Cat Brooks is scared. The pending recall of Sheng Thao is freaking her out. Brooks controls much of the agenda at City Hall these days, what with the “progressive” takeover of Oakland politics, and if Thao disappears from the scene, that control is threatened. So Brooks is doing everything she can to pre-emptively deter any recall from ever happening.
All you have to do is look at her tweets. In just the last week or so, she’s become obsessed with recalls. Yesterday she tweeted, “Anyone else fascinated and maybe a little disgusted by the current ‘recall movement’? Tune in tomorrow to learn about the history of the #recall and it’s current utilization across the political spectrum in CA by folks #mad shit ain’t go their way at the ballot box.” Then, just this morning, she tweeted, “1911: recall comes to CA. Since 1913 - 179 recall attempts of state electeds. Current use is HUGE deviation from original intent/practices:. The recall has been ignored for much of its modern existence. Ex: from 1923 - 970, only 1 state legislator across US was recalled &removed.”
Let me explain the real reason Brooks is so upset. It’s because she hates true democracy. She’s happy as a clam when “shit” goes her way at the ballot box. But when the voters are pissed off by Brooks’s leftwing agenda and try to correct it, she suddenly discovers the “originalist” within her—the fascist part, so attuned to the rightwing, that purports to know exactly what the “original intent” was of California’s recall process.
That process began in 1911, when the California Constitution was amended to permit citizen recall of elected officials. This was the heyday of California’s Progressive era, which began as an attempt to limit the lobbying power of the Southern Pacific Railroad but went on to embrace ideals of social welfare and economic reform. By allowing citizens the recall, it was felt that when crooked politicians got themselves elected fraudulently and were subsequently discovered to be working against the interests of the common man and woman, those politicians should not be allowed to finish out their terms. This empowered the electorate, and set the model for the rest of America.
Brooks obviously would be in favor of the recall process if she felt it benefited her. But in this case, it doesn’t. Her woke/progressive movement is loathed by a wider majority of voters than ever. Brooks, who is purely a transactional politician, knows that if the people have unfettered access to the ballot box, she and her colleagues would be crushed, as they were when the people of San Francisco recalled Chesa Boudin. Therefore, she discovers that she’s really always been an anti-recaller.
Fact check: Let’s go back nearly seven years ago, to July, 2016, when Brooks herself led a recall effort against Libby Schaaf! Yes, the person who just tweeted that the recall is “a huge deviation” of the electoral process herself was hell-bent on recalling Mayor Schaaf! Let that sink is. To call Brooks a hypocrite isn’t strong enough. There is something morally, maybe even mentally wrong with someone who thinks that a Google search won’t reveal her stunning duplicity.
I don’t know where the Thao recall movement is going. As I previously blogged, California law forbids any active recall process of an elected official before she’s been in office for 90 days. That would get the Thao recall started sometime in the first week of April. From my contacts, it’s happening; recall leaders are working with the same team that recalled Boudin. I believe there’s a good chance we can get rid of this rather credulous, ineffective Mayor and replace her with someone who can truly lead us—maybe Loren Taylor or LeRonne Armstrong. Cat Brooks, on the other hand, is scared to death, and embarrassing herself by “forgetting” inconvenient truths. I’ll continue to report on this story as events unfold.
Steve Heimoff