Talk about chutzpah! This grifter, “Madame D.A.” as she calls herself, has the nerve to compare backers of the recall effort against her to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. “These are election deniers," said Price. "We had an election. We won the election by an overwhelming majority. It wasn’t a small close election and so the people who lost, they lost, and when you lose an election you shouldn’t be able to overturn the will of the voters. That’s what happened during the insurrection on Jan. 6."
It's also what happened to Chesa Boudin last year in San Francisco. That’s why Price is freaking out. She knows that the Recall is built into the California Constitution and is perfectly legal. She knows how much she’s pissed off and frightened ordinary people, who object to injecting race into every decision she makes.
Price is also comparing recall supporters to MAGA Republicans. “In what appears to be a page out of the January 6th playbook, outside special interest groups, supported by the Republican party, are trying to seize control from local voters because they refuse to accept the results of a legitimate, democratic election to remove the status quo.” Look: Pamela Price has built her political career on lies and smears. I know the leaders of the Recall Price movement. I know Carl Chan, who was the Coalition for a Better Oakland’s Person of the Year in 2023. These people are not “outside special interest groups,” they’re longtime Oakland and Alameda County citizens. If they have political preferences (and I don’t ask because it’s none of my business), I’m sure they tend to be Democrats. The Republican Party may well be supportive of the Recall Price movement but the movement itself is sui generis, entirely grass roots and home grown.
So I would urge people not to be misled and deceived by Price’s lies. She knows how egregiously she’s wounded Alameda County and contributed to our crime spree and disrespect for law enforcement. Everything she’s done has been deliberate, with malice aforethought. She’s waited her entire life to be in a position where she can foist her Black Panther radical agenda on the rest of us—but now, she’s been caught.
On a related topic, you may recall that the Coalition for a Better Oakland supported Seneca Scott in the recent Mayor’s race. Seneca lost, but he’s hardly retreated into the shrubbery. He’s more active than ever, which leads me to believe that he has his sights centered on future elections. He’s also made common cause with Fox News, which seems to have adopted him as their favorite Black activist from Oakland. He was featured again on Fox News the other day when they interviewed him about the demise of the Defund the Police movement and Oakland’s massive crime problem.
“So the reason that Oakland is not safe and livable is because of the failed policies of our neo-progressives who have come to dominate our local government," Scott, founder of the nonprofit Neighbors Together Oakland, told Fox News. "The defund movement was a dismal failure."
Obviously, I agree with every word Seneca said. But we do have to deal with the elephant in the room: Fox News. In my judgment, this media outlet owned by Rupert Murdoch is a pernicious, radical right wing cult that is attempting to overthrow our democracy and install a Christian theocracy in place of our Constitution. So why is Seneca playing footsie with them?
I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Any port in a storm,” says the old saying, and Seneca is simply responding to a national media outlet that’s willing and eager to give him publicity. I don’t think this means Seneca agrees with everything that Fox claims. I believe, for example, that Seneca knows that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and that propagandists such as Tucker Carlson (now fired from Fox) and Sean Hannity simply lied when they claimed that Trump had actually won. Just because you’re featured on a media outlet doesn’t mean you’re entirely supportive of its claims.
At least, that’s my hope. I’m not at all blaming Seneca for playing with Fox. Politicians go wherever the cameras and microphones are, and Seneca is a politician. Besides, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and Fox has been spot-on in attacking the Defund the Police madness. So to Seneca, a good friend, I say, congratulations on your post-election career. You’re doing well, and that makes me happy for you. But beware, my old friend, beware! In cooperating with Fox News, you’re playing with fire. Please be very, very careful going forward in how rightward you drift. You have the scent of power and fame in your nostrils and that can be heady stuff. It can also lead you into madness, destruction and, possibly even worse, political irrelevance.
Steve Heimoff