The key to leadership in a city like Oakland is being able to play in the sandbox with others, having the ability to work on a vision through consensus, and understanding that as smart as you think you are, your success is going to be measured by achieving the goals and aspirations of the people around you. Oakland is not electing a dictator, a commander, a father-knows-best character. Oakland is a city filled with smart, in-your-face visionary policy-wonks, who could run intellectual circles around most residents in America‘s greatest cities. Everybody has a well thought out perception of what is wrong, and a limited belief of what can be right. Oakland is where the we-shall-overcome-liberal elite come to die.
With that, I will not be voting for Dan Siegel.
Siegel is the poster child of what the University of California Berkeley represented. Smart guy who goes to law school there, becomes Student Body President, gets his eyes further opened to a deplorable part of America which compels him to live the rest of his life seeking to change the world. Berkeley took in a thinker and helped send out a leader….45 years ago. Siegel’s challenge is that while he wants to serve as the Mayor of the future, most of his own rhetoric refers to the past. Two nights ago, I sat 5 feet from him when he made an opening statement to the crowd, and his 1st comment was that he marched in the South in the 1960’s. As he spoke, I couldn’t help but wonder if he got the social and political realities of the North, in the 2010’s, and did not try to rework them into something they are not. Nearly 70% of Oakland’s population wasn’t even alive in 1970, (only 11% is over 65) and the 40% unemployment rate for black men and the top ten murder rate involving black on black crime is occurring in our liberal West, at the same time that 14% of the businesses are black owned. Life is more complex than marching down a street playing the us versus them game. There is a do-as-I-say ethos that comes from the liberal elite persona that Siegel can’t shake, like having the ability to loan oneself $100k for a race you know you cannot win. Most people would see that as an opportunity to create a think tank, a small business, a loan. I don’t dislike anyone enough to parcel just one policy, or have the ego large enough to run against them to make a philosophical point about the tenets of real liberalism…that is a 1st world problem.
Siegel’s vision suggests that as mayor he will work on 13 distinct issues. Aside from the fact that I get dizzy when someone smart gives me a laundry list and pretends they can swallow the pachyderm of governance in a city, I become frightened when none of these issues focus on the real elephant in the room that this same activist makes a living at debating. He couldn’t manage the Oakland school’s budget, but now we are to trust he can build the political goodwill to navigate a baker’s dozen. Surprisingly, none of his topics speak in specifics to:
Pension reform in Oakland
Government accountability and budget reform in Oakland
Gentrification (though he does address renters rights)
Jobs creation for Oakland residents
Siegel’s approach has been that of the 1960’s statesman; that is, telling us what we need to do, but not providing an outline on how to get there. What comes from this is oration without narration, and this gets real old with the information based society that Oakland is morphing into. What we get is depth without width, and I expect more from a Mayor. Unlike Rebecca Kaplan, he is not trying to be all things to all people; he wants to be all things to some people. If you live in any city in America, you understand the balance of big and small; businesses, government, incomes, owners and renters. That is not going to fly in Seigel’s Oakland. His 7th issue, which is nearly everyone else’s 2nd in Oakland, is the 21st Century Economy.http://siegelforoakland.org/21st_century_economy.php
Siegel acts as if his is the moral consciousness of Oakland; indeed, he left the Mayor’s office in 2011 because he felt that she acted against the legitimate rights of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.
Here are some of the real problems he faces from the high chair:
Being outraged at the actions of your former friend presents an ill equipped rationale for seeking the office of Mayor.
In 2010, Seigel wanted people to be for Quan until he was against her. The same rhetoric that we were supposed to support Quan is the same reason he is giving why we need to back him; that ‘I am true a Lion of the Left of 50 years’ mantra. Almost everybody is on the left in Oakland; our Republicans would be considered Socialists in Texas.
If Quan is a failed leader, and he was her right hand guy, and only broke ranks with her over an encampment, and not say, budgets or infrastructure, how will he be any different?
Before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he argued what good is it for a man to be able to sit at a lunch counter when he cannot afford to buy a hamburger? Siegel’s articulation cannot answer that rationally. How do you get a man a job in an underdeveloped market? On the backs of small business? He is opposes large business, and expects small business to pay the highest minimum wage in the Bay Area. Proposing a $15 per hour wage increase is real change; until you realize that the jobs that are grabbed up at almost twice the regular minimum wage rates will be snatched by out of city/hipster crowd.
Seigel served with Quan on the Oakland Unified School District Board during its darkest hours; he was part of the failed machine that sent the schools to state receivership. In his tenure, particularly in his time as Board Chair, they never seemed to address the bread and butter issue of fiscal management, either at the schools or later with the City. That leadership has put the schools in the state it is today, and it is hard to give him a pass.
Dan cannot even analyze his own data, in part due to his own bias. The first issue that he tackles, public safety, is misaligned with spin. He shows a 12 year period of crime statistics in a 160 year old city, says that the number of officers has made no effect on the crime rate, and that the crime rate is virtually constant over the decade in review. I remember when we had over 175 murders in Oakland in a year; crime is no constant. However, crime decreased as much as 50% during some of the periods in question, and every period after police officer enrollment increased, crime went down the following year. The next issue; home ownership, he states that 71% of residents rent their homes, when the US Census says that 41% of the residents are homeowners. But what he neglects to say is what rate is acceptable in our city? In San Francisco, less than 37% of the residents are homeowners, and in Berkeley, where he served as the Rent Control Board Executive Director 4 decades ago, even their ownership rate is just 43%. Protections for owners? Repeal of miscellaneous taxes? Credits? Nah, you don’t need it you rich 1%ers…
Most of Seigel’s work has been as a reformer; he would be better served if he ran for City Attorney.
holowe 