It may be true, as Barbara Lee’s latest attack ad alleges, that five years ago Loren Taylor voted to defund the Oakland Police Department. There were so many procedural votes at that time that it’s possible some temporary legislation got Taylor’s vote and OPD defunding was part of it. But these procedural votes are never final and mean little. What is certain is that, when push came to shove, Taylor did not vote to defund OPD. The all-important vote came on June 24, 2021, during a contentious City Council meeting on the upcoming budget. Nikki Bas, then Council president, along with Carroll Fife “spearheaded the push to defund the Oakland Police Department,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Loren Taylor was not part of that initiative.
Still, Taylor’s record on public safety during his four years on the Council left much to be desired. These were, remember, the “Defund the police” years that followed George Floyd’s death. The whole city, it seemed, was in an anti-police frenzy, and it was all that moderates, like Taylor and Libby Schaaf, could do to contain the pitchfork-wielding mobs. Fortunately, the Bas-Fife radicals eventually proved unable to wreck OPD. The disastrous “Summer of Murder” in 2021 convinced Oaklanders that kneecapping the cops perhaps wasn’t the smartest thing to do, and by Fall, voters’s sentiments toward the police were decidedly more positive, and remain so today.
Taylor is not as strong a supporter of OPD as the Coalition for a Better Oakland would like. But, unlike his opponent, Barbara Lee, Taylor is able to learn. Lee has learned nothing since her Black Muslim-Black Panther days 50 years ago: she harbors the same useless racial grievances and anti-cop prejudices. It’s almost as if her mind has been fossilized.
I suspect that, when he’s elected, Taylor will be a bulwark against the City Council harming OPD. Anyway, the worst influences on that Council, especially Bas, are gone, thank God. Fife is still there, and we always have to keep an eye on her, but she’s now a freak outlier among a much more moderate majority.
I’m not saying Taylor is perfect. He still relies too much on government to solve problems. He’s hinted that he’s against higher taxes—property and sales—but I’m not convinced that he will hold that line. Interviewed yesterday on KQED radio, he was asked what he would do about a gang of thirteen-year old thugs that have been bipping cars lately. I was hoping he would say something about the responsibility of parents to raise their kids with moral values, to keep them in school, to make sure they understand right from wrong, but no: instead Taylor launched into a spiel about how Oakland needs more social programs which, of course, would cost more money.
But social programs don’t raise children: parents do. This is something I’ve argued eye-to-eye with Taylor, and he’s pissed at me for suggesting he should do a much better job criticizing dysfunction in his own Black community. Still, at least Taylor is educable. He’s the best of the candidates, and I have hope for him. Because what is life without hope?
Steve Heimoff