As Oakland’s next mayor, Barbara Lee must guide the city through challenging times.
Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle
Will Oakland’s new mayor-elect, Barbara Lee, be the Bay Area’s third promising new leader, after San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and Golden State Warriors forward Jimmy Butler?
Both men defied the preconceived concerns about them and instead focused on attaining immediate results without caring about getting credit. They just want the win.
And if there is one thing that Oakland needs, it’s a win.
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As a longtime Oakland resident, I typically cringe at Oakland gazing aspirationally at what’s happening in San Francisco. The Town should be the Town, not the City. But the next mayor of Oakland should take heed of what Lurie, a rookie officeholder, has done during his first 100 days in City Hall and Butler has accomplished in his first two months at Chase Center. They didn’t try to do too much. They weren’t performative. They used their superpowers to bring people together and win.
Lurie snared his first win weeks before taking office when labor leaders — who didn’t endorse him during the campaign — applauded him for helping to settle the hotel workers strike. Lurie didn’t act performatively by marching with the strikers, which would have snagged him a Sunday foot rub on MSNBC and accomplished nothing. Instead, union officials told me he used his superpower (a rich guy who knows a lot of other rich guys) to find the decision-making rich guys representing the hotel companies and nudge them to sit down and hammer out a deal.
“These first 100 days have taught me that we must remain vigilant about the challenges we face,” Lurie said this week. “We must continue to cross entrenched lines of difference. And we must boldly move toward better days ahead. Together, we can win, and we will.”
Golden State Warriors forward Jimmy Butler has proved to be a strong leader focused on winning.
Brandon Dill/Associated Press
Butler has been focused on winning, too. The Warriors were floundering at midseason and in danger of not making the playoffs until they acquired him from the Miami Heat. He came to the Bay Area with a reputation of being an egotistical team-destroyer. Yet that narrative has seemed like fiction since he landed here. He was the star on the Heat, but has seamlessly become the self-described “Robin” to Stephen Curry’s “Batman” since he joined the Warriors. So far, he has lived up to his nickname of “Playoff Jimmy” — a veteran player who ramps up his game when the high-pressure contests begin, while being a calm and steady leader focused on getting results. The Warriors’ record since Butler debuted on Feb. 8: 23-8.
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As mayor, Lee needs to be Playoff Jimmy. Use her leadership skills — which were the selling point of her campaign — to unite competing factions and make the city work. She also boasted about her ability to bring $1 billion in government funding to the East Bay while in Congress. Time to show that she can still do that as mayor.
“A lot of Warrior fans weren’t happy when they made the trade for Butler,” said Marlon Mosley, civic engagement coordinator for Oakland nonprofit EBASE, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, which focuses on economic and social justice. “But he hit the ground running, and they started winning.”
Similarly, Lurie has been admirable in calmly preparing San Franciscans for a period of austerity as he (hopefully) makes the long-term fixes needed to repair the city’s $16 billion budget.
“We cannot bank on temporary fixes,” Lurie said. ”We must invest in permanent solutions for our economic success as we dig ourselves out of the nearly $1 billion budget deficit we inherited.”
“Getting through this painful period of tough decisions requires a change in the culture of politics that has held us back for too long,” said Lurie, who has thus far has not behaved like an entitled prince or been “dangerous” — as some expected. Instead, he has been measured, been a relentless visitor to all corners of the city, and has avoided performatively lashing out at Donald Trump, which would have been easy (and superfluous) in the bluest city on the planet.
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Hopefully, Lee is observing.
San Francisco politics has long been described as a knife fight in a phone booth. By that standard, Oakland politics is grenade-juggling on a trampoline. Oakland is facing similar economic problems. It has an $87 million budget deficit, $130 million it is paying in interest each year on pension debt, and a $140 million annual structural deficit in its general purpose fund, meaning that the city’s expenditures outweigh its revenues.
And Lee, like Butler, is facing preconceived notions about her. That she’ll be “another Dellums” — a reference to former Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Lee’s mentor, who like Lee was an iconic member of Congress representing the East Bay before returning to become mayor … and was meh and disengaged.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, a rookie officeholder, seeks to use his power to bring people together.
Gabrielle Lurie/S.F. Chronicle
During the campaign, Lee said, “everything is on the table” when it comes to solving Oakland’s budget crisis, but includes this caveat to her pals in labor: “Cutting jobs, of course, would be the last action I would undertake, because jobs means services to the city.”
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Not Lurie: “Getting through this painful period of tough decisions requires a change in the culture of politics that has held us back for too long. We can’t just cut our way to change — we will learn to do more with less, because we have to.”
Lee told voters she is the leader who will bring together a city reeling after federal investigators indicted the previous mayor three months after voters recalled her. She’s the veteran who touts her ability to command respect from the City Council (most of whose members endorsed her) and from all corners of the city. Now it is time to prove it. She will probably have to use her superpower (using her gravitas to command respect) to persuade public sector unions to get a haircut. Because everyone in Oakland is going to have to get a trim so the Town can start stacking wins.
Doing that will require that she be Playoff B. Lee.
Reach Joe Garofoli: [email protected]; X: @joegarofoli
