Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

At the election for the 16th District Democratic Delegates on January 8th, I talked with Oakland Activists Pam Drake Mike Colbruno Sean Sullivan Vicky Kolkaski about Oakland, elected officials and the BART Shooting. Pam Drake is a long-time Oakland activist who has worked as an assistant to then-Oakland City Councilman and now Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley, and was recently head of the Lakeshore Business District Association. Mike Colbruno is the chair of the Oakland Planning Commission. Sean Sullivan ran for the District Three Council seat currently held by Nancy Nadel. Vicky Kolkaski is very active in the Oakland LGBT community.

Sean Sullivan's a new name and face in Oakland politics. Observers may remember Sean's run for Oakland's District Three Council Seat, where he lost to the incumbent Nancy Nadel. But Sean pressed on. He's worked at Covenant House and serves on the board of several non-profits in Oakland and the Bay Area. You can learn more at his website: http://www.seansullivan.org At the Westin on Election Night, Sean stopped to talk about the election and now President-Elect Obama and the then-progress of the No On Prop 8 campaign.

I have to admit I've seen this too many times before, including myself. Someone's upset that Nancy Nadel won District Three. (Or at least as of this writing -- hence the (*) -- it looks like she did. She had 51.7 percent of the vote, BUT there are still thousands of absentee ballots to be counted . If Nancy falls below 50 percent, then Sean Sullivan gets to challenge her again for a November do-over. But here's the next BUT: absentee ballots tend to follow the Election Day voting trend , so I continue...) In the past, it was Clinton Killian, who ran against her and lost in the 90s. Then Hector Reyna. Someone once tried to get me to run against her, but even though I thought Nancy was neglecting the area of Grand Avenue between Mac Arthur and Harrison, I know that I've never wanted to run for office and have always enjoyed the role of King / Queen Maker. Knock it off with the "Oh Brother" comment, will ya? Look. I can't remember a time when every

Oakland District Three Councilmember Nancy Nadel retained her seat and assured that there would be no November runoff election, as she captured over 50 percent of the vote. Here are the totals, below: Contest # of Votes % of Total Nancy Nadel 3576 51.65 Sean Sullivan 1873 27.05 Gregory Hodge 1435 20.73 Write-in 40 0.58 As I wrote earlier, the low voter turnout favored incumbents like Nadel. As this study by the Institute of Research On Public Policy shows, areas that have high income, university-educated people, and where the unemployment is higher and the immigrant populations are largr, it can be argued that Oakland, even in Adams Point, has it's share of problems that caused this low turnout. Also, the challenging candidates didn't do enough to tell their stories to people around them, like me. And they didn't have Nancy's track record of doing "nuts and bolts" constituent work. For example, I backed Nancy and

If one can get over the shake and compression issues with this video, it's worth listening to as it features the Oakland District Three candidates on Measure DD implementation (Measure DD raised and prioritized money for improvements around Lake Merritt) and has what is now a familar pattern: Hodge and Sullivan attacking, and with Greg Hodge giving a spirited explaination of how the Mayor and City Council inaction is to blame for Measure DD execution problems, with Nadel, the incumbent explaining that "We're working on it." To be fair to Nadel, it is a large undertaking and the law calls for public imput throughout the process. That alone makes it a complicated undertaking. This video's had only six views before I found it for a host of technical reasons that boil down to a lack of infrastructure and engineering knoweldge on Vsmoothe's part. That stat should change dramatically.

Yes. Sean Sullivan still leads in our Oakland Focus Oakland City Council District Three race poll with 77 percent of the vote, compared with just over 11 percent for both Greg Hodge and Nancy Nadel. But look, only 35 people elected to take the poll. If I actually promote the poll and drive the numbers to about 200 people, then we've got something worth noting. Stay tuned.

This is the second part of a two-video movie on the debate between incumbent Councilmember Nancy Nadel, and challengers Greg Hodge, and Sean Sullivan

This is the first part of a two-video movie on the debate between incumbent Councilmember Nancy Nadel, and challengers Greg Hodge, and Sean Sullivan.

See also TagamiVision.com