If Pamela Price were willing to concede that there’s some merit on the part of her critics, that might go a long way toward making us feel a little better about her as a human being. But no: instead of acknowledging that we’re worried about crime and that she is at least partly responsible for it, she doubles down, accusing us of being MAGA Republicans whose minds have been bought by billionaire conservative fascists.
There’s a disturbing vindictiveness about Price, which makes me feel that at her core is anger, resentment, denial and a desire for vengeance—hardly the qualities we want in anyone, much less a District Attorney.
Madame D.A., I wish you’d meet the people I meet who have been signing our Recall petitions. To a man and woman, they’re liberals: pro-women’s rights, pro-LGBTQ, insistent that religion and politics be separated, in favor of higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, believers that climate change is human-caused, and that all religions and peoples deserve to be free.
You are simply lying when you say that we’re a bunch of rightwing fanatics. You either know you’re lying—and doing it anyway for crass personal reasons—or you’re too blinded by your woke ideology to see anything clearly. Either way, you’re profoundly unfit to hold your high office.
You say that “Pointing fingers and spending millions on a forced election less than a year after the real election make absolutely no sense to any reasonable person in their right mind!” So you’re arguing that anyone who signs the Recall petition is unreasonable and not in their right mind. Hurling insults at your critics is not the way to win hearts and minds, Ms. Price, although it is the sign of a desperate loser. Yes, you were elected “less than a year” ago, but reasonable people have concluded that you’re a dangerous racialist ideologue who cannot be allowed to remain in office. Look, if someone marries someone who starts battering them only a month into the marriage, they don’t think, “Well, it’s only been a month. Maybe he’ll change.” No, Madame D.A. You get out of that dangerous, dysfunctional relationship immediately, and chalk it up to experience. After all the hoods and thugs you’ve set free, or undercharged, or refused to indict and made excuses for with your identitarian politics, you have the nerve to tell us that you’re just a misunderstood new D.A. who’s being hounded by the radical right. It’s true that the Right may be against you, but your opponents in Oakland aren’t rightwingers, so stop the lying. As soon as you got elected, you became accountable to the People, and we, the People, are holding you to account.
You know, it might make your life a little easier if you apologized for smearing us. All you’d have to say is something like, “I know you’re frightened. I know crime is out of control. And I know that some of the things I’ve said and proposed—like not charging anyone below the age of 25, or not bringing enhancements against criminals of color, or decarcerating the jails and letting everyone out, or blaming crime on white supremacy—have rubbed you the wrong way. Maybe I’ve gone too far. Maybe it’s time for me to start listening to you, the People of Alameda County. Maybe it’s time for me to change my woke ways.”
But you can’t bring yourself to say those words, Ms. Price, and that’s why, every day, more and more Alamedans, from Fremont and Hayward to Oakland and Berkeley and Livermore to Union City, are lining up at the card tables to sign our Recall petitions. The anger and resentment out there are palpable. People want you gone. You have been weighed on the balance and found wanting. Unless you pull some truly deplorable stunt to stymie our Recall—and we’re watching every move you make—you’ll be gone next June.
Steve Heimoff