One afternoon, some years after the election of Jerry Brown to succeed Elihu Harris as mayor of Oakland, I saw Mr. Harris walking with some friends and former aides along “government street” between City Hall and the federal and state office buildings that were the centerpiece of the Harris administration’s downtown revival after the devastation of Loma Prieta. I had once described the Harris administration as “dismal” and “drifting” in a column for the old Urban View newspaper, and I had to stop and confess to him that the more I saw of his replacement, Mr. Brown, the better Mr. Harris had come to look.
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