It’s been a while since I’ve written about the mayor’s race, partially because I’ve been super busy and partially because not much has happened in the race. But the candidates have been campaigning, raising money, and blogging. Yes, it looks like all of the mayoral candidates have started blogs so I thought I’d take the next several days to review them and bring some attention to what they’re writing about.
I’m starting off with Green Party candidate Don Macleay. Yeah, I know he’s unlikely to be a serious candidate against Don Perata, Jean Quan, and whomever else jumps in the race, but after reading his blog, I felt like it would be a disservice not to share some of his messages.
A poll just came out that showed that people who identify as part of the Tea Party movement mostly identify as Republicans, but some identify as independents and a few identify as Democrats. Yet in Oakland, the Tea Party mayoral candidate is actually a Green.
I’m guessing Macleay would contest my description of him as Tea Partier, but his blog backs up my description. In the past couple of months, here’s what he’s ranted about:
- Taxes are too high. The government came after him for not paying taxes, and the shock of it, they even penalized him for not paying taxes!
- Let’s delay BRT because there haven’t been enough public hearings – the Berkeley Daily Planet says so so it must be true.
- DUI checkpoints are impound scams.
- Parking is as big a problem as homelessness and crime! Let’s get rid of all parking meters and not charge for parking at all!
It would be unfair for me not to mention Macleay’s posts about some issues that come more from the Green Party than the Tea Party, like restorative justice programs, but I’m left to wonder how programs like this would be paid for in Macleay’s world. If we lower taxes, stop penalizing tax evaders (even if they’re small businesses), and make parking free, where is the money for social justice programs going to come from?
It looks like the Tea Party is alive and well in the Oakland mayoral race, even if disguised behind the Green Party label.
Living in the O 
Macleay – what a disappointment. At first (like, maybe the first 10 seconds after I heard about him) I was interested, but then as soon as you look just a little deeper…WTF?
Why/how is he even a Green? Is he this disconnected? Is there something else going on?
To label him a tea partier is funny because he’s far to the left of Dellums or Quan who claim progressive but in practice are more the Washington salon or Montclair living room liberal verison of same.
Compared to Perata, he really held union blue collar jobs.
I’m not enamored of the progressive parts of his platform, but he is more in synch with what many ordinary Oaklandersthink about their local govt finances than Quan or Perata.
Call it tea party if you wish, but many normal lower middle and middle class Oaklanders are pissed off that their city officials think it’s ok to reach into the residents’ pockets to protect salaries, penisons, benefits that the residents will never enjoy. whether that be thru parking fees justified as green, or taxes for cops. t
They think it’s business as usual here that no one asked them what they thought first before raising those fees and proposing new taxes, but they could turn out for a candidate who gets that message across to them. The other candidates know that in IRV that candidate could make the election and will adjust their platforms if DM picks up steam.
-len raphael
temescal
Agree that DM’s promises of jobs and economic development seem like the same kind of sound bites, platitudes empty promises we expect from JQ and DP.
Those rosy promises roll out of JQ so easily, it almost makes me start to belief her.
I look forward to hearing DP explain how his deal years ago to bring back the Raiders was worth every penny of the 10Mill Oakland pays for it every single year since.
Unlike you, I’d say there ain’t no parcel tax or parking fee high enough, that could pay for even the current level of Oakland social support programming over the next three or four years when all the boomers start retiring and claim the amazingly high pensions and medical benefits that JQ and all the other CC incumbents granted most city employees including themselves.
None of the candidates says anything about that situation, and none of them will because a) they don’t have a solution
b) they don’t want to antagonize the city unions
-len raphael
temescal
This is kind of superficial and disappointing. Fortunately the on line world has a lot better reporting in it than this. .
For example, I did not say that the DUI checkpoints are an impound scam to take cars from undocumented workers, the New York Times said that. I asked the city of Oakland to tell me how many cars they are taking, from whom and what kind of money comes in. I still do not have an answer to that. Jean Quan has been saying that we have to replace the revenues if we stop this practice, and I have been asking: How much revenue?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/us/14sfcheck.html?hp
It is bad enough to have sound bite politics, but then to create sound bites out of a blog and to deliver a superficial opinion out of it seems intellectually weak.
If I’m so off base, what took you so long to respond? And what about everything else I wrote above that’s accurate?