Pulling Rank

Pulling Rank

A pundit turned politico on roller derby, pot, and Oaktown’s fate.

As any pundit knows, their gig is a whole lot easier than actually stepping into the blood sport of electoral politics. Just ask longtime Oaktowner Joe Tuman. Despite the prospect of long odds and a grueling schedule, the San Francisco State communications professor, who moonlights as a political analyst for KPIX and KCBS, pushed himself away from the commentator chair to make a run for the hotly contested Oakland mayoral seat in 2010. While he didn’t come close to winning, his 14,347 first-place votes in the new ranked-choice system showed he can do more than just talk the talk. Now, he’s even eying a run for City Council. I tracked down S.F. State’s mediagenic professor recently at the Montclair Peet’s to talk about my old hometown—a place we’re both tired of apologizing for.

Paul Kilduff: Oakland being the hotbed of corporate greed that it is.

Joe Tuman: Yes, indeed.

PK: Oakland became this target for the Occupiers and, I mean, is it kind of a relief for you?

JT: Your tongue is planted firmly in your cheek here, right?

PK: Yes. Is it a relief that you’re not having to deal with this as the mayor of Oakland?

JT: No. Actually, it’s not. Let me be real clear cause I get this question a lot usually from my friends. I’m sure any of us would have made mistakes, too. You can’t know how to run a city until you’ve started running a city and there’s always a learning curve. And I feel unfortunate for our mayor that the crisis that everybody is going to have to face at some point came early in her term. But, having said that I would have made mistakes, too doesn’t mean I wouldn’t relish the chance to be mayor. And in point of fact, I wouldn’t have made these mistakes that she made. Just to be clear, I think that with respect to “Occupy,” the first problem that she had was not being clear about what the ground rules were going to be. If she had come out the first day with the land use permit and said, look there are time, manner and place restrictions as part of First Amendment law. Here’s your land use permit, you can occupy the plaza in the morning. When the sun goes down at night, you go home. Don’t pee in the bushes and don’t bother the businesses around here. Be part of this environment and do so in a constructive, peaceful way. It wouldn’t have been a problem. But when she went out instead and embraced them and then allowed them to camp, which is not what cities do, all the homeless people in Oakland who regularly get rousted by the police for sleeping in public places looked at what was I would say more than half in terms of the percentage a white group, [they said] how come these people get special treatment and the rest of us get rousted wherever we are? So the homeless joined them, a small group became a much larger group and then eventually other people with other agendas joined them. And the ability to manage that crowd got out of control. Then she betrayed their trust later by arranging to have them thrown out and then compounded that error by pretending she didn’t know anything about the tactics. So the police were mad at her, the community was mad at her and the Occupy people who had a message that was a good message about income inequality at that point knew they would never trust her again. The same land use permits that everybody else gets could have made this be a smaller problem than it is. And now it’s become a larger issue and it’s not really about corporate greed, it’s about the struggle for who’s in control of the city.

PK: She did release those doves, though.

JT: Yes, she did.

PK: That was this nice symbolic gesture. What’s put Oakland on the map, obviously, is pro sports. And unfortunately, we are looking at the very real possibility that every team in Oakland will leave. The Raiders want to go back to L.A., the Warriors want to move to San Francisco, and the A’s are hell-bent on moving to San Jose.

JT: There is a woman’s semi-pro roller derby team. I’m not joking. There is one that I think would be happy to stay.

PK: We’re going be dubbed the home of roller derby, I guess, right?

JT: Yeah, it could be.

PK: Has Oakland put too many eggs in the pro sports basket?

JT: Even though they are called Oakland you have to fold in the county on this. I mean Alameda County has a big investment in this, too.

PK: That’s true.

JT: But honestly, free agency and ownership participation and lucrative television contracts cured me of my sentimentality about professional sports a long time ago. When the Raiders moved to Los Angeles the first time, they broke my heart. I was a ticketholder back then and what I realized is this will always be a business decision for them. And if it’s a business decision for them it should be a business decision for a city or a municipal entity that’s making a deal. So, I think there are a lot of advantages that come from having a downtown ballpark.

PK: Jerry Brown didn’t feel that way.

