The East Bay Express, now in independent hands, is endorsing candidates — which is a very good thing in a community where the daily paper is marginal, at best — and the paper’s editors pretty much agreed with us in the Oakland mayor’s race. They endorsed both Rebecca Kaplan and Jean Quan (along with Joe Tuman), and made about the same arguments we did — Kaplan’s a visionary, Quan’s experienced, either would be fine — and Don Perata would be a disaster. In fact, my favorite part was their “anti-endorsement” — 25 reasons not to vote for Perata — which included some stuff I did know (“he’s lazy” and “he’s corrupt”) and some stuff I didn’t:
Perata has purposely fostered the image of a mobster. Friends and foes have called him “The Don,” he conspicuously carried a gun around with him, and he kept a life-size cutout of Tony Soprano in his senate office. He also posted a plaque in his office that read, “The Peratas,” written like the logo from The Sopranos with a handgun in the place of the “r.”
Don Perata, armed. That’s scary.