Brown Victory In Black And White

Eric Ellis San Francisco

06/05/1998

The black disc jockey rapped Get Down for Jerry Brown and the people of Oakland, the festering sore of poverty that separates two of the world's richest regions, did. Overwhelmingly. Mr Brown was the only white candidate for an election in a mostly black town, but the 60-year-old political gadfly walked it in, taking 60 per cent of the vote in an 11-strong contest for mayor.

He may have run for president three times, been California governor twice, ran the Democratic Party and dated Linda Ronstadt, but he was saying his election as mayor was the "sweetest" moment he had in public life. "I don't want to call this a victory," he announced to the rap-happy street party that fired up outside his loft in the downtown of this deeply-depressed and crime-ridden city. "I want to call this a celebration. The real victory will come when people take the bars off their windows."

Gertrude Stein famously described Oakland as the place where "there's no there there".

Between Silicon Valley and San Francisco, Oakland is the city the New Economy, indeed any economy, left behind. Unemployment stays stubbornly high in a nation that has its lowest jobless rate for 30 years. Some 72 per cent of the city is non-white, 43 per cent of it black.

It's the city where the African-American "dialect", ebonics, has officially taken root in schools, where the Marxist Black Panther movement that terrified Middle (white) America during the 1960s was born. One Black Panther holdout was a key Brown campaign aide. Per capita income in Oakland is about half that of the wider San Francisco Bay Area.

Mr Brown's stunning election sends signals that confound conventional political analysis. His mostly black challengers included Mr Shannon Reeves, the 30-year-old local president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the African-American community's premier lobby.

At one level, the high voter turnout - relative to the other regions and States that voted in this week's local elections - and an impression of Mr Brown as a political insider, indicate black voters think a white mayor can bring to Oakland the white investment and prosperity of its neighbours in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. But he may have also been swept along simply by his celebrity. At times during the campaign, it was difficult to determine who else was running, such was the attention from the fascinated national and local media.

Complained a defeated Mr Ignacio de la Fuente: "This campaign has been nothing about issues but about rhetoric."

Son of the late Democratic grandee Governor Pat Brown and brother of former California Treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Kathleen, Mr Brown's connection with Oakland is tenuous.

He moved there in 1995, giving up a large house in San Francisco's affluent and very white Pacific Heights - known locally as Specific Whites - the absolute antithesis of Oakland.

Many Americans regard Mr Brown as flaky, remembering his time as "Governor Moonbeam" of California, who eschewed the governor's mansion for an apartment and a mattress on the floor.

Or that he dated the singer Linda Ronstadt, consulted Mother Teresa, sought Zen fulfilment in Japan, openly smoked marijuana and proposed that California launch its own moonshot.

Even today, in his loft that is part political HQ, part home, part community centre that he shares with 10 others, he runs yoga and tai chi classes in the main living room and still consults Jacques Barzaghi, a French mystic cum adviser.

He has talked of transforming Oakland into an "eco-city", a mecca for environmentally-friendly investment - when what the town really needs is more real jobs.