In a November 24th column in the Berkeley Daily Planet entitled “Oakland Power Politics,” J. Douglas Allen-Taylor similarly argued that De La Fuente’s power base has been compromised and Taylor raised the possibility that Larry Reid could emerge as a compromise candidate.

On the other hand, in a front-page article in the Oakland Tribune on December 17, Heather MacDonald quotes Jean Quan as saying “I don’t think anyone else [besides De La Fuente] can get five votes.”

That may, in fact, be true, but it’s an invalid premise. Since the City Charter specifies that the Mayor will cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie, only four council votes are needed. Nancy Nadel and Desley Brooks will not, under any conceivable circumstances, vote for De La Fuente. This past week, Nadel did announce that she was interested in the post. Nadel has long been the most consistently progressive member of the council and is certainly deserving of the opportunity to serve as its president. Unfortunately, she has at this point a harder row to hoe. In my mind, the other two leading candidates for the leadership post—Jane Brunner or Jean Quan—would need to pick up only one additional swing vote and the tie-breaking vote would be cast by Mayor Dellums.

Even if De La Fuente is re-elected, his impact will be severely diminished. In effect, what he did for the past eight years was to step into the vacuum created by Jerry Brown’s lack of interest in the day-to-day activities of the council and the city as a whole. My expectation is that Dellums and his staff will be far more focused and involved in policy decisions. In addition, De La Fuente’s surprising loss in the June Primary has already emboldened individual members of the council to take opposition stances on important legislative issues.

Nevertheless, the council president does retain crucial powers, including budget management and committee assignments, including the naming of committee chairs. Since much of the decision-making process takes place in committees (long before it reaches the city council chambers), the latter is particularly significant, allowing the council president to selectively reward and punish colleagues as he sees fit.

As its chair, the council president also sets the tone for council meetings and frequently affects their course. This was once again painfully evident a couple of weeks ago when the council debated the merits of proposed, highly-controversial, changes in the city’s condominium conversion ordinance. Halfway through the meeting, Pat Kernighan, citing the presence of over 120 residents who came to address this issue, asked to have this item moved up in the agenda. Her motion received a second and most of the other council members seemed to agree. Nevertheless, De La Fuente plowed on totally ignoring the input from his council colleagues.

What really rankles me is that when the condo conversion ordinance was finally called well after midnight, as the very last item on the agenda, Desley Brooks announced she was withdrawing her support of the ordinance and it died as a result. De La Fuente, fully cognizant of the likely outcome, could have spared those who had filled out speaker cards a five-hour wait, but he’s never been good about accommodating concerned citizens—particularly when they disagree with his own position.

There are, of course, lots of other reasons mandating a new council president—some more tangible than others. Nadel, while obviously choosing her words very carefully, said, “His style of leadership does not bring out the best in members of the council.”

Reflecting on Nadel’s comment, it suddenly occurred to me that the same could be said about De La Fuente’s effect on the members of the public. De La Fuente is not and never will be a unifier. What the council really needs to do, at this critical juncture, is to elect a council president who is open to change and to community input; one who is committed to working hand-in-hand with our new mayor towards his goal of creating a model city.

If you agree that the circumstances demand change, I’d urge you to lobby the city council members; post comments below; send letters to the local press; attend the special council meeting on Monday, January 8 beginning at 11:00 AM and take advantage of the Open Forum that opens the meeting. The election of the council president is the second item on the agenda.