Crime’s inflection point
San Leandro’s eviction moratorium gets laid to rest; A’s will have to pay county if they leave before 2026; Madame DA back in the news
CITY NEWS
CRIME
—QUALITY OF LIFE ISSUES—You just had a feeling scrolling through social media that Oakland Councilmember Dan Kalb’s public safety forum last Tuesday was going to turn out bad for him. This assessment was further problematic since Kalb is concurrently kickstarting his campaign for the state senate.
—Speaker after speaker flashed anger and despair during the heavily attended and sufficiently covered forun in North Oakland. Oakland activist and rabblerouser Seneca Scott harangued Kalb from the audience with his own mic and speaker.
—Kalb really had no answer for the uptick in crime in his District 1. After 10 years in office it’s difficult not to lay some blame on him for the state of public safety in his district and the city at-large. In fact, leaders all over the Bay Area don’t seem to have an answer for the doomsday feel quickly becoming tightly latched to our collective thoughts concerning quality of life issues.
—Many people were watching the scenes from Kalb’s forum and the sheer anger displayed may be an inflection point in East Bay politics and the upcoming 2024 election cycle.
—But we’ve seen this cycle of great public fears about safety before. Two years ago, following the “Defund the Police,” there was push back fueled by constant news stories and video clips of hold ups and Asian Americans being attacked on the streets by assailants.
—In late 2021, it appeared crime would be a big issue during the East Bay’s 2022 elections. It was, but the outcome at the ballot box mostly favored candidates who leaned toward police defunders.
—Now, we’re at nearly the same stage of the next election cycle when crime fears are even more rampant. There’s signs in other Alameda County cities that the electorate is bound to mimic the anger we saw this week in Oakland. You hear it in public comments all over the East Bay.
—If an elected official were to hold a public safety forum in their own jurisdiction, they may also receive an earful from upset constituents.
—But, will 2024 deliver a different result? We probably won’t know until November 2024. The races in the March 2024 primary don’t really revolve around solving crime. The primary is mostly county and state legislative races.
—However, the fallout from this week’s forum in Oakland is extremely problematic for Kalb’s bid for the state senate. He’s already trailing in the money race in a field where labor unions are already contributing big time to the perceived top two candidates.
—Furthermore, if a growing number of his own constituents are upset with Kalb, that’s a big problem, and those in the rest of the senate district that don’t know him may have an early negative sense of his campaign after watching that raucous forum.
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