Election 2014
Tax specialist Nancy Sidebotham, 69, said she’s run for the Oakland City Council six times. She’s never won a seat. But, to her mind, she’s never lost either. “There’s not too many candidates that lose, and stay involved,” said Sidebotham, who’s lived in Oakland for more than 50 years, and served on the Community Policing Advisory Board, Neighborhood Watch and Shop Oakland boards, among other organizations. “I continue to stay involved and continue to work for my community.” The East Oakland…
Former Occupy spokesperson Jason ‘Shake’ Anderson, a U.S. Navy veteran, artist and activist, is a candidate for Oakland mayor. “What I see in the city is a lot of dysfunction, a lack of leadership and a lack of direction,” said the 38-year-old Oakland native, citing the resignation of the city administrator and multiple police chiefs in recent years. Under his “new and fresh leadership,” he said, the government could hire the best people for the “two most important jobs in…
Attorney and Oakland mayoral candidate Dan Siegel has some big plans for the city. And he wants your vote. “I have the ideas, experience, and ability to be a great mayor of the city of Oakland,” Siegel said. He faces a tough field that so far includes 14 other competitors for the city’s top job. The longtime civil rights lawyer and independent candidate has a detailed proposal to combat what he feels is the biggest issue facing Oakland: the threat…
Bryan Parker embraces being an outsider. Although Jean Quan appointed him to the Port Commission in 2012, most know him as a former healthcare and tech executive. He sees his lack of political experience as an advantage in his run to become Oakland’s next mayor. Parker pointed to his record of business leadership, saying that as vice president, general manager of real estate and internal growth at healthcare company DaVita Inc., he grew his division’s budget from $400 million to $800…
In a tightly-moderated discussion Thursday evening at Temple Sinai in Oakland, mayoral candidates took questions from journalists, querying one another and making closing statements. Many aimed shots at Mayor Jean Quan, but most refrained from taking jabs at one another.
On a rainy Wednesday, Oakland City Councilmember Libby Schaaf rushed into Laurel Elementary School, staving off any signs of exhaustion from the previous night’s late council meeting. There, potential student council members waited to hear her advice regarding their campaigns.
Oakland’s Twitter community is hoping to create a new kind of mayoral debate in the coming election season—the kind that fits in 140 characters or less.
At a campaign event at Redwood Heights Elementary, Oakland mayoral candidate Jean Quan sought to position herself as the “education candidate” and discussed the upcoming Oakland teachers’ strike.