Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

Our new blog at http://oaklandbaseball.blogspot.com has videos of Oakland Mayoral Candidates expressing their views on keeping the A's in Oakland. Here's Nancy Nadel talking with A's fans:

I just read this article on how the Bay Area's white media has launched a weird campaign against Ron Dellums and I could not agree more. What continues to read as illogical is how the media and some totally unformed so-called Oaklanders of little note hold against Dellums the same things they praised Jerry Brown for: vision for example. No one has explained this at all. Let's see: Jerry Brown's white; Ron Dellums is black. I'm sorry, where there's smoke, there's fire. I would like to see a day when Oakland has several black mayoral candidates, not just one.

I've got to write that of all the political lawn posters, those representing Ignacio De La Fuente are just plain rude. They don't ask for permission to post on grass areas of condo complexes, they just do it. They don't request to get clearance to post a sign on the facade of a building, they just do it. How do I know this? They did it to my building. I took them down. It's not cool to maintain such a practice. ..Another reason to vote for Ron Dellums.

One simple way to battle crime is to know your neighbor. I've found that few people in Oakland who live next to each other know each other. The best way to change this is the block party. Tuesday August 1st is "National Night Out" and the sponsors want Oakland to have a lot of block parties. You should sign up to host one at National Night Out

I got this email from other supporters of John Russo, but it speaks for me. I think the negative campaign mailer on John Russo came from ex-Nate Miley Aide and Montclair-Greater Oakland Democratic Club President Pam Drake, as she said a similar message to me at the gym last fall. I guess no one knows about Sandre Swanson taking money from Jack Abramoff's firm, but whatever. Dear Friend: As you may know, we are strong supporters of John Russo for State Assembly. We know that John is the person we need in Sacramento. We also know John personally and he has been a passionate, outspoken champion for our kids and for our neighborhoods for nearly 20 years. The Russo for Assembly campaign is going well. John has done 75 House Parties and has knocked on more than one thousand doors. The campaign is ready for the final push. In fact, the Russo campaign has gone so well that John's opponents have resorted to distorting John's record. WE NEED YOUR HELP to get the truth out abo...

My long time friend -- all the way back to Bret Harte junior high school and Skyline High School-- car salesman (I bought mine from him, as did KNBR's Gary Radnich), actor, and all around "Man about town" Richard Liberman is going to be the online columnist for "Matier and Ross", the popular muckracking columnists of the San Francisco Chronicle. I am very proud of Richard, and as I told him, they're grooming him to become the next Herb Caine. People -- like me -- are already sending him items. You may remember that for a time, Richard played "Big Vinny" in the Round Table Pizza commercials of about four years ago. There was even talk of Richard playing a role on "The Sopranos." Richard was born to be a star. I can remember when he talked the Women's Pro Tennis reps into letting me onto court to photograph Margaret Court in a tennis match while we were in high school. Richard's always had great media connections, and even L...

I was reading the SF Chronicle at Gold's Gym yesterday, and noticed that Ron Oz took out an entire page in the news section to tell people why he's the best choice for Oakland Mayor. The problem was that he had too many words. I wonder who's going to read it. He should have had big 64-point letters reading "Ron Oz For Mayor of Oakland." That's enough.