Barbara Lee wants to be mayor after 30 years as a legislator. Can she make the switch? 

All through the twentieth century, the principal job of Oakland’s mayor was to mediate amongst totally different and infrequently competing pursuits within the metropolis — enterprise leaders, business bosses, unions, Black migrants, landlords, renters, neighborhood teams, even the Ku Klux Klan. The factional conflicts shifted because the make-up of town modified, however the important function of the mayor remained roughly the identical: to dealer amongst energy blocs in a rising Oakland.

This isn’t the job that former U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee and eight different candidates are vying for in subsequent month’s particular election. 

Deindustrialization, disinvestment, and a shrinking tax base beginning within the Nineteen Seventies modified the way in which mayoral politics are performed. Industries aren’t regionally owned anymore, “so throughout the nation, mayors are put within the place of being salespersons for his or her cities to attempt to appeal to investments,” mentioned Chris Rhomberg, a sociologist at Fordham College and creator of No There There: Race, Class, and Political Neighborhood in Oakland. “It has modified the perform of native authorities to be extra entrepreneurial whereas on the identical time attempting to guard high quality of life for native residents.” 

Within the phrases of Marcia Fudge, one in all Lee’s colleagues within the Home of Representatives, “You must be a cheerleader to your metropolis,” to be an efficient mayor.

You even have to grasp the trivialities of metropolis authorities, the way it works, and the way it’s damaged. And it’s a must to deal with fixing probably the most hyper-local sorts of issues — suppose potholes, crime, unlawful dumping, and homeless camps.

In her marketing campaign to switch recalled Mayor Sheng Thao, Lee, 78 years previous, has confronted a lot of questions — notably from her principal rival, former councilmember Loren Taylor — about whether or not her time in Congress is related to the work of working a metropolis. The following mayor should pull Oakland out of an enormous funds deficit and restore confidence in a neighborhood authorities that appears to have spent a lot of the previous yr in a hail of subpoenas and by no means fairly sealed offers to bail out town’s funds. 

What’s extra, Lee’s try to commerce a congressional seat for the mayor’s workplace has evoked some unflattering comparisons to Lee’s personal mentor, Ron Dellums, the previous member of Congress who was elected mayor in 2006. Dellums was seen by many Oaklanders as a heroic statesman on international coverage and home points like poverty and well being care, although in line with some accounts, he struggled to get a deal with on Oakland’s most elementary issues.

However the evolution of the mayor’s function in current a long time suggests a special query about Lee’s expertise: Did her time as a legislator put together her to be town’s cheerleader-in-chief?

‘Being the one one’

Barbara Jean Tutt ran her first political marketing campaign as a 15-year-old at San Fernando Excessive Faculty — to grow to be an precise cheerleader. No Black scholar had ever been chosen, so she turned to the NAACP for assist in altering the choice guidelines to permit your entire scholar physique to vote for the squad. Lee was chosen and have become the varsity’s first Black cheerleader. It wouldn’t be the final time she blazed a path and faced a backlash for it. 

My dad and mom raised me to do what’s proper—not what’s simple.

After I was 15, I wished to be a cheerleader however did not match the choice committee’s look.

So, I known as the NAACP to assist me change the choice course of to an election course of.

The primary ever election I received was as San… pic.twitter.com/5Sjt5uvfWl

— Barbara Lee (@BarbaraLee_CA) November 9, 2023

Whereas Lee spent nearly all of her political profession in Congress, she acquired her begin working for Shirley Chisholm’s presidential marketing campaign within the early Nineteen Seventies whereas a scholar at Mills School. Lee, who on the time was a frontrunner of the Black Scholar Union and a volunteer with the Black Panther Occasion, has referred to Chisholm as her mentor.

Lee went on to intern for Dellums on the Hill, finally changing into his chief of employees. In 1990, she entered the California State Meeting, changing into the primary African American lady to be elected to the state legislature from Northern California. That have of being “the one one” meant she needed to grow to be extra savvy in bridging variations, Lee mentioned.

