Dear Steve,
It take a lot more than community gardens, being funny and cool to manage Oakland. Your piece here shows a lot more of the kind of wooly haired thinking on your part that we get from the "woke" council members. Charisma helps but you also need a seasoned manager in Oakland. Seneca's employment history with unions may not enable him to "stand up to the unions" as he claims.
Jim Mehner
Sheffield Village
(Jim is referring to my post from yesterday about Seneca Scott.)
Here’s my reply:
Dear Jim,
I’m taking the unusual step of reproducing your comment in its entirety, including your name, because when you published it on the blog, you went public anyway. So let me respectfully respond in detail to your point.
First, I’m glad you wrote. Thank you. Others have made the same point on occasion—namely, that we need candidates with long experience at city administration, or law, or business management or elected office. This point deserves to be cleared up.
I concede that Seneca’s resumé may be lacking in some of these areas. But I’ve lived in Oakland since 1987, and have watched politics and mayors with scrutiny. I have lived through the following 6 Mayors: Wilson, Harris, Brown, Dellums, Quan and Schaaf. With the single exception of Jerry Brown, all have been disasters, in my opinion. They all ignored downtown; none of them tried to lure business development here. They all turned a blind eye to crime, to infrastructure deterioration, and to the general state of decrepitude and blight into which Oakland sank more deeply each year. Under their watches, homeless tents erupted everywhere. They all allowed the Oakland Police Department to atrophy, and failed to rise to its defense when OPD was attacked by “progressives.” The irony is that all of them were supremely qualified to lead our city—on paper.
I thus have reached the conclusion that I don’t much care about a candidate’s experience. I care more about character and determination. Take Libby Schaaf. Law school graduate. Oakland Unified School District administrator. Aide to Council Member Ignacio de la Fuente and then to Mayor Brown. Director of public affairs for the Port of Oakland. Then five years on the City Council. With all that experience, Libby looked ideal.
But what has happened in the eight years of her administration? Can you name a single way in which Oakland is better? Granted, there have been landscaping improvements around Lake Merritt, for which we’re all grateful. But in every other way I can think of, Oakland has gone downhill. Downtown is worse than ever. Businesses avoid Oakland like the plague. Our roads are still littered with potholes despite hundreds of millions of dollars in bond funding. Garbage is everywhere. Crazy people wander the streets. Our public school system—well, it’s not exactly news that it’s circling the drain. Our libraries struggle to stay open. Crime is worse than ever. People are afraid to go outside at night. Conventions and tourists don’t come here. Jack London Square is a ghost town. We’ve lost two of our three professional sports teams, and can anyone say the A’s will stay? Our national reputation is a punchline. As Oakland sinks into the mire, the peoples’ despair is evident. I could go on and on. My point is that the greatest resumé in the world is meaningless if the person lacks common sense, vision and strength.
When I think about Oakland’s problems, I’m convinced that what we need is someone fresh, bold and imaginative, with the intelligence to know what to do and how to handle adversity. I don’t know what’s “wooly haired” about that. You speak of the need for a “seasoned manager.” Like whom—Sheng Thao? Please. As for Seneca’s experience with unions, in my mind that’s a plus. He understands unions, the politics behind them, and the secret deals they make with politicians. He understands that the public has almost no knowledge whatsoever of what kinds of agreements Sheng Thao or Nikki Bas make with SEIU, because none of the principals wants us to know. He understands how parochial unions can be and is not beholden to them in the least. I’m not sure what you mean by “standing up to the unions,” but Seneca will work with them to keep Oakland working and productive.
I grant that there are complicated management and technical aspects of being Mayor, but I suspect that every incoming Mayor has a steep learning curve in which to develop the knowledge of people, processes , laws and issues required to govern. Seneca is really smart. He’ll learn, and he’ll choose managers who are smart and dedicated to actually fixing Oakland’s problems. This is no smear on Oakland’s current administrative staff, who are competent and hard-working. But the direction the city takes is determined by the person at the top and, as I’ve said, we’ve had no smart direction for many years, with the sole exception of Jerry Brown.
I hope I’ve addressed your concerns. And I hope you’ll reconsider Seneca. I’ll add that I, and my colleagues at the Coalition, also like Loren Taylor, and if Seneca should somehow falter, we would likely endorse Loren. But right now, Seneca’s our candidate. He has a real chance, and I, personally, see no reason he can’t win.
Again, Jim, thank you for your thoughtful comment. Happy to meet with you over coffee and talk about this further.
Steve Heimoff