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Those who may have thought that Ron Dellums would alter his political positions before the business community now that he has entered Oakland’s City Hall, or that the business community would be less than favorable to Dellums’ previously announced positions, got a sense they may be wrong at the San Francisco Business Times’ Annual Mayors’ Economic Forecast breakfast at the San Francisco Hilton on Wednesday morning. 

Dellums told more than 1,200 business representatives virtually the same thing the newly installed mayor has been saying throughout Oakland for the past week: while he believes that advancing an agenda of one or two items is a “cop out”, his focus in the immediate future in Oakland will be to reduce the city’s staggering crime rate, and to work to make health insurance available to Oakland citizens who do not currently have it. 

He said that the interests of the business community and Oakland’s city officials were intertwined, both groups looking for a prosperous city. 

“Everyone in this room is bright enough to know that there is no demarcation between the public and the private sectors,” Dellums said. “We’re joined at the hip.” 

Also speaking at the two-hour breakfast gathering was San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. 

In a follow-up question and answer session, a SF Business Times editor told Dellums “there was an undercurrent during last year’s mayoral election campaign that Ron Dellums was anti-business. I don’t know where that perception came from. I know it surprised you. It certainly surprised some of us who knew your background.” 

In answer, Dellums said that during the campaign he was often asked if he was for or against development. 

“That’s an unintelligent question,” he said. “The real question is, what community values are going to drive that development, and who will it serve?” 

Dellums also repeated a criticism he made in last week’s inaugural address, that the current state of American politics concentrates more on the personalities of who is being elected than it does on a discussion of what the candidates propose to do. 

“It leads to the position by voters that ‘I’m for this person’ or ‘I’m for that person,’ and that’s all, and ‘I don’t care what you stand for.’ It’s a burlesque of politics. To assume that one is a peace activist or a social activist and therefore cannot understand the needs of business is an insult, and I’ll leave it at that.” 

His answer was met with applause throughout the audience. 

Dellums also sketched out some of his economic development goals for Oakland, saying that he is working to create a global trade center in the city, and said he expects to host “a major economic summit” in Oakland this spring. 

He reiterated his support for former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown’s program to increase business in downtown Oakland by bringing in 10,000 new residents, calling it a “common sense” approach. “If you put a thousand people out in a hot field, someone is going to come out and sell them sno-cones. I understand the logic of the program. My only question is, will 10K alone get you where you want to go?” 

He predicted that many Californians who moved to the suburbs and exurbs in previous decades would be returning to the state’s cities for convenience, and that it will be the challenge of cities to accommodate that growth. 

But in answer to a question from the Business Times, Dellums said he did not believe that the Oakland A’s baseball team will remain part of Oakland’s commercial future. 

“In hindsight, building a downtown stadium would have made sense, and would probably have kept the A’s here,” Dellums said. He added, however, that this was no longer a possibility, and that “the likelihood of the A’s staying here is very slim.” 

He called the proposed move to Fremont “a large endeavor,” however, and said that “in any deal as large as that, things can go wrong. So I think the door may be slightly open” for the A’s to remain in Oakland. 

While sticking to his immediate policy goals of lowering crime and ensuring the health of Oakland citizens, Dellums sought repeatedly to convince the business community that it was in their interest to join him in achieving them. 

In the area of health care, Dellums said that “every human being has the right to a healthy life. You of all people know the value of a healthy citizenry. You want a healthy work force because it enhances your productivity. A healthy citizenry enhances the productivity of the cities.” 

He called for a “public-private partnership” to bring this about. He also praised Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for bringing for bringing forth a plan to expand health insurance coverage for California citizens. “Whether you agree with the governor or not, he has moved the ball forward. That’s important.” 

Dellums called crime and violence “a national epidemic,” adding that “it is my greatest concern. In the past, it has mostly been confined to the hood and the barrio, but that is true no longer, and it can no longer be ignored by the larger community.” 

The Oakland mayor said that while the “overwhelming role of police is currently in prevention,” “the police cannot solve the problem of crime alone. They are only a ‘thin blue line.’ To the extent that they are effective, they have to partner with the community to prevent crime.” 

He said that in the past, Oakland’s crime-fighting policy has been to “send police in large numbers into the high-crime areas that, for historical reasons, are mostly low-income or of certain ethnic backgrounds.” Because of the way those police come in, Dellums said, “the view in those communities is that the police are more like an occupying force.” 

In order to build trust for police within communities most affected by Oakland’s crime rate, Dellums said that “we have to get the police out of their cars” and “move towards community policing.”