Why?
While the story Oakland City Council President Pat Kernighan (District 2) gave to the media was that it was because the report which in a racist way zeroed in on Oakland’s two black councilmembers, when evidence and use of names and dates that would have implicated each representative was left out, was too politically divisive, there’s a back story.
It’s all over town that Oakland City Auditor Courtney Ruby is considering running for Mayor Of Oakland. Ruby’s idea that she’s the best candidate for Mayor would be deep-sixed the minute council brought up the item for discussion.
A conversation that would also lead to new claims of racism, and the revelation that a small Oakland-based black construction company was being used to get Oakland to select a white construction company that was not based in Oakland and for the Oakland Army Base Project.
While she’s not officially made that known beyond a handful of people, Oakland’s a small town, so word travels. It’s widely known that Ruby has been looking for a way to salvage her currently wrecked political career – a public discussion of her report would be the coup de gras.
I saw this coming, the idea that Courtney Ruby might run for Mayor because she started taking up the task of using her office to attack people on a very personal level. It was one thing to single out the problem of a security company as being a favorite of an elected official to win a bid for work, but it’s another to investigate the personal life of well-known Oakland Developer Phil Tagami, all the way to the point of digging around to learn how he met his wife.
Truth.
And of course, there’s the very personal attack on Reid and Brooks that came from her report.
My numerous friends have repeated that Courtney Ruby was going to run so much that my stomach was turning. I’ll just plain say I totally hate the idea, as the person who I once admired as a real true leader for Oakland and a good person, I now can’t think of in any way that is not related to use of the office to put down elected officials for personal gain.
Kinda sounds like something a Mayor’s race candidate might do, if it’s true.
Something else to consider: there are two other possible candidates for Mayor who would be politically seered by a public discussion of Courtney Ruby’s Auditor Report: Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan and Mayor Quan herself.
Stay tuned.