One of the more amusing trends of the past few days has been the reaction of Pamela Price, Sheng Thao and Nikki Bas to the startling news that Gov. Newsom has taken over the Alameda County District Attorney’s office.
They’re pretending that they welcome this move by the Governor when in reality they opposed it, feared it and tried to stop it—until it became clear that Newsom was determined to go through with it anyway despite their opposition. Under the compulsion of necessity, they fell onboard with self-justifying lies. In other words, Price, Thao, Bas & Co. opposed the takeover before they supported it. But it’s not hard for intelligent observers to see through their little game.
For example, here’s Bas’s statement on the takeover: “We appreciate collaboration with Gov. Newsom, AG Rob Bonta and our state legislators. It will take accountability, intervention, prevention & more for the justice we seek.” Incoherence and insincerity don’t get expressed any better than this string of nonsense words. When Bas talks about “the justice we seek,” you know exactly what she’s talking about: so-called “woke justice,” in order words, soft treatment of criminals and ne’er do wells, based on racial grievances, that ignores the cries of decent working people begging for relief from crime and filth. Bas has struggled for years to impose her woke ideology on Oakland, which include defunding the police. But when Newsom embarrassed the entire leadership of Oakland by taking over the DA’s office, Bas, backed into a corner, had no choice but to “appreciate” it. Self-serving lies from someone who’s running for the Board of Supervisors and hoping to fool the people again.
Then there’s the object of Newsom’s crackdown herself, Madame D.A. Price. Here’s what she had to say about the humiliation of being rebuffed by her own Governor: “As he did last summer in San Francisco, California, Governor Gavin Newsom is now sending attorneys from the Judge Advocate General (JAG) to bolster the effort to prosecute organized retail crime and fentanyl-related drug cases in Alameda County.”
Well, Price has been pretending for the last week that this action is aimed strictly at fighting “retail crime and fentanyl…” but that’s another lie. Newsom has made it clear his attorneys are going to prosecute ALL crimes in Alameda County, not just organized shoplifting and drug dealing. They’ll be going after exactly the same murderers, carjackers, muggers and looters that Price has been exonerating if they happen to be people of color. But Price doesn’t want you to know that because it’s too embarrassing. So she lies about it.
And then there’s Sheng Thao. True, she did tweet on Feb. 9, the day after Newsom’s announcement, “As Mayor of Oakland, I extend my sincere appreciation to Governor Gavin Newsom…”. But was she grateful to him for sending in the troops? Nope. The rest of the tweet is, “for [his] invaluable dedication to cultivating a cleaner, greener Oakland.” Turns out the Governor went to a trash cleanup along the 880 freeway. Look, Thao was one of the most ardent police defunders during her time on the City Council. She, Fife, Bas, Kaplan and Kalb were persistent cop-haters who felt more sorry for criminals than they did for normal law-abiding Oaklanders. They also allowed homeless encampments to spread throughout the city—a foul deed they have never apologized for. Thao is just barely hanging on to office by her fingernails; she’s deeply unpopular because the public knows she’s in over her head and unfit for the job.
I wish Gov. Newsom had made it clearer that he’s fed up with these incompetents. But being the diplomat he is, he’s made it easy for them to mischaracterize his takeover by claiming they’re thankful for it. Well, they’re not. There have been emergency meetings between Price, Bas and Thao and their crisis management P.R. teams on how to publicly manage the humiliation, but as with all coverups, this one isn’t going well. The public knows exactly what happened. Price was busted, and her supporters are scurrying like rats to find safe shelter from the storm. All the more reason to recall Price ASAP and then get started on Thao. As for Fife, it’s not worth launching a recall because she’ll be running for re-election next year—assuming she doesn’t step down before then.
What Gov. Newsom has done is unprecedented in California politics. He has essentially cast a vote of no confidence in a sitting District Attorney. He is taking over her office with his own attorneys, thereby relegating her and her hand-picked stooges to irrelevance. He is neutering an out-of-control, rogue D.A. who has done so much damage to the people she purports to represent. Make no mistake, this isn’t just me, Steve, ranting against the three blind mice, or the Coalition for a Better Oakland hurling partisan charges. This is the Governor of California—a possible future President—telling the public, as politely and respectfully as he can, that we made a disastrous mistake in electing Price, and that it’s his Constitutional duty to help correct the damage that irresponsible vote has caused.
Steve Heimoff