Former Rep. Barbara Lee, who called for a $50-an-hour minimum wage for California when running for the Senate last year, has been elected mayor of the city of Oakland, California.
During a debate that featured candidates running to fill the seat of the late Senator Diane Feinstein, Lee argued that employees deserved a “living wage.”
“Just do the math, just do the math,” Lee urged the audience.
“In the Bay Area, I believe it was the United Way came out with a report that very recently, $127,000 for a family of four is just barely enough to get by. Another survey, very recently, $104,000 for a family of one, barely enough to get by.”
Lee defeated former city councilman Loren Taylor after an exhausting nine rounds of ranked-choice voting. “I think in a democracy, you should vote for who you want to vote for and that vote should be counted and that’s it,” said voter Eric Strelneck, quoted by KTVU.
Speaking as an observer of one failed city (Chicago) to another (Oakland), I would recommend to Mayor Lee that she keep living in a dream world, because Oakland’s real world really, really sucks.
To wit:
Oakland’s crime rate is five times the national average. The crime rate has climbed by 86% since 2003.
“Robberies grew 38% last year [2023] in Oakland, according to police data. Burglaries increased 23%. Motor vehicle theft jumped 44%. Roughly one of every 30 Oakland residents had a car stolen last year, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis,” reported CNN.
The real nightmare is that those statistics may be grossly underreported.
The city is facing a significant budget deficit, with lower-than-projected taxes and declining property sales. Then there’s homelessness, gentrification, economic decline, a hollowing out of the downtown business district, and the crisis in shoplifting, and Mayor Lee should have thought twice about wanting to run this hellhole.
Lee is also charged with trying to restore a little faith in city government. Recalled Mayor Sheng Thao, along with her partner Andre Jones and two other powerful local businessmen, were indicted on bribery and influence peddling charges.
Federal prosecutors allege that Thao agreed that the city would purchase housing units from one of the Duongs’ companies and renew the city’s contract with a recycling company David Duong owned.
In exchange, David Duong and his son Andy are alleged to have promised to fund a $75,000 negative mailer campaign during the run-up to the 2022 election. They are also accused of a plan to funnel $95,000 in payments disguised as wages for a job that Jones did not need to show up for.
If convicted of all counts, each faces up to 35 years in prison if the sentences run concurrently.
Speaking as a chronicler of public corruption in big cities, these Oakland crooks are both stupid and not very greedy. They should take lessons from New Orleans, Chicago, or New York pols who engineer maximum thieving with minimum exposure.
Mayor Lee needs help. Since receiving aid from Washington is out of the question, Lee must look to putting the squeeze on Governor Gavin Newsom, a man who wants to run as far away from a political liability such as Oakland as he can get before 2028.
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