Barbara Lee Is Queen Of Oakland Now
OK fine, mayor. Whatever. It's *like* queen.
Congratulations are due to the fabulous and consistently prematurely correct Barbara Lee, who just won her special election bid to become mayor of Oakland, California. Also, congratulations Oakland on having Barbara freaking Lee as your mayor. That’s going to be awesome for you! Lee will be serving out the remainder of the mayoral term of now-former Mayor Sheng Thao, who was recalled by voters last November and has since been indicted on federal bribery charges.
As of Friday night, in the second round of ranked choice voting, Lee had garnered 53 percent of the vote to moderate Loren Taylor’s 47 percent. It’s something of a change of pace for California, as Lee is a full-on progressive and cities have been electing more moderate candidates lately.
Lee’s campaign had not declared victory on Friday night, because they want to wait until things are more official, but did note that “This is a wonderful way to end the week.”
“We are exceeding expected turnout for this special election, because the people of Oakland care deeply about our future,” Lee said in a statement. “This is democracy at work, and I look forward to further election updates.”
In the San Francisco Chronicle’s story about her win, the opening paragraph states that Lee is “resting her legacy on turning around a city now embroiled in crises, including mass homelessness, the indictment of the previous mayor on corruption charges, and daunting financial challenges.”
Except I really don’t think she ran for mayor for the purpose of bolstering her own legacy. She already has an awesome legacy in Congress, starting from the time she was the lone vote against giving George W. Bush the Authorization of Military Force and moving forward. I think she ran because she genuinely wants to help. She’s a true believer and always has been.
Lee just does not strike me as the kind of person who would want to help the unhoused in order to make herself look good, but instead because she actually, sincerely cares and wants to do whatever it takes to help people in that situation. The bright side of this is that people who care more about whether things are effective and helpful tend to be more effective and helpful than people who are sitting around worrying about what the others will think or say.
As such, Lee has already released her plans for what she wants to do, specifically, about public safety, homelessness, housing issues, and corruption.
I like to call Lee the queen of being prematurely correct, but, just to be clear, I don’t mean that as some kind of coincidence. I mean that she thinks clearly, has profoundly good judgment and an instinct for justice, and she sticks by it regardless of what kind of pressure there is to drop it — and, ultimately, she very often ends up having been right all along.
This kind of moral and, frequently, logistical clarity is what we need in government and elsewhere. The people of Oakland will surely be #blessed.
OT; NOPE, NOPE NOPE, the american tax payer should not be on the hook, in ANY way to pay for the defense of That Fucking Guy. NO.
"The Department of Justice is filing to intervene on behalf of President Donald Trump in his appeal of the $83 million civil defamation judgment against him won by writer E. Jean Carroll."
Gary Seven is at the Boise 50501 early
https://substack.com/@gary7seven/note/c-110383696?r=r437l&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action