Dellums endorses Kernighan?

In today's Oakland Tribune, Heather MacDonald writes about the hypocrisy of Allison's wealthy SF-based supporters exploiting OakPAC's loophole and sending out vicious, lying mailers blaming Pat Kernighan for the recent crime wave, even as OakPAC was denounced for attempting to spend its donations. This has outraged bloggers before, such as Pamela Drake of the Grand Lake Guardian and Will Harper of the East Bay Express. But now we find out that Mayor-elect Ron Dellums is outraged as well.

According to the article, Dellums "was not pleased that the most recent mailing from the Allison campaign features his picture, implying an endorsement." Pat's campaign has been very careful not to use pictures of Dellums, because they felt it would be disrespectful to the mayor-elect's neutral stance. Allison, on the other hand, has basically ignored the fact that Dellums refused to endorse her. His displeasure bodes ill for their relationship, and certainly belies Allison's claim that she needs to be elected to implement his agenda.

What's so galling about this scandal is the blatant hypocrisy combined with lies. According to the Trib, the "Pat is responsible for crime" mailer used utterly false statistics, claiming that murders have triped when in fact they are up by only 75%. Allison's spokesman says that "the progressive community," which is apparently made up of two millionaire lawyers from San Francisco, wants "to make some real change." Well, I hadn't seen city races dip to this level before, so it seems that they succeeded.

I am truly shocked by Allison's hypocrisy and the unethical actions of her mega-rich friends. I'll let Dellums' spokeswoman conclude for me: "The community will have to decide whether they want to support a candidate who is associated with violating the spirit of the agreement. The mailer sends a bad message and is in bad faith."