THE RUNNING OF RON
The “Draft Ron Dellums” Movement that is currently
sprouting wings and flying all over town has generated the most excitement in an
Oakland mayoral race since, well, let’s see…since Jerry Brown announced his plans
to run some eight years ago.
For those who don’t read the news so much, a group of progressives and black political
leaders recently began a campaign to convince Mr. Dellums–the former Congressmember–to
run in the 2006 election to succeed Mr. Brown. From all indications, Mr. Dellums
is giving it serious consideration.
From a distance, the 1998 Brown candidacy and the potential 2006 Dellums candidacy
have some superficial similarities, particularly the idea that a nationally-known
political figure would be expected to bring star-power attention to an unappreciated
Oakland. Remember when Jerry Brown was going to put Oakland on the map? Has that
been long enough that we can now call it a back-in-the-day thing?
Anyways, the similarities between what Mr. Brown has done and what Mr. Dellums might
do pretty much end right there.
One is in the area of race, but it’s more complicated than the obvious fact that
Mr. Brown is white and Mr. Dellums is black.
No one is expecting that Mr. Dellums–one of the few (if not the only) black politicians
in the nation’s history to win repeated re-election from a political district that
was not majority black–would suddenly reverse course in the latter stages of his
life and start building a black political power bloc at the expense of all other
groups.
And Mr. Brown is not accused of being an anti-black racist, if by that term we mean
someone who either hates black people, or thinks they are not his equal. (Mr. Brown
probably thinks that few people are his equal, but that makes him arrogant
and elitist, not racist, which is another thing altogether.)
When he first ran for mayor in 1998, Mr. Brown did ride
the wave of underlying feeling in some areas of Oakland that there had been enough
of black rule–the Wall Street Journal reported in an August, 1999 article
that “in his campaign for mayor, Mr. Brown … promised to dismantle the African-American-dominated
political machine that presided over much of the city's decline since the 1970s.”
And while Mr. Brown’s attacks on the black sideshow youth have not been overtly anti-black,
they have often strayed very close to the edge in their appeal to anti-black stereotypes.
Still, Mr. Brown retained some of the black presence within Oakland government that
was there under Mayor Elihu Harris. Mr. Brown retained the African-American Robert
Bobb (for a while) as City Manager, replacing him with another African-American,
Deborah Edgerly, when he and Bobb could no longer get along. Mr. Brown also replaced
one black police chief (Joseph Samuels) with another (the since-departed Richard
Word) in one of his first actions as mayor.
Some of Mr. Brown’s black appointments or attempts at appointments have been–to say
it charitably–somewhat, um, peculiar (Harry Edwards as Park and Rec chief
and the time the mayor wanted either Angela Davis or Maya Angelou to come on as head
librarian–while both of them had read books and written books and even taught from
books, neither of them, it appeared, had actually worked in a library) Still, it
cannot be said that the mayor swept Oakland’s decks clean of black faces.
But that has not kept black political activists in Oakland from worrying.
In the years when this city had an African-American mayor and a majority African-American
school board and the local assembly district was regularly sending an African-American
member to Sacramento, Oakland was one of the centers of black political power, both
in California and in the nation. Given the change in the city’s demographics, it
is doubtful that any ethnic group will so dominate Oakland’s elective offices in
the near future. (A look at the present racial composition of the Oakland City Council
is a better indication of the type of racial-ethnic balance we will probably continue
to see: three whites, two African-Americans, two Asian-Americans, one Latino.)
But the Draft Dellums group says that their major concern is for further down the
road, and if there will be enough young and upcoming black political talent to fill
the available slots. While Latinos and Asian-Americans are beginning the build strong
political organizations in Oakland–and white folks, as always, are holding steady–some
black insiders are concerned that the pool of gifted young black politicians is drying
up.
Working for a state legislator or a Congressmember is the farm system of politics,
where potential young politicians gain name recognition and learn the political ropes.
Former Assemblymember Dion Aroner built up her political resume by working for Tom
Bates while he was in the assembly, and members of State Senator Don Perata’s team
are salted in government positions throughout Oakland and Alameda County. During
the time when he was in national office, Dellums did the same, and made certain that
at least some of those protegé’s were black. At least two of them–Congressmember
Barbara Lee and County Supervisor Keith Carson–continue to play important roles in
Bay Area politics.
Dellums did not confine his mentorship to up-and-coming blacks, of course, but he
certainly included a lot of up-and-coming blacks, probably more so than any
other local politician. Members of the Draft Dellums group are hoping that if he
returns to local politics, Dellums will revive that training ground for young black
politicians, which has virtually dried up since Ms. Lee succeeded him.
Another area where the Draft Dellums folks think a Mayor Dellums administration would
be significantly different from a Mayor Brown administration is in the area of regional
cooperation.
Few of the problems of a modern California city can be solved within the city itself;
they need a regional effort (that’s an issue we’ll have to explore in detail in a
future column). Because of its size and its geography, Oakland should be the natural
political, social, and economic leader of a regional coalition spanning the coastal
East Bay, an important section that stretches from Richmond to the north, through
Berkeley, Emeryville, and San Leandro down to Hayward to the south, with Piedmont
to the east and Alameda to the west. But under Mr. Brown, no such coastal East Bay
coalition ever materialized.
The major reason is that in a coalition, every party must get enough recognition
to satisfy its own constituency. No one party can dominate, or the coalition falls
apart. But Mr. Brown, who clearly only saw his time in Oakland as a steppingstone
back into state or national politics, needed to get full credit for every major Oakland
initiative in order to build (or rebuild) his political resumé. He wasn’t
too crazy about sharing any of the credit with other Oaklanders, much less the mayors
and city councilmembers of other cities.
There is hope that Mr. Dellums–who, after all, cemented his legacy long ago–would
have both the stature and the ability to smooth over the political egos and head
up a coalition effort to attack some of the common problems in the region, from economic
development to education to transportation to health care, and beyond.
Will Ron run? I’ve got no inside track on the decision. But I do know that just the
thought of a Dellums candidacy has gotten a lot of people excited in what they hope
will be a new turn in Oakland politics. And that may end up having an effect on the
2006 mayoral race, whatever Mr. Dellums eventually decides to do. More on that in
another column.