Let me tell you about the Alameda County Democratic Party Central Committee and the career bureaucrats that run it. There’s a certain type of career politician (Dan Kalb comes to mind) who sets himself the goal of a life in politics. There’s a well-tested path: start with volunteering, make contacts, establish relationships with powerful people. Then run for something boring: school board, rent control board, county party committee. This is preferably done when you’re in your thirties. You’ll have to put up with a lot of dreary people and interminable meetings, but that’s the price of advancing in politics.
Finally the day comes when you make the big leap: City Council! You find a campaign manager. You raise funds – and raise funds – and raise funds. You beg, plead, threaten, cajole, mislead donors. You call in old chits. By now, you’re a polished speaker. You have everyone important on speed dial. You also have your fair share of grudges (just as others have grudges against you) but politics is seldom personal: you get along with idiots as long as they’re potentially useful.
And then you find yourself on the Central Committee of your county political party, an essential cog in the machine. It’s grinding tedium but you’re on the way up. Who knows how far you can ascend? Mayor – State Senate or Assembly? U.S. Congress? Lieutenant-Governor – Governor – Senator – President of the U.S. of A.?
Meanwhile, you still have to kiss a lot of rear ends. And that means keeping your fellow bureaucrats in power. After all the time and energy you’ve spent securing that network, you don’t want to see your old pals kicked out of office and replaced by people you don’t know, who owe you no favors. So you support your fellow bureaucrats – not because they’re the most qualified for their jobs but because you can use them in shimmying up the greasy pole.
This is the sort of person on the Alameda County Democratic Party Central Committee. Ambitious. Calculating. Not necessarily smart, but crafty. Willing to do dirty stuff. Knows where the bodies are buried. Unscrupulous, but adept at keeping his fingerprints off the murder weapon. Charming, but there’s something insincere under his skin. Moral fiber has been replaced by self-interest. These are not the sort of people you want running the political life of your county. But there they are: and having achieved so much power they’re not going to easily relinquish it.
If this personality description sounds unsavory, that’s because it is. And it explains why the Alameda County Democratic Party Central Committee has voted to oppose the Recalls of both Pamela Price and Sheng Thao. It’s not because the committee men and women like or admire either of them. It’s not because the members think Price or Thao is doing a good job. It’s because Price and Thao still have power, as long as they’re in office, and access to power is what middling bureaucrats thrive on. It’s the heady brew that gets them off. “Madame D.A. and I were having coffee and she told me…”. “I was with the Mayor at her house when…”. These are the sorts of name-drops bureaucrats love to utter. This is the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” quid pro quo that pollutes our politics and demeans our culture. The cynicism underlying it is staggering, the hypocrisy breathtaking. It’s why so many people think that politics is a great, big, steaming pile of manure: because it often is.
It’s important for voters to understand these subterranean connections. People like Pamela Price aren’t isolated phenomena. They’re simply the visible tip of a vast, largely unseen mechanism that controls the lives of cities and counties. Is it a conspiracy? In many ways, it is. Or call it a marriage of convenience.
I hope that voters won’t be influenced by the Alameda County Democratic Party Central Committee’s opposition to the Recalls. Ask yourself why the Alameda County Democratic Party Central Committee would back the most incompetent Mayor in Oakland’s history, and a District Attorney who fails to hold criminals (especially of color) accountable. Then forget your “loyalty” to any particular party, and vote your conscience.
Steve Heimoff