Like autumn leaves, the ground these days is littered with political mailers for local campaigns. Let’s take a look, shall we?
First up: OH MY GOD THEY’VE IRRADIATED PAT KERNIGHAN!
Or else maybe it’s hepatitis? Hard to say. Plus, the angle of the shot makes her look like a giant, capable of crushing all of Oakland’s problems.
No, I didn’t Photoshop this or crank the yellow. I think I know what the designer was going for, but how this ever got through prepress and was actually printed and mailed I have no idea.
Next up, it’s this voting guide from COPS.
You might assume that COPS is a police group of some sort. If you’re an idiot or from another planet. No, of course COPS is a consulting firm – specifically one called Moran and Associates. What do they have to do with the Police? Nothing. They just like the name. Well, plus crime is obviously a big issue in Oakland, and people take police endorsements seriously, and they want their clients to seem like they’re popular with the police.
If I read the fine print properly, all of the candidates endorsed by COPS paid for it. Which means it’s not really an endorsement from any police organization. Of course they only use the word endorse once – they go for voter guide and recommend instead – but the implication is that police endorse these candidates. Which they don’t.
One of the candidates paying for that endorsement is Jean Quan. If you don’t live here or just don’t know, she’s one of the top candidates for Mayor, battling tooth and nail with Don Perata. Let’s look at some of her mailers, shall we?
Here to start things off, it’s Detective Jean Quan keeping our streets safe.
I’m going to guess some rookie is getting tons of grief right about now for leaving his car unattended and enabling Jean Quan to jump in front of it for a photo op. Arms crossed and looking tough! Why do all photos of her always remind me of Walter Mondale Michael Dukakis riding the tank? (If you’re not old enough to get that reference… you’re probably better off – thanks to Charlie Pine for correcting my dubious memory). She always looks out of place – like in this video where she’s cruising with her posse in her thumpin’ Prius, nodding along while her homies lay down some fresh rhymes.
Right or wrong, Quan’s idea of what makes Oakland safer doesn’t put an emphasis on police but rather after school programs. I’m all for after school programs, but they’ve yet to be proven useful tools for fighting crime and the available data about the programs in Oakland shows they haven’t had any positive impact on truancy, crime, or anything else its supporters claim it deals with. Logically I agree that it should help, but reality says no. That’s why Jean is posing in front of a police car, not a midnight basketball program.
Next, it’s the ol’ endorsement shuffle:
Fragmentary Evidence already wrote about this pretty thoroughly, and I don’t have much to add. In short, none of these papers suggested she should be your first vote, and 2 of the 3 suggested that you should vote for Rebecca Kaplan first (which I’d recommend you do, too). The Oakland Tribune put her 3rd. But, because we’re using instant run-off voting and you choose your top 3 candidates, papers are suggesting you vote for 3 people and usually ranking them in some order.
So you could technically argue that these papers have “endorsed” her, leaving out the caveat that they didn’t say she should be your top pick. But it’s dishonest – the exact same sort of dishonestly that she’s very critical of Don Perata for engaging in.
What bothers me is not this specific instance of her shading the truth in her favor, it’s the ongoing pattern of doing this. She claimed to know Oscar Grant – by which she meant that she shopped at the store where he worked and talked to him once. By that standard he and I were best friends (we talked a few times, although I never knew his name).
She brags about organizing the Dimond to get rid of the crime magnet Hillcrest Motel, but the truth is that the community had been working to get rid of the Hillcrest Motel for 6 years before she got involved. I don’t want to diminish her help in getting rid of the Hillcrest – she absolutely deserves credit for stepping up and helping out. But that’s very different from having brought the neighborhood together to her cause.
Jon Stewart said something about how he doesn’t hold politicians responsible for spinning the truth, but rather the media. His metaphor was that if you go to the zoo and a monkey throws its feces at you, well, it’s a monkey so what do you expect? The person you hold responsible for that is the zoo keeper (the media in his metaphor). That’s a realistic stance to take. However, I do hold politicians to a higher standard – especially ones who will receive very little media scrutiny. If you’re going to be paid by the citizens then you should be held to a higher standard of integrity.
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And the subject of integrity brings us to Don Perata. The man has spent bazillions of dollars (and gamed the system to make that legal) and it seems like I get a new mailer from him every day. I won’t even bother scanning them. He’s got a very professional graphics team working for him so they lack the engaging oddness of the above mailers. And they say absolutely nothing. He’s got the name recognition, all he’s trying to do is not blow it.
If only he weren’t a terrifying backwards machine politician… If only he weren’t using a cancer charity as a front. If only he weren’t the odds-on favorite. I’m obviously not big on the idea of Quan being mayor, but I prefer her to Don Perata. However, even Don is going to be better than our current mayor.