But it is hard to think of a city that has done more shifting and evolving in the last generation than Oakland, Calif. In the middle of the 20th century it was recognized by almost everyone as the ugly industrial duckling of the San Francisco Bay Area, grimy cousin to its glamorous neighbor across the bay. In the 1960s it became known to the world as the home of the Black Panthers and their militant violence. A couple of decades later it found a new identity as a growing container port in the burgeoning global economy. That and the tech economy led to a resurgence as a gentrified urban model, with a vital downtown and houses selling for a million dollars.
The mini-boom seemed to end with COVID-19, a depression in shipping and a crime wave worse than what many other cities were going through. Now it is being denounced in an angry new book as a depressing icon of corrupt and insensitive world capitalism, unfair to its minorities and unaffordable even to most of its struggling middle class.
The writer and playwright Gertrude Stein, who grew up in Oakland, famously said that “there’s no there there.” It might be more accurate to say that Oakland lacks any sort of “there” that lasts very long. Oakland just doesn’t stay the same from one generation, sometimes even one decade, to the next.
Fully in keeping with its protean nature, Oakland has in the last 30 years elected perhaps the most unusual assortment of mayors chosen to run any large American city: Ron Dellums, a retired congressman who looked — and sometimes sounded — like an Old Testament prophet; Jerry Brown, a famous former governor who vowed to restore a troubled community to prosperity and vitality; and Sheng Thao, a Hmong newcomer who vaulted to City Hall after a stunningly brief political career.
Now it has made another Oakland-style decision: It has chosen as mayor Democrat Barbara Lee, a 78-year-old veteran politician who spent three decades in Congress tilting at windmills and provoking colleagues but who promises to be a uniter rather than a divider in local government.
That will take some massaging. Her friends in Congress used to refer to her playfully as “Original Gangster,” referencing a rap song and album from the 1990s. She described her philosophy not long ago as that of her mentor Shirley Chisholm: “to shake things up, not to go along to get along.” One of Lee’s prominent allies told Lee’s supporters in this year’s campaign that “big-money people … want to take your city from you, take your voice from you.”
Lee’s ascension became possible last November when Thao, the daughter of Laotian immigrants who had been mayor for less than two years, was recalled from office shortly before being indicted on bribery charges. Lee’s special election campaign had the support of the city’s labor unions, left-leaning activists and leaders of the faith community. She narrowly defeated Loren Taylor, a former city councilmember whose moderate reputation earned him backing — and funding — from developers and much of the city’s tech entrepreneurial class.
Lee’s plan for her first 100 days in office didn‘t sound like the platform of a longtime rabble-rouser. She promised to work with the police department to pass a budget that would prioritize public safety; to generate new entrepreneurial investment; and to launch public-private initiatives with the city’s 10 largest employers. The details remain to be filled out. They need to be filled out fairly quickly, because Lee’s special-election term ends next year.
THE QUAGMIRE THAT OAKLAND FINDS ITSELF IN would have been almost unimaginable as recently as 2019, the year Thao joined the City Council. The economy was doing as well as it had at any time in recent years, the crime rate was under control, and Oakland still seemed to be something of a 21st-century urban success story. Much of that good fortune traced back to Jerry Brown, who served as mayor for eight years beginning in 1999, before returning to state politics as attorney general and then as governor for two terms.
Brown’s mayoralty seemed a shot in the arm for an often-troubled city. He focused on reviving the downtown, promising to bring 10,000 new residents to the city center. Brown promoted charter schools, arts programs and Navy training projects, founding a military institute and a school for the arts. Throughout these years, Oakland was amassing new wealth as the fourth largest container port on the Pacific Coast, focusing on trade with China and other Asian countries.