JT: Well, I mean, there can be economic multipliers, you know. But here’s the truth, Lou Wolff is not going build hotels and a shopping complex at the Oakland Coliseum. And I’m not really sure that he would at Jack London Square. His heart’s set somewhere else and I think he’s assuming that the true Athletic fans will follow him wherever they go like the New Jersey Giants who play in New Jersey, not in New York, but they call themselves the New York Giants. And, I don’t know what will happen with the Raiders going forward. They have new management that’s kind of from the L.A. days, not the Oakland days. Who knows now that Al Davis is gone? And the Warriors are supposedly looking at San Francisco. I mean there’s a lot we could lose with those but I think we should focus in Oakland. I want to keep them. [But] I wouldn’t want to spend any city treasury on this. I might trade land and certainly encourage private development. There’s nothing wrong with those things. But we have so many more problems in the city at the small business level that I think should be the first priority.

PK: Just the whole theory that pro sports brings so much money into the community. I mean I’ve heard that there’s lot of different sides to that argument. What is your general take on that?

JT: I think that certainly if you’re looking at the model in San Francisco with a beautiful ballpark they have and that area especially around the ballpark with the housing and the businesses and the retail that’s grown up around there. And San Francisco being a tourism city anyway, it’s an additional push into their economy. There’s no question that’s been wonderful. But one of the problems I think Oakland has is we’re constantly looking across the Bay at San Francisco to figure out what we should be doing. You’ve got to remember that San Francisco was a desirable point for tourism before there was a ballpark. Nobody’s coming to Oakland for tourism reasons. Maybe they’re coming now for our restaurants but we don’t have that niche yet.

PK: They’re coming here to protest greed, corporate greed. You know what Oakland can do better than San Francisco? High-end bowling.

JT: I’m not in disagreement with you on that. I’ve often thought that downtown could use a big bowling alley. It’s a draw.

PK: You know what’s going in there across from AT&T Park?

JT: A bowling alley?

PK: Used to be the Borders right? Borders are all closed, now it’s a bowling alley.

JT: There you go.

PK: High-end bowling.

JT: There you go. What does high-end mean?

PK: Nice food. Drinks.

JT: You don’t have to wear the same shoes that some of the other guys wore?

PK: What does Oaksterdam do for the city of Oakland? What is making Oakland the weed capital of America do for the city?

JT: This is a slightly complicated topic. If you ask me in the abstract, do I want the city to be known primarily for Occupy or for pot? I would say, no, right? We’re at this point though I think, not just in Oakland but statewide and nationally, where people are reevaluating legalizing marijuana. It’s been on the ballot so many times I can’t even count. And so, just like with abortion, instead of dealing with the issue directly, you go around it. Instead of abortion, you talk about parental notification of abortion. And likewise with legalization of marijuana, instead of just saying, “Hey, people want to smoke pot, let’s legalize it.” They go around it. So we’ve had recently medicinal use.

PK: Right, who’s been turned down for the medicinal use pot card?

JT: Nobody, right? Yeah, exactly.

PK: What a scam for the doctors.

JT: So the reality is I think nationally and statewide certainly, there continues to be, as our generation gets older, I think that people sort of look at that and say, you know, what’s the harm? And there’s less resistance to it than there was before. At the same time, those organizations that look at this as a business—and we have some in Oakland —want to just be treated like the other businesses. To play by the rules in terms of the medicinal use of this and get business licenses and the rest and I think what they found is the city basically looks at them as a gigantic deep pocket that takes their money but doesn’t do much to support them. And then you have a federal government that still says if you’re doing this it’s illegal. You’re in violation of the law. So there’s a part of me that doesn’t want the city to be known just for pot or mostly for pot. There’s a part of me that empathizes with small businesses. And then there’s another part of me that looks at this and says, in the end, I don’t know what the federal government will do about this. And we have to balance that. And I don’t know if I want the city to be known as Amsterdam West.

PK: Amsterdam has legalized prostitution as well so maybe that’d be a good thing.

JT: Well, exactly, and then hash bars and the like.

PK: June 5th primary. I can’t figure it out. The one fact that sticks out for me is no president has been reelected with 9 percent unemployment or higher. And yet, Mitt Romney is plastic.

JT: Plastic is the word.

PK: And he isn’t likable.

