FYI. Rather good news given the strength of US economy (traditional terms of
measurement). It suggests that alternate indicators of well-being & perhaps
sustainability are being considered.
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Green Party's Victory Stunned Both Sides
Ripples of discontent grew into wave of support that beat Harris
Rick DelVecchio, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, April 1, 1999
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Former Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris, one of the best-known Democrats in
the Bay Area, fell yesterday to a fringe-party opponent with no name
and almost no money but a fervent following of Democratic voters sick
of the same old faces and the same old lines.
Green Party candidate Audie Bock, a 53-year-old East Asia scholar and
businesswoman from Piedmont, beat Harris in their head-to-head contest
Tuesday for the East Oakland-Piedmont-Alameda seat in the state
Assembly -- a post Harris held from 1979 to 1991 and hoped to reclaim
with a boost from San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and the state
Democratic Party.
Bock's stunning upset makes her the highest-ranking elected member of
the Green Party in the nation and continues a year of sweeping
political change in Oakland that started with former Governor Jerry
Brown's comeback as mayor of the East Bay's largest city.
The Alameda County voter registrar will not declare a winner until
tomorrow. But with fewer than 50 votes uncounted as of yesterday
afternoon, Bock had 14,663 votes to Harris' 14,327.
``There is a change going on,`` Bock said at a victory party last
night with well-wishers, including Jerry Brown. ``People are not
satisfied with what the two major parties have to offer. . . . This
race reflects that dissatisfaction at the national level.''
Bock's victory over a journeyman Democrat with an organization 20
years in the making and credentials for
leadership in a term limits-churned Capitol was a serial slap to
Harris, Willie Brown and state Democratic leaders. By the time they
saw it coming, a few days before the election, it was too late.
Bock accused them all of ``machine politics'' in an improvised runoff
campaign that stopped the so- called Democratic machine when no one
thought it could be done.
At one point, a Bock volunteer dressed in a chicken suit greeted
voters by clucking ``bock, bock, bock,'' goading Harris to debate and
lampooning the Democrats' use of chicken-dinner vouchers to get
Oakland voters to the polls in a February primary for the 16th
District seat.
Bock's upset -- however fleeting it may be, as Democrats want the seat
back in 2000, a presidential year -- was roundly hailed as historic
for ending nearly 30 years of Democratic representation in the
district. ``It's just showing people are sick and tired of machine
politics,'' said Nancy Sackett-Goss, an Oakland Democrat who switched
sides to run Bock's no-budget phone campaign. ``They really want
something different.''
Sackett-Goss called Harris ``an excellent person'' who has grown
tired.
``The chicken thing just did it for me,'' she said. ``I was appalled.
I called Audie the next morning.''
A reflective Harris phoned Bock yesterday to offer his assistance. He
said he intends to remain active in public life and did not rule out
another try for his old Assembly job in the March 2000 primary.
Richie Ross, a Harris campaign consultant, said he had a gut feeling
that there might be problems for his candidate.
``I paid for a poll a couple of weeks ago, and it showed that things
were pretty serious,'' he said.
Ross talked to state Democratic Party leaders about the poll, but
``they all thought I was crying wolf,'' he said.
State party officials acknowledged that they should have done more for
their candidate. ``Clearly there should have been a better effort,''
said party spokesman Bob Mulholland.
Bock's victory embodied sentiment against Harris' mayoral record and
Democrats' campaign style. Also in the mix was a backwash from Jerry
Brown's popular juggernaut to break up the old networks and throw out
the old ideas at City Hall.
``The Jerry Brown candidacy, anti-Harris rhetoric, anti-establishment
and pro-reform desires all contributed,'' said Assemblyman Kevin
Shelley, D-San Francisco, the Assembly majority leader. ``The vote was
anti- Harris, pro-reform. She was a fresh face. There's a real
throw-the-bums- out mood in that city.''
As a mature woman with a younger person's idealism and a bright and
personal manner, Bock not only looked different from her opponent but
looked like the kind of leader who would be unlikely to bring scandal
down on voters' heads.
A few days before the election, Harris spoke apprehensively of his
first contest ever against a white woman. He felt racial voting
patterns -- particularly low turnout in predominantly black
neighborhoods -- could hurt him, and they did.
But race was just one of many factors on Tuesday.
``They're tired of impeachment hearings, they're tired of not being
heard,'' Sackett-Goss said. ``With Audie, they will be heard. She
answers the phone.''
The Greens, least of all, expected victory in February when their
candidate qualified for a runoff against Harris to pick a successor to
Alameda Democrat Don Perata, who was elected to the state Senate.
About two-dozen Greens hold local offices in California, but in
legislative races in this state and elsewhere, they typically try more
to energize ideological opposition than to win. Bock, whose icon of
political leadership is consumer advocate Ralph Nader, is the nation's
first Green elected to an office higher than county supervisor.
Bock ran for election for the first time in February, when she
received about 3,000 of 37,000 votes cast. The election, which drew no
Republican candidates, was one of a series prompted by Representative
Ron Dellums' resignation last year.
Harris, a few hundred votes short of the majority needed to avoid a
runoff, found himself in a two-person contest against the Piedmont
scholar, whose presence had helped delay his return to Sacramento.
Everything had to go wrong for Harris, and everything right for Bock,
for Harris not to realize his wish. And, apparently, everything did.
Democrats who had aligned themselves with Oakland lawyer Frank Russo
and Oakland educator Enrique Palacios, Harris' two Democratic foes in
February, broke party ranks in the runoff.
And Bock attracted all manner of non-Democratic voters frustrated with
the party's dominance in the district. Non-Democrats make up one-third
of the district's voters.
An election in which only 15 percent of eligible voters participated
had no groundswell, but there was enough of a gathering of
non-Democrats behind Bock to blunt Harris' advantage in identity and
numbers.
The Alameda County Conservative Exchange, for example, endorsed Bock
because she was not of the establishment.
``I don't know if we have any communists in the group, but I wouldn't
be surprised,'' said John Cromwell, an Alameda cafe owner who advised
Bock. ``It's the only way to make this work, the conservatives working
together with the progressives.''
Finally, Harris and the Democrats failed to motivate their core
voters, despite plenty of advertising. In Oakland, 6,000 fewer voters
turned out at the polls on a rainy Tuesday than in February.
``No. 1, people were comfortable in assuming he had it, because of the
turnout in the last special election,'' said Brenda Knight, a Democrat
for Harris. ``They let their guard down.
``I also feel that for some reason, our Oakland community is ready for
change, and they don't care how they get it. Those who have been part
of our community for years are finding their way out, and not by their
own will.''
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