It can be hard for a political activist like me to criticize his own team. I think everyone knows I’m a Democrat who is fiercely opposed to the MAGA cult that has corrupted the Republican Party. But sometimes, in the interests of truth, you have to call out your own people when they do bad stuff.
Today I’m calling out the husband-and-wife team of Wayne Jordan and Quinn Delaney. They’re uber-rich Piedmont billionaires who are heavily involved in funding progressive candidates. On the surface, Jordan & Delaney have all the credentials to be celebrated liberals. She was on the board of the ACLU for years, and also is on the boards of Planned Parenthood, the Oakland Museum, and is a commissioner on the California Commission for the Status of Women and Girls. He has hosted fundraisers for Barack Obama, Barbara Lee, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, and is on the board of Rock the Vote, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Government, and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Together, Jordan & Delaney hosted a fundraiser for Joe Biden in Piedmont, shortly before the president withdrew from the 2024 Presidential race. On the other hand, they also contributed at least $29,000 to Pamela Price to help her fight off her recall.
Democratic political credentials don’t get more impressive than theirs. Their money comes from investment banking and real estate. Their major political lobbying group, run by Delaney, is the Akonadi Foundation. Its mission is “Ending the Criminalization of Black Youth and Youth of Color in Oakland.”
Jordan & Delaney pose an intellectual conundrum for me. They seem like good people, well-motivated and idealistic, and typically Democratic in that they feel for the underdog. They’re also limousine liberals, a class of people it’s easy to make fun of, and I have: the sort of rich Piedmonters who have Black Lives Matter signs in the yards of their mansions, but who would immediately call 9-1-1 if they saw Black men outside their homes at night. I’m not saying that Jordan & Delaney are hypocrites. What I am saying is that their fixation on race has brought us Pamela Price, Carroll Fife and Sheng Thao, and that’s bad.
I wonder what it is about extreme liberals that makes them so uncurious about the actual results of their actions. Do Jordan & Delaney not see what a generation of woke governances in Oakland has wrought? They must both be very smart people, but somehow they manage to overlook the corruption and mismanagement that have characterized Oakland politics for decades. Did they not see Libby Schaaf invite the homeless to come to Oakland, where “we love you”? Have they not watched Thao, Fife, Nikki Bas and Rebecca Kaplan make war on the Oakland Police Department, a war that continues to this day? Are they not aware of the disastrous results of Price’s war on public safety, which every day sends violent thugs back out onto the streets? Do they not understand that all the money Oakland has thrown at homelessness has been completely squandered?
This is my intellectual conundrum. In so many ways, I admire and respect Jordan & Delaney for their years of service and generosity. At the same time, they seem like idiots to me. I don’t know how to square that circle, except to hope it eventually squares itself, and Jordan & Delaney realize they made a mistake.
Steve Heimoff