Steven Tavares, whose East Bay Insiders daily newsletter is must-reading for politics, headlined his article “DA Pamela Price: Rep. Eric Swalwell is critical of me because I’m a Black woman.” Not even Chesa Boudin, when he was recalled in San Francisco, resorted to a race card or gender defense. Chesa’s politics were all wrong, but at least he was a gentleman and defended himself on policy grounds.
Price is not a gentlewoman. She’s a race-monger. Resorting to a racial defense is the final, desperate action of a scoundrel. It is in fact the vilest political act an elected official in America today can commit. Price plays the race card because she cannot defend herself based on the facts, which Rep. Swalwell got exactly right. "The cops catch and Price releases," Swalwell observed, confirming what we all know: if there’s any racism going on, it’s Pamela Price’s. She has dedicated her life, in true Black Panther tradition, to political activism on behalf of Black people who she purports to believe are victims of racism. This extends even to violent Black offenders. Price, as her actions repeatedly show, would rather see them on the streets, free to reoffend, than being locked up in prison, where they belong. This is why Swalwell determined that "Pamela Price has failed the people of the East Bay, and we are uniting to seek her recall from office." His message will resonate among undecided voters in Alameda County; Swalwell is enormously popular locally because he has been one of the leaders in the anti-MAGA movement. Price knows this, and in her desperation, her anxiety, her hysteria, she accuses Swalwell of racism. Just last night, she issued a new statement implying that Swalwell is not only a racist, but anti-semitic and homophobic as well, and a secret MAGAt. These Trumpian, Hitlerian tactics show Price’s desperation. Her attacks have reached a new low, even for her.
We should all be disgusted. The voters should arise in united indignation and tell Price that her behavior is unacceptable. If Price wants to defend herself on the actual issues—if she truly believes that not enhancing criminal charges contributes to public safety, if she truly believes that violent repeat perps deserve some kind of “second chance,” if she truly believes that parole is better than locking up violent offenders, if she truly believes in “decarceration,” which means shutting down the jails, if she truly believes no one under 25 should be charged with a felony--then let her come out and say so, and offer intelligible arguments, instead of ad hominem insults to her critics. But this is something Price can’t do, not just because her mind is closed, but because she has no intelligible arguments. Her ideology has nothing to do with public safety. It’s obsessed with the racial grievances she’s nourished for decades. Even as America mercifully has moved beyond the race-based antagonisms of the 1960s and 1970s, Pamela Price remains stuck there, mired in racial resentment directed especially toward cops. And we citizens of Oakland pay the price.
Price should apologize to Swalwell and to all of us voters. She needs to resign, and find herself a job in the private sector.
Steve Heimoff