JT: Yeah.

PK: I can’t stand that guy. I can’t stand Newt Gingrich and I can’t stand Santorum. What’s going to happen here? Is it going to be Mitt versus Obama?

JT: You know it’s beginning to look that way simply because, I think, within the Republican party, there’s an ongoing discussion right now about whether it’s more important to state your true conservative credentials, whatever conservative means. This is as ephemeral a term as liberal, right? Or is it more important to pick somebody who can compete? And I think right now, Romney seems the more viable candidate. He’s better capitalized, he has strong organization, he’s on the ballot in more places. His odds of getting the nomination are better. And yet, in spite of all that truth, the fact is it’s kind of like with ranked choice. He’s not everybody’s first choice. He might make the top two or three but he’s not everybody’s first choice. And so every time you’ve got one of these other people you mentioned, and don’t forget Ron Paul, too—who’s actually the most entertaining in a Walt Whitman kind of way. You never know what he’s going to say but you know it’ll be funny. Every time you’ve got one of those, especially in the caucuses where you can do the person-to-person lobbying.

PK: What’s the difference between a caucus and a bake sale?

JT: About a thousand calories, I think, right? Anytime you give somebody a reason to sort of think twice about Romney, a lot of voters in the GOP still have their reservations and the reservations come from across the board. If you’re in the South, it’s the Evangelicals who look at him because of his LDS faith. And frankly by the way, personally for me, I find that reprehensive. [sic] The First Amendment celebrates freedom of religion. There’s no religious oath for office. And if you’re going to reject him, don’t reject him on those grounds because it’s a dangerous precedent. Go to other parts of the country and people don’t like him because they think he’s too moderate. He’s not to the far right, whatever that means.

PK: What if he was a Scientologist?

JT: Probably be the same, right?

PK: Should the Mormons merge with the Scientologists?

JT: Well maybe. No. And then you go to other parts of the country and people don’t like his connection to big business. There are lots of people who are moderates and independents or Republicans who lost their jobs or had their jobs outsourced and who look at his record at Bane as an example of someone who [doesn’t] really care about them. So any place he goes there’s population there who could think differently if the right person approached them, if you get the pun. The problem is, there’s no way Newt Gingrich could win the fall election. And not because he can’t compete head to head with Obama. He can’t because to get from here, now to there in November and not manage to put his foot in his mouth, at least once because he basically says whatever comes into his mind. He’s a loose cannon. Message discipline is just not there and he hasn’t really had one of those campaigns from beginning to end where he did it. Ron Paul knows that he’s basically just playing for a spot at the convention where he can give a speech and speak for the moderate part of the party. And, Santorum appeals, I think, in a very limited way to a slice of the party that’s still social issue conservative. Romney ends up being the guy, I think, at the end of this because of all that.

PK: What was your first real job?

JT: I’m not sure what constitutes “real” here. I certainly thought spending eight hours a day in heat to fill a bin with apricots was real, when I was 10. Ditto for helping to manage one of my parents’ restaurants in my late teens. Or later appearing for the first time on CNN, analyzing the 1984 presidential debates. Truth is, I’ve done lots of jobs, often more than one at the same time.

PK: Any favorite mottoes?

JT: I used to tell my daughter’s boyfriends (when she was in high school): “I have a gun and a shovel.” The gun reference, they got right away. The shovel thing, they had to think about. I was kidding, of course. But I said it with a straight face, just to put the fear of God in them.

____________

For more Kilduff, visit the “Kilduff File Super Fan Page” on Facebook.


Joe Tuman Vital Stats

Age: 53.

Birthplace: Dallas, Texas

Astrological sign: Virgo

Reason for being: If I don’t say, “Why, my wife Kirsten, of course!” she will kill me.

Running qualifications: 13 Ironman races, 200 shorter triathlons, and 40 marathons.

Last book read: I have a habit of reading several books at the same time which means I take my time getting through each one. My tastes can be a little eclectic, too. Right now I am finishing David M. Kennedy’s, Don’t Shoot: One Man, A Street Fellowship, and The End of Violence In Inner-City America, and Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, by Chris Matthews; and (because I dig his writing) Martin Cruz Smith’s Three Stations.

Faces of the East Bay