“I needed to be sure that my perspective was understood by individuals who didn’t appear like me or had the identical form of historical past and expertise, to be able to signify everybody,” she informed The Oaklandside. “Being the one one required me to have the ability to respect everybody else’s viewpoint, however to additionally deliver folks collectively to help what I wanted them to help.”

Throughout her time with the Chisholm marketing campaign, she met Sandre Swanson, a political guide. Swanson additionally labored for Ron Dellums and served as Lee’s chief of employees for the primary 5 years she was in Congress. Swanson was additionally a state assemblymember from 2006 to 2012.

Responding to constituents and fixing their issues was an enormous focus of her time in Congress, Swanson mentioned. Through the housing disaster within the mid to late-2000s, residents would come to her workplace asking for assist negotiating with banks making an attempt to foreclose on their houses. 

“We weren’t attorneys, however we have been in a position to name the financial institution straight and speak to authorities affairs folks, allow them to know we have been trying over their shoulders, and acquired them to rethink foreclosures on some properties in Oakland,” Swanson informed The Oaklandside. “Years later, folks would stroll as much as her in Oakland and say, ‘You helped save my home.’”

Her workplace would get entangled with Social Safety disputes and lacking incapacity funds. Even when somebody confirmed up who didn’t dwell in her district, employees had a coverage of by no means turning anybody away, Swanson mentioned, an angle he thinks she would deliver to the mayor’s workplace. 

Lee served in Congress for 27 years, stepping down this January. She launched greater than 600 items of laws, however solely 33 made it out of the House and solely 3 turned legislation. This file has led some to criticize Lee, saying she’s proven ethical management however has hardly ever been the creator of main payments which have improved the lives of Individuals.

Nonetheless, she was a member of the highly effective Home Appropriations Committee, which holds the federal government’s purse strings, permitting her to affect laws and federal spending, and he or she chaired the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Based on GovTrack, an impartial analyst of congressional exercise, Lee constantly ranked excessive amongst members of the Home in cosponsoring payments, gaining cosponsors, and dealing to achieve agreements with the Senate.

Most famously, in 2001, she forged the lone vote in both chamber of Congress in opposition to giving the Bush administration broad authorization to wage battle in Afghanistan. It was, Lee wrote in 2021, “probably the most tough vote I’ve forged in my profession in Congress.” For her troubles, she acquired insults and dying threats and required a 24-hour safety element. Nevertheless it established her fame as one of the crucial brave politicians on the Hill, mentioned U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who represents Kansas Metropolis.

“There may be no person in Congress whose backbone is as steely as Barbara Lee’s,” Cleaver informed The Oaklandside. 

Cleaver was elected mayor of Kansas Metropolis previous to his time within the Home of Representatives and served as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus instantly following Lee’s time period. When Lee talked about to him that she was contemplating working for mayor of Oakland, he inspired her, he informed The Oaklandside. 

“She’s not going to be afraid to get into a few of the most controversial however important points locally,” Cleaver mentioned. “She’s been within the place of getting to persuade others and convey folks alongside who have been simply mildly in help of one thing she wished. That’s why she saved getting place after place within the Democratic caucus in Washington. Everyone wished to have a chunk of Barbara Lee due to her skill to observe by means of and work laborious.” 

Lee was elected unanimously as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Cleaver famous. There weren’t many points that cut up the caucus throughout her time period, he recalled. “That, in and of itself, is main,” he mentioned. 

Lee’s time as chair coincided with the primary two years of Barack Obama’s presidency — when he was going through vehement and at instances racist opposition from Republicans. She made positive to gin up help for Obama’s insurance policies among the many caucus on the time, Lee mentioned in a 2019 talk. Through the struggle for the Reasonably priced Care Act, one of the crucial consequential payments in current a long time, she helped kind the Quad Caucus, which included the Black, Hispanic, Asia-Pacific American, and progressive caucuses, to drive help for the well being care act and guarantee their priorities, like addressing racial well being disparities and offering a public possibility, have been included. Lee went to satisfy with the president on the White Home to debate the invoice.

