Interesting comments from Chip Johnson over at the SF Chronicle regarding Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums.
Let’s see, last week some guy got shot in broad daylight right near the train that I take to work. A few weeks before that Christopher Rodriquez was shot and paralyzed by a gunman while taking piano lessons less than a mile from my home.
And meanwhile, Ron Dellums is being touted as the wonder Mayor while he jets out of Oakland (hey, who can blame him for wanting a vacation from the violence) down to Los Angeles to campaign for Hillarious Clinton.
Maybe Dellums should spend less time politicking and more time trying to get guns off the streets of Oakland.
The fact that Hillarious Clinton would make absentee mayor Dellums her “senior advisor on urban issues” only goes to show how badly out of touch Hillarious is with what it’s like to live in the urban crime of America.
Mayor spends more time on Clinton than on city: “That more or less describes Dellums’ first year in office, too. And that makes it particularly tough for Oakland residents to hear Clinton trumpet Dellums’ bold leadership as mayor when leadership is what he’s lacked the most.
And it’s downright uncomfortable for the locals to see him presented as a savior for the nation’s urban ills when his own city is suffering so badly from rampaging crime.
Still, the Clinton campaign named Dellums its senior adviser on urban issues, which is strange for a mayor who hasn’t adequately addressed those issues in his city. In 14 months as mayor, Dellums has yet to adopt initiatives on housing and economic development, and he had to be pushed by Oakland residents into using a voter-approved tax to hire more officers.
But that hardly seems to matter on a national stage, where image and symbols seem to count more than the details just about every time.
If Oakland residents didn’t know better, it would appear as if Dellums’ commitment to the Clinton campaign is stronger than his desire to provide leadership and governance for the city he was elected to lead, and that’s disappointing.”
Just politics as usual I guess. And people wonder why voters are so disenfranchised and barely take the time to vote anymore.