Dear Voter: I’m sure you consider yourself a good human being. You are fair-minded and don’t judge people on their skin color or sexual orientation. You support abortion and science, and would never vote for a Republican. You’re an idealist. You think that Black people have had a raw deal in America and it’s time for some reparative justice. You agree with Bobby Kennedy: “Some people see things as they are and say, 'why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'why not?' "
And yet, with all due respect, you don’t always show the greatest political acumen. You have a tendency—unfortunate in its effects—to self-identify as “progressive” and then to vote for whatever candidate is deemed by the media the most progressive. You often show an ignorance of the actual policies of the people you vote for: not what they say, but of what they’ve done, which is what they’re probably going to do again, only more strenuously if they get power. Which bring us to Sheng Thao.
I’d bet that many of you who voted for her couldn’t say exactly why you did, beyond some scant surface facts. She was supported by the unions, and you like unions, and may even belong to one. She also was supported by Planned Parenthood and the Sierra Club, which told you she must be a very noble person. She was a critic of the police, and you believed that Oakland cops are brutal and racist. She was a woman, and a Hmong, a member of a minority group, which elevated her in your mind. You heard her say that she’d been homeless and a survivor of domestic abuse, which increased your respect for her. Beyond these things, you’re not sure what specific policies of Thao’s you liked, because she never spelled out the specifics for the record during her campaign for mayor. True, she talked about “uniting us as a city,” “doing more to meet this moment,” and “tackling the challenges we face.” You weren’t sure precisely what these cliches meant, but they sounded good. So you marked your ballot “Sheng Thao for Mayor” and she won.
Now, more than a year later, you look around Oakland, and are faced with a dilemma I would call existential. You know that the conventional wisdom is that Oakland is circling the drain. You know, if you pay the slightest attention to the news, that crime is devastating us, that homelessness and encampments are on the increase, that real estate values are plunging, that retail businesses are shutting down or leaving town, and that Oakland, even more than San Francisco, is in a doom loop. And yet, your own life seems okay. Why should you care that a home in the hills has lost a quarter-million dollars of value in the last year? Your own rent may actually have gone down as a result of this collapse. That’s good, right?
You understand that there’s a Recall attempt on Mayor Thao. You don’t fully understand the specifics, but you’ve heard that the Recall is sponsored by out-of-town billionaires, and we all hate billionaires. You’ve also heard that local racists and rightwing MAGA types support the Recall, and we hate racists and MAGAs. So if the Recall makes it to the ballot, you’ll vote NO.
But here’s where your existential dilemma comes in. A part of you wonders if, just maybe, Sheng Thao is in over her head. You know she’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. She doesn’t inspire you the way, say, Bernie Sanders or Obama did. But she’s well-meaning, and sweet, and if the people attacking her are the monsters you think they probably are, then shouldn’t you rally around her? Still, the thought gnaws at you. Oakland is a shit storm. Is Sheng Thao to blame? Would things get better if we recall her?
I want to talk honestly with you. You, like me, are a resident of Oakland. You may, like me, love our city. Surely you know that something is wrong here. You know that this stuff is complicated, that there’s no single reason why we have so many problems. I don’t mean to talk down to you, or to dismiss your feelings, even though I may disagree with you. But there are reasons why things are the way they are, and a main reason is that Oakland has been governed by progressives for decades. If anything, the city has moved further to the left in recent years than it’s ever been. And I would suggest that the left has lost its moral bearings.
It has become all too accommodating to crime. Our electeds have bought into the theory that Black crime is due to the suffering they have historically endured. I suggest that this narrative is false and dangerous. I accuse the left of lying when they allege that “racism” and not individual choice is responsible for criminal behavior. I accuse them of using this slur to achieve power, and the money that comes with it. You, yourself, have suffered in this life, as have I, as have we all. But would you ever rob a 7-Eleven, mug an old Asian lady, break into a car? Would you ever shoot someone to death? I sincerely hope not. Why, then, are you so resistant to fighting crime?
And that is what this conversation comes down to. Either we declare crime a public safety emergency and deal with it, or we don’t. Sheng Thao is not dealing with it. She remains the police defunder she was in 2021, when then-Chief Armstrong warned us that her desired OPD budget cuts imperiled us all. Thao didn’t like that; two years later, she took her revenge and fired Armstrong.
Thao voters, I urge you, I plead with you, put aside your blind progressivism and help save our city. To remove Thao from office is not to support MAGA. It is to course-correct. We can support LGBTQ rights, abortion and science, and we can oppose the unholy intrusion of rightwing Christianity into government. We can also insist on public safety. Recalling Thao is the right, responsible thing to do.
Steve Heimoff