Chris Smith’s blog

Last year, I spent a good amount of time following Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums around, for a story on his promise to turn his troubled hometown into a “model city,” a progressive light unto the nations. It was–and remains, despite the troubles he’s encountered since then–inspiring stuff, and his candidacy had an air of destiny about it, a sense of uplift that his opponents simply couldn’t match.

Dellums, of course, seemed well aware of this dynamic. At a public health event last summer, the mayor stood outside City Hall, his suit immaculate, and told a story to a group of nonprofit workers. Growing up in West Oakland, he said, he sometimes went kite flying. One day, the wind lofted that kite high into the air, leading him out of deep West Oakland, across the train tracks, and all the way downtown. Pausing to catch his breath, the young Dellums looked up: his kite was flying above the City Hall cupola. Beaming, the mayor paused for effect, letting the image sink in. “And now here you are!” an admirer responded breathlessly.

As political founding myths go, you’ll never hear better. But you have to wonder if Dellums, facing Bushian approval levels, scandals, and a tanking economy, wishes that kite had taken him somewhere–anywhere–else. In the new issue of San Francisco magazine, I check in with a few of the mayor’s strongest supporters, to see how they feel about the first two years of the Dellums era in Oakland.

(Previously: “Here’s hoping for the politics of hope,” October 2007.)

So I just voted, across Haight Street in somebody’s garage. It was 10 am or so, a bright, crisp November morning, and still kind of busy, with a short line of people waiting for the half-dozen or so voting booths that had been set up. There were a few people I recognized from the coffee shop, and a woman voted with her baby slung across her shoulder. I had heard about the lines outside City Hall during early voting last weekend, but there were even lines outside my polling place, in the righteous-lefty but extremely transient Lower Haight. I’ve never seen a line around here. San Francisco, of course, is typical of exactly nothing in these United States (except maybe Berkeley, across the bay), so I won’t draw too many conclusions from my experience. But the poll worker told me that it had been so busy that they had already run out of ballots once. The atmosphere was festive, with neighbors shooting the shit, and nobody seemed in a rush to get out of there and back to work. I’d guess that everybody else was feeling a bit like I was, savoring the vote we were about to cast for Barack Obama. As someone who writes about politics regularly, I can be pretty cynical about our process, and I’m sure I’ll revert to form later on, no matter what happens. But I couldn’t feel cynical this morning.