OAKLAND — The room fell silent Tuesday when Barbara Lee was sworn in as the city’s mayor. After a rousing standing ovation, it quieted once again when Lee acknowledged a personal significance of the moment.
The Bible she had placed her hand on during the Oakland City Hall ceremony, Lee explained, had belonged to her grandfather — who was born just two years after Juneteenth, 1865, when slaves in Texas found out they had been freed.
Lee ran through more of her family’s history, including how her father, who had been a segregated World War II soldier, once tried to purchase a home in San Leandro, but “he couldn’t, because he was Black … and ended up being ran out of town.”
“Little did my parents know, then, that I would end up representing San Leandro for three decades,” Lee said, referring to her 26 years as an East Bay congresswoman, a decorated legacy that paid off with Oakland voters in the April special election.
Now, Lee will represent Oakland, a much smaller territory with a large set of challenges. The mayor, 78, is at the tail end of her political career but can expect to face a new test in governing a city with split politics, a shaky national reputation and steep financial struggles.
Still, Lee related her upbringing in both Texas and Southern California as a lesson in multiculturalism. Lee’s father, Garvin Alexander Tutt, eventually got divorced and re-married a woman from Japan, whom Lee taught English and considered a second mother.
“I think about Oakland and I think about its beautiful diversity,” Lee said, hewing once again toward a message of unity that powered her mayoral campaign, which earned approval from over 50% of voters.
The positive vibes in the packed council chamber echoed those during a swearing-in earlier Tuesday of Charlene Wang, the newest councilmember in the city’s District 2, which spans Jack London Square, Chinatown, Eastlake, San Antonio and neighborhoods around Lake Merritt.
Unlike the political arm of public labor unions that backed Lee and other candidates in the special election, Wang was supported by deep-pocketed business interests.
As a candidate, Wang called out Oakland’s problems — dispiriting public displays of crime, drug addiction and homelessness — more vocally. But on Tuesday, she struck an optimistic tone similar to that of the new mayor.
“It would be easy to feel overwhelmed,” Wang said, referring also to the Trump administration’s attacks on public funding for local governments. “But yet, this is a moment when we are called to lead. Oakland doesn’t fold under pressure; Oakland gets sharper, it gets stronger.”
In the coming weeks, the City Council will address a two-year budget proposal by Councilmember Kevin Jenkins, who had served until Tuesday as interim mayor — part of a leadership carousel that ensued following ex-Mayor Sheng Thao’s removal from office last year.
Jenkins re-assumed his duties Tuesday as the council’s president, who runs the public meetings. Council deliberations have historically become tense during budget discussions, but Lee on Tuesday promised a “clear-eyed” fiscal approach with realistic spending.
“We will keep the public informed the whole way,” Lee said.
The mayoral swearing-in ceremony had earlier been announced as a private event, but members of Lee’s team ultimately broadcast the festivities online and the local TV station KTOP, with invited guests and some media present.
The new administration’s chief of staff will be Miya Saika Chen, who previously worked for Nikki Fortunato Bas, the council member who left the District 2 seat vacant after she was elected as a county supervisor last fall.
Wang’s swearing-in as the new District 2 councilmember also marked the final meeting of Rebecca Kaplan, who served in the council’s at-large seat for 16 years and filled in as District 2’s leader the past few months.
Kaplan exits the council as its most-tenured member, leaving behind a relatively young roster: District 5 Councilmember Noel Gallo and District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife are now the only members of the eight-person board who have served for longer than a single term.
Among the objectives Lee has outlined for her shortened term — it will last until the end of 2026 in what would have been the rest of Thao’s tenure — is a re-examination of the mayor’s responsibilities, which do not include veto power over the council’s legislative decisions.
The mayor and council have often clashed in Oakland. Lee, however, praised the current members as “phenomenal,” saying they mentored her during and after a truncated election cycle.
Her commitment to a unified Oakland may be tested by the city’s financial constraints and social problems, which continue to cast a shadow over the town’s cultural offerings and its rich history of progressive politics.
Lee’s supporters, however, see her as a unifying force after a period of divisiveness at City Hall. And her own history is vast: the new mayor closed her remarks Tuesday by reading a passage from “Still I Rise,” a poem by the late writer Maya Angelou, whom Lee described as “a very good friend of mine.”
“Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise,” reads the poem’s excerpt that Lee read aloud. “Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear, I rise. Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise, I rise, I rise.”
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at shomik@bayareanewsgroup.com.