“[I said] ‘Now we have over 110 votes, Mr. President. We would like all of it.’ And he mentioned, ‘You deliver me the votes, you bought all of it,’” Lee recalled in 2019. 

Two years after Lee’s vote dissenting in opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan, Lee labored with President George Bush on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Reduction (PEPFAR), which she coauthored. The initiative funds analysis, remedy, and prevention of HIV/AIDS. Thus far, it has saved greater than 25 million lives, largely in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s one in all Lee’s proudest accomplishments. Continuation of this system could be at risk below the Trump Administration.

“George Bush didn’t agree with me and I didn’t agree with him on a lot of something. However we discovered a strategy to work collectively,” Lee mentioned. “There are a lot of examples of that all through my work each legislatively and as a member of the Appropriations Committee.”

Advocacy versus management

Throughout her mayoral marketing campaign, Lee has touted her file of bringing in billions of {dollars} to Oakland in federal funding for increasing the Port of Oakland, supporting clear air initiatives in West Oakland, applications with town’s Division of Violence Prevention, help assist throughout COVID, investments in transit upgrades, parks, and humanities and neighborhood organizations. Elihu Harris, a former mayor of Oakland, informed The Oaklandside, “Her focus has all the time been on bringing assets again to Oakland.”

In boards and different public talks, Lee has pointed to her relationships with different legislators and dedicated to working with different establishments and personal funding streams to deliver extra investments and philanthropy to Oakland. 

Whereas these expertise are helpful for Congress, being a mayor is a bit totally different, mentioned Jim Ross, an Oakland-based political guide who just isn’t concerned in Lee’s marketing campaign. 

“While you’re a member of Congress, you’re taking what your constituents are nervous about and go advocate for that in Congress. In a metropolis like Oakland, one thing we’re determined for is somebody to guide town towards fixing issues,” he mentioned. “The skillset of a member of Congress can simply translate. It’s only a matter of recognizing that the job of the mayor is to guide, the place the job of a member of Congress is to signify.”

However as Ross additionally identified, the mayor’s skill to guide is circumscribed in Oakland — not simply by the tightening financial circumstances of town but additionally by its personal constitution. Below the City’s distinctive type of governance, the mayor has some affect however doesn’t run metropolis departments (town administrator does that) or have last say on the funds (that’s the Metropolis Council’s function). The result’s that the mayor, along with being a cheerleader who encourages outdoors funding, needs to be one thing of a legislator, too, persuading councilmembers to get on board.

“In Oakland, it’s a must to persuade a majority of the Metropolis Council to go together with you to get something executed. That’s what legislators do,” Ross mentioned. “In Oakland, it’s actually rather more of a legislative and persuasive function, being mayor, than you’d discover in another cities that are rather more administrative and govt.”

Marcia Fudge is aware of all about that. Earlier than representing Cleveland in Congress, she served as mayor of Warrensville Heights, a suburb of Cleveland. From 2021 to 2024, Fudge was secretary of the Division of Housing and City Improvement. One of many extra important capabilities of a mayor, she mentioned, is making folks be ok with dwelling of their metropolis. 

“You must…promote town so folks perceive why it’s an important place to be,” Fudge mentioned. “That, [Lee] is superb at. She’s among the best cheerleaders I do know. And it’s a must to be sure you’re main in a means that makes folks need to observe. And he or she is superb at that.”

Lee’s marketing campaign, coming because it has within the aftermath of a mayoral recall and the reelection of President Trump, has not gone in for lots of the rah-rah stuff. However generally the previous cheerleader in her makes an look. At The Oaklandside’s Feb. 26 mayoral discussion board, candidates have been requested why they wished such an unattainable and thankless job. Others spoke darkly of the current disaster in Oakland, of being “fed up with the scenario within the metropolis,” of watching “the sanctity of human life be destroyed.”

Lee was sunnier. “I don’t suppose that being mayor of Oakland is an unattainable thankless job,” she mentioned. “I acknowledge the challenges, however I additionally acknowledge the alternatives.”