Libby schaaf

Floyd huen
Quan is a former Maoist, a veteran of the student movement of the 1960's.
Jean Quan, Jean Quan is the first woman and the first Asian American to be elected Mayor of Oakland.

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Special Section: 10 Good Mayors in California

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All politics is local except at Capitol Weekly, where we have an unhealthy obsession for the state variety.

So we thought we’d pull a fast one – what the Muckrakers call a change-up – and turn our gaze to California’s mayors, those local government executives on the front lines of nearly every political fight, large and small, in the state.

There are more than 400 mayors in California. Some are well-known – they know who they are, so we won’t say their names – and many are unknown outside their immediate jurisdictions. But all are dealing with Draconian budget problems, increasingly restive constituents, public safety, road potholes, a recession-weary public, rivals who want their job and a fractious relationship with the state.

It isn’t easy being a mayor, although it can be fun. It can also be a stepping stone, although to where isn’t exactly clear. An upwardly mobile mayor isn’t going to strive for a seat in the term-limited Legislature. In fact, t

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List of mayors of Oakland, California

Number Term start Image Name Notes 1stApril 17, 1854Horace W. CarpentierHorace Walpole Carpentier was born in July 1824, in Galway, New York, to James and Henrietta Carpenter. He graduated from Columbia College (now Columbia University) in New York City in 1848. He and his brother Edward, also a graduate from Columbia, arrived in San Francisco in 1849 and they practiced law for two years before beginning their vast land acquisitions in the East Bay.^{[citation needed]}

On May 17, 1852, thirteen days after Oakland was incorporated, the board of trustees who governed the city granted Carpentier rights to the entire waterfront for a period of 37 years (soon amended to "in fee simple forever"), in exchange for $5 and the building of three wharves and one schoolhouse. Besides ownership of the waterfront, Carpentier also built up a ferry monopoly and a toll bridge across present day Lake Merritt, so that "he and his associates were collecting a fee on virtually every passenger, animal, or item of cargo that entered o

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Newly released FBI records reveal that Richard Masato Aoki, widely revered as a radical hero in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s, was deeply involved as a political informant for the FBI, informing on his fellow Asian activists and on Black Panther Party leaders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

Going beyond previously disclosed FBI records, the documents show that while acting as a militant leader, Aoki covertly filed more than 500 reports with the FBI between 1961 and 1971 on a wide range of activists and political groups in the Bay Area.

Aoki was a well-known figure in the Bay Area’s activist community and an early member of the Black Panthers who publicly acknowledged giving them some of their first guns. After he died in 2009 at age 70, he achieved new notoriety with the release of a feature documentary about him and a biography. Neither work mentioned his relationship with the FBI.

Although incomplete, the records show that FBI agents considered Aoki a valuable informant with “top level” access to the Panthers. The bureau assigned him a “confidential source symbol n