This is the most accurate and in-depth reporting on the Oakland political sea changes I've seen. The only minor error you made was referring to Isaac Abid as Phillip Dreyfuss's "Fellow developer and organizer."

That juxtaposition suggests Dreyfuss has an economic interest as an Oakland real estate developer, which he is not.

Dreyfuss is not so easily pigeonholed. He is strictly an old-fashioned good government, wealthy, non-ideological quant. A former Oakland resident, he and his family reside in the tiny city of Piedmont, surrounded by and affected by Oakland's dysfunction.

Oakland progressives don't understand that Dreyfuss can't be explained by "follow the money" or ideology. The same goes for the liberal Democratic SF tech supporter of the Mayoral recall.

You overlooked the fine point that real estate developer people did not back the mayoral recall. Similar to the failed recall of Mayor Jean Quan in 2011 (I was the treasurer of that recall), real estate developers are leery of supporting recalls of mayors because if the recall fails, they face risks in getting the zoning approvals and entitlements they need from the City. There was no such risk in the DA recall.

Don’t overstate the extent of voter sentiment moving away from progressive to moderate. It’s not as if most Oakland voters were ever straight out of 1960s Ann Arbor or Berkeley. It’s more than Oakland progressives formed tight symbiotic relationships with most municipal unions (except for police), such that the municipal union's funded progressive candidates and elected progressives approved some of the highest municipal union employee benefits and wages of any city in CA. This directly led to our current general fund insolvency.

Lacking a good newspaper, Oakland is too big for voters to know what happens at City Hall. They assumed adults were in charge.

The union-backed progressives are not taking the assault on their control of local government lying down. In the largest and most prosperous City Council district, they are backing the progressive president of the Firefighters union for an open City Council seat. This would “eliminate the middle man,” where Oakland muni unions commonly fund progressive candidates who are not union members.

Len Raphael

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