In the election fol de rol last week was an item most of you probably missed.
It was the fact that nobody knew who the new mayor of Oakland, Jerry Brown's former bailiwick, was going to be. And why nobody knew. No, no need to call in WineRev.
It seems that Oakland is one of the places (anybody know how many?) trying out voting for more than one person for a single office-- and ranking those votes as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices.
So, it is entirely possible to come up with a result like Oakland got, finally, after 8 days of counting the ballots-- a mayor who wasn't most folk's first choice.
Now my main purpose here is to have a discussion. I don't live in Oakland, never have. I am from San Francisco and have observed Oakland mostly from afar.
Like a lot of Californians, I kinda thought the new mayor was going to be a fellow by the name of Don Perata, a former State Senator, Assemblyman, and Alameda County Supervisor. Once President Pro Tem of the State Senate, he seemed like a fellow who could get things done for Oakland, a city that really needs somebody in charge who knows their way around Sacramento, especially in these awful times.
But no. The winner is-- Jean Quan, a two term City Council member.
Well, knock me over with a feather! Never heard of her!
Not that I've heard of every NoCA politician, of course, not my point exactly. But I digress.
The point is, even people who DO know who she is, and were pretty much on top of the whole Oakland mayor's race thing got surprised.
Now it appears she ran a good, clean race, and reached out to many different communities, and managed to ingratiate herself with voters to the extent that they thought she would make a good 2nd or 3rd choice.
But she's not the 1st choice of most voters.
I think she'll do a good job, and I certainly wish her well, but I still have to wonder if this whole instant run-off thing is really a good idea.
For more on what happened, you might want to read columnist Chip Johnson's take on the whole thing, in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Meanwhile what do you think?