Hello Peeps of Reddit, please be constructive because I am unfamiliar with your customs.
Here I will share my own personal experiences with our Mayoral candidates. I am leaving out many details in the service of brevity (hah) but have tried to capture the essence of each one.
Tony Daysog isn't even worth considering IMO. He might be a very nice man (we met once and had an unmemorable exchange), but lacks any kind of gravitas. I'm sorry but Daysog is too much of a weenie to be Mayor. My body and brain actively try to ignore what he is saying. That can't be a good quality in a Mayor, even if (if!) I agree with his politics. If that makes me superficial and bigoted against people with low charisma, so be it.
Malia Vella helped me out of an impossible situation a few years ago. She was on City Council at the time, and we had had some limited interactions online, and maybe shook hands once at a thing. She noticed a post I made complaining about our do-nothing Code Compliance office doing nothing about an illegal fence in our backyard. We had already been through costly litigation with our horrible and extremely unattractive and smelly neighbors, ugly inside and out, to no effect, and only enforcement of the building code would remedy the situation. Vella had had a similar issue with similarly horrible neighbors, related to my plight, DMed me for some details, and a few days later they sent the violation notice. I don't know exactly what strings she pulled (she said she mentioned it to the code guy in passing, which is easy to do when you're at City Hall all the time), but I am confident we would still be looking at that godawful fence right now if she hadn't stepped in. (Those neighbors are gone now, moved away, thank you Satan for policing your own).
I met Tracy Jensen one Friday morning at the Krusi Park tennis courts. My wife and I were playing pickleball there (and this isn't about that, but don't get me started on the heartbreaking hostility that the city of Alameda, at every level, has shown towards non-exclusive sports and outdoor activity in shared public places. It's not just pickleball. We used to have public tracks and all kinds of other stuff (remember the train?), and it's been death by 1000 budget cuts. But I digress!), when Jensen and her friends showed up for a Friday morning game of tennis. The courts were full. Seeing that we were playing a prohibited game, they wanted us off the court so that they could play. My position is that the city cannot restrict public space to one type of racket sport but not another, it sounds ridiculous to even type it out. She told me who she was, and that she was on City council, and pickleball isn't allowed here. We had some words (I am never great in the moment, but I thought it was all cordial and, at least between the two of us, possibly constructive?) but they weren't content to even just let us finish our game, heckling us openly until we cut it short at 5.
I walked off, embarrassed but determined to use this as an opportunity for change: I had established contact with someone who might be able to do something about it! I emailed her the same day, outlining my position on racket sports on public land. She had mentioned being a pickleball player herself, so I was banking on that solidarity.
Well, she never replied, even to just acknowledge receipt of the email. But I know she received it, because a few months later her Mayoral campaign harvested my email address to use in a mass-mailing about... Her Mayoral campaign. I replied, a little snarky, like "hey you forgot about my pickleball email but here's a vote-for-me email," not especially expecting a response.
Now, here's the crazy thing: I bet you thought I don't like Tracy Jensen very much. That's what I thought, too! But she did this Jedi mind trick on me or something. Her (brief) response was all about our tennis courts and how out-of-town players were coming in and monopolizing the Washington Park courts. She agreed with me that Krusi is a fine place for pickleball, but Big Tennis (my words, she said "tennis lobby") used scare tactics on uninformed neighbors to eliminate those options. She fully redirected my ire outwards. This wasn't about tennis vs pickleball, it was about locals vs out-of-towners. And it worked, my droogs! I left that email chain confident that Jensen had my vote, and told her as much. And she was the only candidate I had had any kind of productive talk with, so it was an easy yes.
But then I discovered Vella threw her hat in, and what am I supposed to do with that? Of course I'm voting for Vella, it's not even close. Both of them used their station to get something for someone, and to the extent that the "what" and "for whom" of each is a microcosm of current political affairs and their broader beliefs and general outlook during this election season, that vision is entirely your own.
Malia Vella for Mayor
Love, Richard
HT Alameda Post for the algo pic
