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At Oakland’s recent inauguration for its newly elected officials, I watched former City Council President, Ignacio De La Fuente shrewdly position himself to become Oakland’s next mayor should the current occupant, Ron Dellums, fail to complete his term, which has two years remaining.
I watched and I listened as City Attorney, John Russo, tell those in attendance, “The correct policy choices, the ones that will set this City back on the right course, will be so hard because they will be popular with hardly anyone. They will not be popular with the media. They will not be popular with the majority of the public.”
In addition to calling on the city’s elected officials to make difficult choices, Russo also stated that, “the re-establishment of public safety must be our primary focus.” Russo’s brief, but sobering remarks were an honest assessment of the city’s current plight—a role normally reserved for the mayor.
I also listened and observed as a portion of the crowd broke out in the laughter of disbelief as apologies were made for the mayor’s absence at the inauguration along with assurances that he would be arriving shortly.
Some said the mayor was attending the memorial service of C. Diane Howell, which was held at the Marriot Hotel, two blocks away from City Hall. Others dispute the claim that the mayor attended the service. I called the mayor’s office for a confirmation of his whereabouts, but my inquiries were not returned.
Assuming the mayor was at Howell’s memorial service, it would have been possible for him to also attend the inauguration if he wanted given the close proximity. Whether or not he attended the memorial service misses the point.
Oakland is a rudderless vessel that cannot take two more years of the mayor’s laissez faire approach.
Let me put it more succinctly, it’s time for Mayor Dellums to resign.
I went back to the initial column I wrote when the rumors of a Dellums candidacy for mayor began circulating, I reflected on the day he introduced Nelson Mandela at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990.
I wrote in 2005: “To watch this man introduce Mandela was a testament to his conviction and perseverance. Never before, and not since, have I been prouder of an elected official.”
I still feel that way today, which makes this one of the most difficult pieces that I’ve written to date. But I had questions in 2005 about Dellums running for mayor. Which Dellums was Oakland getting, the Dellums who retired from Congress in 1998, or the 2006 version and were they the same?
Unfortunately, the answer to those questions has materialized in the worse possible way for the city. What the city got is akin to watching Willie Mays drop routine fly balls against the Oakland A’s in the 1973 World Series, while wearing a New York Mets uniform.
The mayor deserves credit for his work on affordable housing along with his handling of the Waste Management strike. He has certainly given H.I.V. screening a public face. Mayor Dellums created and hired Oakland’s first re-entry specialist, which offers those released from prison hope to infiltrate back into mainstream society. He has worked hard to help the city reach its goal of having 803 police officers.
But my call for Dellums to resign is not based on a set of tangible results; rather it is the intangible of his body language that strongly suggest he does not want to do the job.
It has been widely reported that the mayor keeps less than a 40-hour work week based on his official calendar. He said as a candidate he would not be a full-time mayor. He has often stated that the day he announced his intention to run for mayor at Laney College, his real intent was to state he would not run—shame on us for not heeding his candid warnings.
The raucous chants of “Run, Ron, Run” were too much for him to resist. Oakland is still living with the results of his having been momentarily caught up in the rapture of adulation.
But the measure for elected officials is the amorphous standard of perception. The mayor’s terse remarks to supportive community members who have asked benign questions in my presence along with statements that the people of Oakland do not know the sacrifices he’s made to become mayor, gives the perception of someone who does not want to do the job.
Another standard for elected officials is occupying a job that is the right fit. Some thrive in the executive branch, while others are born legislators. The mayor appears to be the latter trapped in the former.
What we have now is a bad marriage, and we’re long past the statute of limitations that allows one to freely discuss the D-word without reprisal. To paraphrase Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter, Carole King, “The mayor looks so unhappy and the residents of Oakland feel like a fool.”
Rumors have spread about the mayor possibly being appointed to something within the Obama administration. Assuming he does not become the next Ambassador to St. Kitts, what then? Must we prolong the status quo for another 24 months?
Mayor Dellums is dangerously close to making his unsuccessful mayoral term the exclamation point on an otherwise stellar career as a public servant. Only he can preserve his legacy.
If Dellums decides to resign, Oakland will survive. In this case, I wouldn’t view his resignation as a sign of weakness or failure, but one of strength and character.
Oakland is effectively without a permanent City Administrator, a Fire Chief, or a Director of the Community Economic Development Agency (CEDA), and it has a mayor who seems to be missing in action more than he is available.
To confront the foreclosure crisis, the declining economy, public safety, and the cuts in city services, Oakland needs the type of “fireside chats” that the mayor seems unwilling to provide.
On Inauguration Day, Oakland was crying out for cohesion, in the mayor’s absence, it was the city attorney who sounded the clarion call of FDR. But that’s not his role, that’s the mayor’s role.
The mayor’s failure to attend Oakland’s inauguration becomes the indelible indicator of an individual who either will not or cannot provide the city what it so desperately needs in these challenging times—leadership.
But leadership is not about competence as much as it is about the heart. If Ron Dellums searched his heart with an honest, self-reflective lens, can he see himself being Mayor of Oakland for an additional two years, especially if he plans to use the same modus operandi as the previous 24 months?
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