Everyone I know is disgusted that Barbara Lee has been anointed as the next Mayor of Oakland. Who anointed her? If you believe the media, it was the unanimous decision of “the people” and “community leaders” who united in support of the 78-year old Congresswoman. But in fact, it was a small, ideological cadre of leftwing racialists and radical union leaders who decided to install Lee, who they know will preserve their special privileges and perks.
The last thing we need in the Mayor’s office is the woman known as the Grandmother of Woke. Before there was Sheng Thao or Carroll Fife, before there was Pamela Price or Cat Brooks, we had Lee stirring up the old racial grievance pot. She’s made a career of using race to empower herself. But what has Barbara Lee done for Oakland? Name me one thing, I dare you. What has she been doing for the last thirty years, except drawing a Congressperson’s salary? She’s been a total zero, coasting on her biennial guarantee of being re-elected. She never even had to wage a proper campaign, because Oakland is one of those one-party towns where, once a politician seizes power, she can keep it forever, unless she’s found in bed with a bloody horse.
The people of Oakland should be very angry about this “choice” that is being imposed upon us. There are many good candidates who have the vigor to lead, which Lee does not. She’s still locked into her dreary old ideology of “social justice,” an empty phrase meaning nothing except to take wealth from hard-working citizens and hand it over to slackers. I don’t expect Barbara Lee to realize that her day is over, but I am shocked and offended that younger Oakland voters don’t realize that we need new leadership—moderate, thoughtful leadership, not old Sixties radicals still peddling the discredited nonsense of Black liberation. That generation of leaders has been an utter failure. We fired Sheng Thao and Pamela Price because of their incompetence, and now we’re about to elect someone who wrote the book on wokeness?
And yet, it will probably happen. The unions will make it happen. They will never permit anyone to be elected in Oakland who doesn’t kowtow to their demands. But Lee, who has promised to lead “an Oakland renaissance,” does, and always will; like a good house servant, she does what she’s told to by her paymasters. And, as I noted the other day, we’ll never know what deals Lee makes with her union bosses, because those meetings are secret. It’s disgusting, un-American and dangerous. And it will go on happening in Oakland until we crack the backs of the unions and tell them to keep their hands off our government.
Steve Heimoff