Brown’s critics argued that he promoted downtown at the expense of poor minority neighborhoods and derided his whole program as “Jerrification.” What’s undeniable, though, is that he made Oakland into a destination for Bay Area middle-class residents that it hadn’t been for decades. Rental and condominium costs rose to worrisome levels in some close-in neighborhoods, but ultimately that was because people with money wanted to live there. It was hard to escape the downsides of this situation, but it was equally hard to deny that Oakland had become a different and more interesting place.
IT’S DIFFICULT TO PINPOINT just when all of this began to unravel, but Oakland’s downturn coincided roughly with Sheng Thao’s entry onto the political scene. Commercial shipping ceased to be as much of a golden goose as it had been, and crime began to rise alarmingly as the COVID-19 pandemic hit with full force.
Thao did talk about crime in her 2022 mayoral campaign, and cited her efforts on the council to create new law enforcement academies. But she also ran from the left, speaking more about police brutality than about police training. She talked to voters about her experiences with poverty, domestic violence and untenable housing costs. That combination gave her a narrow victory over Loren Taylor, who as in this year’s election was seen as a more conservative alternative.
Very little went right after that. The new mayor drew criticism for firing the city’s police chief, and her administration was attacked for missing a deadline to obtain a federal grant for protection against retail theft. Crime rose by double digits in 2023. The city’s budget deficit ballooned to $117 million in the 2024 fiscal year. Familiar restaurants and retail outlets closed up shop in central parts of the city. “People who have lived here for years and years have not seen it like this,” Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in 2024. “People deserve better.”
More damaging than anything, though, was the federal investigation into Thao’s relationship with a city recycling contractor who had ties to several of the mayor’s close friends. Federal agents raided her home in June 2024 looking for evidence of bribery, and seven months later she was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges, among others, that her romantic partner accepted $95,000 for a no-show job with a housing company as part of the deal for renewing the recycling contract.
The combination of her personal problems and the city's crime rate made her recall inevitable. The only question was how decisive the recall vote would be. It was plenty decisive. In November of last year, 60 percent of the city’s voters opted to recall her.
THAT WAS THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS that led, somewhat circuitously, to the election of Barbara Lee. The current riddle is about just what sort of a mayor she will be, and what it will take to lift Oakland out of its current morass.
Lee has a decadeslong reputation as a maverick and a frequent dissident. Early in her public career, she was a strategist for the Black Panthers. As a junior member of the U.S. House, she cast the only vote in Congress against a bill authorizing military force against terrorists after the 9/11 attacks. More recently, she has been a fairly conventional stalwart of the Democratic left. She was a supporter of President Barack Obama and a consistent vote for President Joe Biden.
Still, running Oakland as a consensus mayor and uniter will require some adjustments on her part. It is commonly accepted in politics that officeholders don’t change very much in their later years, and Lee is closing in on 80.
There is, however, a compelling counter-example rooted in the history of the city Lee will now lead. Jerry Brown's post-mayoral governorship wasn’t his first time holding that office; he had served two terms as California’s governor in the 1970s and 1980s, earning a reputation as an aloof, often arrogant maverick with a disdain for much of the public and a raft of outlandish ideas, earning him the nickname of “Governor Moonbeam.” When he ran for president in the 1990s, he based much of his campaign on a promise to “explore the universe.” That seemed to be the end of his political career.
But when he returned to office as mayor of Oakland in 1999, he began fashioning an image as a prudent pragmatist and fiscal steward, and he maintained that reputation over two successful terms as governor, from 2011 to 2019. Brown was 72 when he became governor for the second time, and 80 when he retired. It may not be easy for politicians to reinvent themselves in later years, but he managed to do it.
Barbara Lee doesn’t have to move as far as Brown did; she just has to continue evolving. “Oakland is a deeply divided city,” Lee said shortly after her election. “I answered the call to run to unite our community, so that I can represent every voter, and we can all work together as one Oakland to solve our most pressing problems.”
That’s a start, anyway. If she can come close to fulfilling that commitment, Oakland will be launched on another round in its modern trajectory of rapid and seemingly unending change.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
