Alan Greenblatt is a GOVERNING correspondent.
E-mail: mailbox@governing.comTwitter: @governing
Chip Johnson of the SF Chronicle is sick of Oakland's celebrity mayors -- first former (and future?) Gov. Jerry Brown, now Ron Dellums, who has clearly struggled on the job.
With the scandal at City Hall in the past month as a backdrop, it's becoming increasingly clear that Oakland residents need a mayor with a ground-level view, not a fly-over assessment.
Johnson openly pines for someone to run against Dellums in 2010 and names a couple of potential candidates: "Rebecca Kaplan, a 37-year-old AC Transit director in a November runoff for the at-large City Council seat" and "Benjamin Jealous, 35, one of the nation's emerging black leaders, who will become the youngest president in the history of the NAACP when he takes office in September."
Johnson notes something that had slipped by me, namely that Dellums has brought in former Oakland and D.C. city administrator Robert Bobb as a consultant to try to clean up the city's finances and the mess left by fired administrator Deborah Edgerly.
GOVERNING Politics is the place for news and analysis on campaigns and elections. If there's a ballot measure in California, a legislative election in Alabama, a mayoral election in Anchorage or a governor's race in Rhode Island, GOVERNING Politics probably is writing about it. We love everything about state and local politics, from polls and campaign ads to policy debates and demographic trends.
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
YouTube
Flickr
RSS
© 2011 e.Republic, Inc. All Rights reserved. |