Skip to main content

Oakland News: Why Kathy Neal Quit Assembly Race; Make Love Oakland!

The race for the California 18th District Assembly Seat currently held by the termed-out Sandre Swanson recently lost a candidate that this blogger thought had a chance because she was the only woman: Kathy Neal.

The reason for Neal's departure, according to my sources, was simply that Neal didn't think she could win. "It was not enough support and not enough money," my source said. "She didn't want to just be in the race; she wanted to win it. After the poll, she didn't see a reason to stay in."

The head of Kneal Resource System, former Port of Oakland Commissioner, and former wife of former Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris (Neal was married to Elihu when I was his economic adviser), Kathy was not only behind Rob Bonta ($161,883), Joel Young ($154,078), and Abel Guillen ($118,584) in contributions, but had came up third in one poll behind only Guillen, with Bonta, the Democratic Alameda councilman, out in front.

Neal's departure makes the possibility of an election win by AC Transit Board Member Joel Young, a greater possibility. This, even with a restraining order, and two publicly known, violence-related encounters that ended in visits to court, the most recent one just over a month ago, and involving long time political operative and right-hand to Oakland At-Large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, Jason Overman. If Young pulls out of this with a win, it would be fair to say the Empire Really Did Strike Back.

Occupy Oakland Love In Tuesday

Believe it or not, there was an Occupy Oakland march recently, on Tuesday. But the reason you didn't hear about it was that there was no police action against it. (Funny how that works?) The Occupy Oakland Valentines Day March went off without a hitch, or even the orgy-like display of public sex this blogger expected to happen. (Rats!) But the protestors had a great cheer: "Make love, not war. We don't want that shit no more."

Here's the video:



Whatever the future, some political candidate's going to adopt that slogan.

The Oakland Green Party Rises

If you're a betting person take a look at the rising - fast rising - Oakland Green Party. It's represented by an unprecedented four candidates: Theresa Anderson will run for the Oakland City Council At-Large Seat currently held by Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan; Donald Macleay, who ran for Mayor of Oakland in 2010, is running for the Oakland City Council District One Seat; Randy Menjivar is taking on Oakland City Council President Larry Reid in District Seven; Vicente Cruz II is running for the Oakland School Board District Three Seat.

Here's Don and Vicente:





Open City Council Seats

In case you don't know, the following districts are the focus of elections this year: District One, Three, Five, and Seven. Of these, one man is throwing his hat in the ring for the third time: Sean Sullivan's going for the District Three seat. Beverly Rivas of Zennie62 recently sat down to talk with Sean in a video interview. Here it is:



In District One, Don Macleay has a challenger in comparatively less known Richard Raya. The one difference is Raya has a more search-engine-visible website than Don - what do I get when I type "Oakland City Council District 1" and "race" - not Don. Better work on that, Donald Macleay!

Earthquake?

That small shake you may have felt was a 3.7 Richter Scale Earthquake located just south of Vallejo, not the tequila shots you had.

Sports in Oakland

Trail Blazers @pdxtrailblazers

Blazers 93, Warriors 91: FINAL. Blazers without @aldridge_12 get a rare win in Oakland. Gerald with 24p/6r, Batum with 17/p/4r/3a/2s/2b


And Jeremy Lin, once with the Warriors, is ballin with the NY Knicks. That's just plain wrong.

And on the matter of wrong, how about this Twitter tweet:

@DarthLewWolff

Woke up from a nightmare! I dreamt the #Athletics won the West & Oakland put $500 mil to a new stadium! Good thing dreams don't come true!


Darth Lew Wolff must be high or something. Well, we are talking about Oakland A's Owner Lew Wolff.

And on the matter of high, I'm not high on the direction of the Oakland Raiders. Fired popular head coach Hue Jackson. Brought in Reggie McKenzie to be the new GM. None of this with a clear five-year plan. Just-make-change. Anyone can do that.

If I walk into the Raiders HQ I expect to see a full planning war room. I want the gm to tell me what to expect five years from today. I want a plan, not piecemeal decisions that look tough.

You fired someone? Big deal. What's the plan?

Where's John Russo?

John, former Oakland Lawyer, is chillin' in Alameda - sorta. Getting out of Oakland when he did was a master stroke of genius. Here's my most recent interview with my friend, and Alameda's first permanent city manager in years:



While John deals with land matters in Alameda, his hand picked replacement Barbara Taylor gets ready to run for Oakland City Attorney, in her first election battle of any kind in years. Her challenger? Oakland Councilmember Jane Brunner, who's also a lawyer. That's going to be a tough battle if Barbara elects to play rough - just saying. Personally, if I were up against Jane, who's a good campaigner, I'd go nuclear from the start.

That's me; question is, does Ms. Parker have that kind of fire in the belly? (To use a term once applied to Walter Mondale when he ran against Ronald Reagan.) We shall see.

Stay tuned.















Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Alex Castro, Electronic Arts VP, Is Oakland’s “Fake Joe Tuman”, “Crocker Mom”

Alex Castro, is currently Vice President Of Product Management At Electronic Arts, and a fairly-well-known and legendary tech executive, regularly quoted in a number of industry publications. But Alex Castro’s also an Oakland resident who has the terrible habit of going online, making traceble email accounts from his Electronic Arts office, and posing as someone […] from WordPress http://ift.tt/1fVkWP9 via IFTTT

Event: Jog For Jill San Francisco Run September 12th Golden Gate Park

Cal Women's Rowing Team member Jill Costello passed away from complications due to lung cancer on June 24th 2010 and at the age of 21. A San Francisco event and run called Jog For Jill has been established and will be held this Sunday, September 12th at 5 PM. Two members of the Cal Women's Crew team were at the Cal vs. Davis football game wearing Jog For Jill shirts, and were kind enough to provide the video interview above. Below are the other details from the event website, where you're encouraged to pre-register here CLICK FOR SITE : Pre-Registration: Online/$25 Day of Registration: 4:00 p.m./$30 Shotgun Start: 5:00 p.m. After run/walk celebration: 6:00 p.m.- 8:30 p.m. Event Location: Golden Gate Park Music Concourse Bandshell S Tea Garden Drive San Francisco, California 94118 Participants are encouraged to pre-register. Only pre-registered participants will be guaranteed a walk/run T-shirt. T-shirts will be limited to the first 2500 day of regis

Oakland Mayor's Race: LWV Forum Draws Oakland's Older Folks

Oakland Mayor's Race Forum first take. (Which means, there's going to be more of these posts on last night, because a lot was happening.) This just in: The Oakland Tribune's out of touch with Oakland. A number of attendees of the 450 estimated said they learned of the Oakland League Of Women Voters via "the newspaper." All of the people who made that statement were over 50 years old. Still, the forum, which attracted every candidate except Dr. Terrance Candell, was a success. The auditorium at 300 Lakeside Drive seats 380 people, so if you do the math, it was about 70 over capacity. The crowd was a happy mix of supporters of candidates and long-time observers of the Oakland political scene. The one complaint they had was there wasn't enough time to hear what the candidates were about. That wasn't because there were too many candidates, but due to the format. Either Oakland Tribune Editor Martin Reynolds or the League of Women Voter