I’m constantly amazed at how pedestrian Sheng Thao’s mind works. To be honest, she doesn’t seem very intelligent to me. She possesses a certain girlish charm that makes her appealing to some voters, but when it comes to the chops of running a big, complex city, Thao is out of her league.
Nowhere do her inadequacies reveal themselves more than at public events, where she seems uncomfortable and feeble. She often reminds me of a sixth-grader who won a lead part in the school play—say, HMS Pinafore. Smiling and shy, she takes the stage, does a little pirouette, and bursts into the song she’s rehearsed for months. In the audience sit her parents, so proud of their daughter. When she’s finished, the audience gives her a polite round of applause, and Sheng is once again offstage, with nothing to do and nothing to say.
She’s been in office only nine months, but that’s more than enough time to have determined that Sheng Thao is a lousy mayor. She hasn’t managed to get a grip on any of the big issues—crime and encampments, especially—and she knows she has no new ideas, so she hews to inconsequential, symbolic gestures, like wearing bluejeans to visit a school (“she’s just like us!”), or a hooped rainbow dress to the Pride Parade, or shopping at the Farmer’s Market in my neighborhood. Somehow, everything Thao does is political. That’s only to be expected from a politician, of course, but in Thao’s case, it’s not even good politics. It’s an endless parade of self-serving stunts, and only mocks the real problems in Oakland for which Thao has no valid approaches. When the people call out for more protection against criminals and sociopaths, Thao just chooses her outfit for the day and takes to Twitter to assure us what a great leader she is.
For example, she’s now touting her “Community Safety Ambassadors” who, at a cost of at least $1 million a year, supposedly are “deployed…to deter commercial crimes and improve safety…”.
Tell that to the employees of the 7-Eleven on MacArthur Boulevard, which was just robbed for the third time in less than a month.
Tell it to the owner of a store whose gate was yanked open by thieves who hooked it to their [presumably stolen] SUV the other day.
Tell it to the surviving family of the man who was slaughtered during a home invasion on Sunday.
Here’s an idea, Madame Mayor: Take that $1 million a year and give it to the Oakland Police Department! But no. People die, businesses are wrecked, but under Thao’s watch, nothing gets done. But have no fear! Here’s Mayor Thao on Twitter, assuring us that “Community Safety [sic] is my office’s top priority…the City of Oakland is united as One Oakland.” This is governance by cliché: the symbolic gesture that reassures no one except Thao’s professional handlers and, possibly, a frightened, deluded Thao herself.
She never should have been elected (and barely was, beating Loren Taylor by less than 700 votes). It was union money—vast bags of it—that put her over the top; and while the union cause polls well (who could be against workers?), the commitment over the years of unions to so-called “social justice” has made them unfair and unfit arbiters of who gets elected and what policies are enacted. The labor unions—SEIU, AFL-CIO, California Nurses Association—contributed heavily to Thao’s campaign. We don’t know why; we don’t know what deals went down; nothing is more untransparent than the backroom machinations of labor unions. Of course, whatever promises Thao made to the unions behind closed doors have necessarily had to be modified to fit in with Thao’s responsibilities as Mayor, which means that what the unions want isn’t always what’s best for Oakland. In cases where the two ends are incompatible, Thao generally chooses to do nothing, hoping that time will resolve the situation. But, of course, doing nothing is the worst possible path. You can’t “do nothing” while the fire is burning down your house. But that is what Sheng Thao has become: the do-nothing Mayor, the mistress of gestural politics.
We have our hands full at the current moment working for the Recall of Pamela Price. It’s probably unrealistic to talk about recalling Thao. If we go there, we’d have to consider recalling other disastrous politicians: Carroll Fife, Nikki Bas, Dan Kalb. There’s only so much the public can handle at any given time. But what we can do is plan for the long haul. We have to change the nature of politics in Oakland—we just have to, our lives and livelihoods depend on it. Gradually, the people of Oakland are learning that elections have consequences and that their one little vote matters. Gradually, events themselves are proving to be the great teachers that are educating Oaklanders to reality. Every murder, every assault, every robbery, every sideshow, every addict ranting in the streets—these are the object lessons citizens are daily exposed to. Voters may be slow to see the big picture, but eventually they do.
Steve Heimoff