how i voted and why

For Oakland voters, this is the most interesting election in quite a long time. As a friend pointed out, in Metropolitan California the Democratic Primary puts people in office, not the General Election.

Oakland Mayor

First, two-term Mayor (and formerly two-term Governor) Jerry Brown has hit his term limit, and is running for Attorney General instead. From Governor Moonbeam to a phoenix-like return from meditating in India to a pro-gentrification Mayor to a "tough on crime" Attorney General. Makes Arnold Schwarzenegger seem focussed.

But I digress. Current City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente was looking forward to strolling into office, when former fourteen-consecutive-term U.S. Representative for Oakland Ron Dellums came out of retirement to run. Commanding respect in Congress as well as his hometown of Oakland, Dellums looked like he might be the one strolling. Not the case: current odds are that there will be a runoff in November.

The conventional wisdom is that De La Fuente is the hard-working pragmatic insider, while Dellums is the visionary with national clout. De La Fuente looks like he will continue with Brown's current agenda, while Dellums is promising universal health care and housing for 100,000 new residents.

While Dellums, who is Black, is bound to get more Black votes than De La Fuente, who will tie up more Hispanic votes, that doesn't actually make much difference: at last count Oakland was 31% Black, 25% White, 23% Hispanic, and 19% Asian. What will decide the election is the rich, white Hills, and De La Fuente has concentrated his efforts there.

As racially diverse as Oakland is, it is almost uniformly Democrat, and, by California standards, these are old-school, labor-and-entitlement-loving Democrats. Platform-wise, there's very little of substance that separates the three leading candidates (I'm ignoring Nancy Nadel, since she seems too weak to have a chance), and the voters would not have it any other way.

I voted De La Fuente. Reasons:

1. Dellums has promised things that are well beyond a Mayor's nominal power. I just don't think he's going to single-handedly redefine the role of Mayor in American society.
2. One basic difference I see is that De La Fuente wants change from within, while Dellums will use his national clout to get state and federal assistance. I firmly believe Oakland does not need outside funds to solve its problems, and more money into a rotten system is going to be mostly wasted. Dellums cites the expanded Port, the Federal Building, and Chabot Space & Science Center as the things he's done for Oakland. There's a name for that: pork barrel.
3. And yet, De La Fuente has the onus of presiding over the City Council through years of horrible mismanagement. I haven't made up my mind totally, so I'd like to see a November runoff, and I think De La Fuente needs more help than Dellums. If only both could put their egos away and work together: De La Fuente the pavement pounder, and Dellums the dealmaker.

Propositions

Next, four propositions are up, three of which are bond issues. I don't know if it works the same way in other states, but in California, the only way projects get funded and people paid is by issuing bonds. All are related to education: two state propositions for building libraries and offering universal preschool, and two local props for reonvating community colleges and K-12 schools respectively. There is a lot of overlap, since some of the school funding would go to libraries, and the libraries are meant to work in conjunction with K-12 and adult literacy programs.

It may sound odd, but I chose the two local bonds, and neg'ed the state library bond. It's all the more hypocritical-sounding when you consider that I'm the only adult I know who averages over one trip a week to the library. Here's my reasons:

1. Oakland is not California. California is in a deep, long-standing budget crisis, and the last thing it needs is more general-obligation bonds for non-essential services that could be funded at the local level.
2. I've never seen a public library filled to capacity. Sure, you have to sign up for a computer, but the bond is not funding new computers — it's funding new libraries.
3. California has some of the shittiest K-12 education in the developed world (I know: I attended the LAUSD), but Oakland is so bad, California took over its school district. Some don't want to fund Oakland schools while they're under state control, but it looks to me like their situation is too bad to wait.
4. Even though it has some of the poorer neighborhoods in California, Oakland is actually richer than California as a whole. Without much industry/commerce to draw from, that wealth is mostly tied up in land. Almost everyone here is a tax-and-spend Democrat, and is happy to tack on a fourth parcel tax for a good cause.

I also neg'ed the universal preschool, not because I think it is a lower priority than K-12, but because I just don't like the way it's structured, in terms of only taxing high income brackets, in its emergency payment loophole, and in its low probable effect on overall enrollment. Besides, I have no confidence a state with California's current level of K-12 education can create a worthwhile preschool system.

Der nächsten Gubernator

In case you haven't already guessed, I have become disenchanted with the Democratic Party over the last decade. Besides regularly handing the Republicans elections liberals should have won, it just doesn't reflect my stance on economic issues.

On to the main question of the hour: Can either Phil Angelides or Steve Westly beat Arnold Schwarzenegger? Let me put it this way: at this point, I think they'd have a better chance outlifting him. And it's not just because Arnie came up with a well-timed budget surplus. Steroid-popping Schwarzenegger is just plain smarter than Harvard-educated Angelides or Stanford-educated Westly. Frankly, life-long Democrat though I have been, as of today, I think Schwarzenegger makes a better Governor than either of the Democratic candidates.

More important than solar power or clean beaches, more important than universal preschools or healthcare, more important than immigration reform, more important than balancing the budget, is that the California Government start functioning again. It is no secret that partisan battles have deadlocked the legislature for years, and the state is starting to self-destruct. Schwarzenegger currently enjoys the backing of key Democrats in the Legislature in promoting his new budget. That's an amazing rebound from last year's failed power grab.

Can you guess yet who I voted for? Yes, it was Westly. As pitiful as his resume sounds (Co-president of the Student Body? Part-time B-School Lecturer? 22nd employee of eBay when he saw a chance to cash in?), as lame as some of his proposed solutions are, as stereotypically Stanford-rich-boy as he is, he has indicated that he will work with Republicans. Angelides will fight them every step of the way, thus ensuring business-as-usual in Sacramento — which is to say, what meager progress there may be right now will grind to a halt. My guess is that Westly has an outside chance of beating Schwarzenegger if Arnold continues to get lumped in with the rest of the Republicans, but that Angelides, with his new taxes, has no real chance. I don't want Angelides as my Governor anyway. Not sure I want Westly, but I know I don't want the Democratic Party attempting to run California, and that's what we get with Angelides.

Hypocriticism

So it's a bit of an odd ballot: locally, I vote for the pragmatic tinkerer, while statewide I disown the pragmatic party-liner. I'm not particularly happy with either choice, but the choices are neither arbitrary nor driven by individual personalities.

Again, Oakland is not California. Indeed, it is a unique case in California. Oakland faces more severe problems with lawlessness, schools that are little more than drug emporiums, economic stagnation, and racial inequality than the rest of California. But Oakland has a politically-involved citizenry that has a great deal of consensus on what its problems are and even the general outline of solutions. Put simply: its problems are real, not political. And given how rich Oakland is, and California more generally, the real problems seem to me easier to solve than the political ones.

Ask me who should be President, and I will apply yet a different level of criteria. I don't consider the loss of a thousand jobs, or the paving over of wetlands, or doubling classroom size, or unaffordable healthcare as important as sending teenagers to be maimed or die in a war that does no one any good. At the national level, the stakes are much higher, and I'd take a gridlocked, bankrupt government over one that provokes and creates rogue nuclear states and international terrorist movements. If only this were a Presidential Election year!