The MOBN! board is proud to endorse Richard Raya for City Council – District One. We strongly encourage Oaklanders to vote for Richard as your first choice for City Council – District One in November. Richard shares our view that public safety is Oakland’s biggest priority right now and he agrees with MOBN! on Oakland’s need to increase the size of the police force. Richard also impressed us with the budgetary experience he gained while serving as the budget director for the Alameda County Public Health Department where he oversaw a $120 million budget and 600 employees. In this position, he was able to maintain services while saving the department $6 million three years in a row.
We were also impressed with his work as a policy director with California Forward. California Forward is on the forefront of developing policies involving fiscal, structural and democratic reform in California. Finally, Richard impressed us with his responses to the MOBN! questionnaire. Richard Raya is an example of the kind of City Council member Oakland needs.
The MOBN! board also endorsed Amy Lemley as our second choice for City Council – District One.
Oh my God, Amy Lamely. Don’t bother to give a reason for endorsing yet another do-nothing, know-nothing clone of Kernighan, Schaaf and Reid.
Well, any of the candidates running for D1 would probably be an improvement over the incumbent. Congratulations for not endorsing the D1 incumbent for Attorney.
I can comprehend arrived at endorsing Raya (his experience looks most relevant on some dimensions, he seems most passionate about Operation Ceasefire, which I recall MOBN! supports; Raya may even end up as my third choice). But it is too bad MOBN! passed on endorsing the only responding candidate that can plausibly be considered to advocate substantial reform (Raphael). I can’t figure out how MOBN! could’ve concluded Lemley is the second best candidate — unless MOBN! has secretly changed its mission to promoting bankruptcy, in which case Lemley ought be the first choice.
I’m a bit sad that I’ll have to follow subsequent MOBN! with more suspicion and less enthusiasm than before. I certainly won’t be blindly sharing its endorsements for D3, D5, and D7, which I had sort of planned to do (I live in D1 and don’t know much about the candidates for other districts).
Agree with Mike Linksaver. I have been a fan of MOBN and look forward to their analyses of issues, esp the pension bonds and the police oversight agreement (NSA ?). However, the endorsement of Amy Lemley over Len Raphael completely baffles me, unless the fix is in at the board level. Can see some arguement for Raya with county budget experience, although he is an unfortunately enthusiastic proponent of the non profits operating without a bid or metric driven governance process. But Lemley seems to have no relevant experience whatsoever or fact based solution for the two dominant problems in our city – crime/lack of police and the effective bankruptcy of the our city. Also, I recently read in the EBX that her husband was Jane Brunner’s staff person – if true, even more reason to question this endorsement.
I’m heartened by the fact that Amy Lemley has been endorsed by Libby Schaaf and Pat Kernighan, as well by the Oakland Police Officers Association and MOBN (in conjunction with Raya). However, the fact that she has also been endorsed by the anti-police, pro-gang East Bay Express gives me pause. Raya has a similarly confusing set of endorsements (endorsed by IDLF and MOBN but also by EBX). I am giving my first place vote to Len Rafael, followed by Lemley and Raya. Dan Kalb seems like a clone of Jane Brunner and is a definite NO.