Oakland voters go to the polls today to choose their new mayor.  I’m betting that it will be a run-off between City Council President Ignacio DeLaFuente and former Congressman Ron Dellums.  I’d love to see DeLaFuente get enough votes to prevent a run off, but I’m guessing that there are enough wackos in my city to help Dellums make it into a November run off. 

In the last days of the campaign, I received several phone calls in support of DeLaFuente, including one from the current mayor, Jerry Brown.  But the most fascinating political marketing call I received was this message left on my phone over the weekend.  It was a woman’s voice reading the following script:

“Ron Dellums left office 8 years ago to become a Washington lobbyist.  He quit representing the people so he could lobby for big corporations and foreign dictators.  Now, he’s sold his D.C. mansion and moved back to Oakland just to run for office.  But Oakland needs a real mayor, not a fat cat lobbyist.  Get real, Ron.  You made your choice and you didn’t choose us.”

I found it very interesting that there was absolutely no tag line identifying the group or campaign responsible for message. 

Also, on a side note, the Grand Lake Theater on Lake Merritt is owned by a left-wing activist who uses one side of his marquee for political messages, normally about rants about how Bruce McPherson is trying to steal elections via Diebold voting machines or how George W. Bush needs to be impeached.  He currently has a message up telling folks to vote for Dellums and Secretary of State candidate Debra Bowan.  Since he does not rent this space out, but uses it for either movie titles showing at his theater or his political rantings, do his marquee ads for Bowan and Dellums have to be reported as in-kind contributions?  I’m guessing not, but I’d love one of you professionals out there to answer this question.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.