope Kalimah focuses on where he’s 100% right on housing — tenant rights, rent reduction, stopping evictions. But recognizes that saying no to anything a developer profits from isn’t going to help either. I know his supporters round me up to a full-YIMBY “abundance bro” because of my endorsements, but I’m more moderate than that. He’s right that status quo isn’t sustainable. Not building housing is part of that unsustainable status quo.

I also hope Kalimah starts being more solution-focused. He’s right that part of loving someplace should include criticism, but often his work ends there. Let’s hear creative anti-capitalist solutions in equal measure to tearing down the parts of our city he thinks are broken.

I hope both of them look for more ways to raise revenue rather than focusing mostly on trying to cut services and jobs.

I also hope both of them are more sensitive to matters that disproportionately affect women and queer people. It was alarming to me and many other residents I spoke to how ignorant or even harmful the statements they’ve made online or while campaigning have been.

The Whole Council

I hope the council is truly diligent in their Flock study session. Including a full network audit, the full event log, and any records of misuse, audit exceptions, or discipline tied to ALPR searches in their diligence. They need to press police and tech companies to prove their efficacy claims with independent peer-reviewed studies.

I also hope the council doesn’t follow many others and fall for the job-destroying, quality-of-service destroying false promises of AI companies. It’s already costing us so much and giving back so little to real human workers. Please don’t make it worse.

What Will Corry Do Now?

First, I will rest. After that, I’m planning to do more volunteer work.

A flyer encouraging people to volunteer for ECAP's holiday dinner on January 2nd 2027. It lists need for: home cooks, bulk cooks, chefs, chef assistants, kitchen & meal support, event room support, registration & check-in, drivers & transportation, parking attendants, and cleanup teams.
The QR code goes to: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScdc7xWcRCZu8CBS8UohUog5gdWDgY9AbeLgSQxCkJ2_SW0kw/viewform

Here are the first few I’m doing that you can help with too:

Next, I want to figure out what to do with my campaign website. My current idea is turning it into a hub for sharing events, promoting local businesses, and promoting activism for issues I believe in. A lot of people I spoke to while canvassing didn’t know about all the fun/rewarding stuff there is to do in Emeryville. I want to fix that.

In addition, I’d like to continue encouraging marginalized communities to come together in the real world and reduce our reliance on big tech for socialization. I hope to do better in an intergenerational way, by including young adults and older folks more.

If you want to join in, let me know. 😊

Your Yard Signs

Sadly, yard signs are pretty annoying and bad for the environment. This is why I tried not to print too many. I also hope if I ever run again, it won’t be about the same issues, so holding onto them for next time won’t be necessary.

So Coyote Media (follow them!) recently wrote an article that includes ways to creatively re-use them.

The Midterms Are Over. The Garbage They Generate Is Forever. An article on Coyote Media by Nuala Bishari.

https://www.coyotemedia.org/the-midterms-are-over-the-garbage-they-generate-is-forever/Personal Stuff

Many of you already know I lost someone dear to me right before election day. If you’re interested in Ember’s memorial or her family’s GoFundMe campaign to help pay for her expenses, find info here: https://corry.us/ember

I will eventually update that link to be my own full eulogy for her, but my capacity to write enough to do her justice is diminished by grief and exhaustion at the moment.

Thank You

Thank you once again for all your support. This will probably be the last email you get from my campaign for a while. Reach out if you need anything. 💖