Rebecca Kaplan, the Oakland At-Large Councilmember, would not have taken time to have a neat logo made that reads “Rebecca Kaplan for Mayor of Oakland” if she had no intention of running in the Oakland Mayoral Election for 2018. Originally, and about four weeks ago, Councilmember Kaplan was to have a kind of joint kickoff event with Cat Brooks, and say she was running, and tag team with Ms. Brooks for rank choice votes. But, for reasons still not completely explained, that didn’t happen. Rebecca, instead, said she would endorse Ms. Brooks.
Rebecca was presented by some others as not running. Friends in Oakland said to me “she’s not running”. But, as I reminded them, Rebecca never put out an official statement that she wasn’t running. I figured it was a simple matter of time before she announced she was.
Then, I got what I considered a weird tip, today. Whoever runs the Twitter account at the Oakland Public Ethics Commission decided to follow my Zennie62 page. I was already following them. So, I scrolled through to see the latest news, and found this tweet:
As of today, 14 candidates have filed statements of intent to run for mayor in the November 2018 election! Use our Public Portal for Campaign Finance and Lobbyist Disclosure to find the latest campaign filings; https://t.co/TFmK5KPP4U #Election2018 #Oakland pic.twitter.com/XI1PijghKG
— Oakland Ethics Com (@OaklandEthics) June 21, 2018
And I thought “14 candidates?” I had just blogged about Peter Liu running for Mayor of Oakland. So, I checked the Ethics Commission webpage, and sure enough, Rebecca Kaplan’s name was there along with a list of 14 people. It looks like this:
Cat Brooks
Shelton Dunson
Ken Houston
Rebecca Kaplan
Saied Karamooz
Peter Liu
Kristina Molina
Libby Schaaf
Nancy Sidebotham
Jesse A.J. Smith
Marchon Tatmon
Cedric Troupe
Preston Walker
Randolph Wilkins
And the At-Large Councilmember Kaplan has filed as of June 21st 2018 – the same day the Public Ethics Commission sent out that cryptic tweet posted above. She’s filed an FPPC (California Fair Political Practices Commission) 501 document, an OCRA 301, (where “OCRA” stands for “Oakland Campaign Reform Act” and “301” is the campaign expenditure ceiling limit agreement) and a FPPC 410. Kaplan’s 501 campaign expendisture limit filing shows that she originally filled out the document on May 21st, but the Oakland City Clerk stamp reads June 21st 2018. This is something you can see for yourself with a click here.
So, I texted Rebecca with the statement: “You’re running for Mayor.” And a photo of the filling, and she texted back “Nope, not running.” Talk about political head fakes.
So, the cover story is Kaplan’s not running, but the back story is she’s filed the paperwork to run for Mayor of Oakland. Whatever is driving this, I do know Rebecca is massively upset that Libby took her off the air quality board. But running for office is hard, and it take a singular commitment – Rebecca knows all of that. Why she’s Councilmember Kaplan’s head-faking is beyond me, but that’s what she’s doing.
Let’s see: filings to run for Mayor of Oakland? Check.
Neat “Rebecca Kaplan for Mayor of Oakland” logo? Check.
Text from Rebecca that she’s not running? WTF? Check the box marked “confusing.”
Stay tuned.