Oakland Mayoral Candidate: Peter Y. Liu

It looks like our next candidate up to bat is Peter Y. Liu. Mr. Liu is a graduate of Oakland public schools as well as the University of California at Santa Cruz. Mr. Liu also served in the Army, where he met Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think they were just visiting, not serving with him. Mr. Liu has become wealthy in real estate, and is motivated by two things to serve Oakland as mayor: God and his child.

Here's what he has to say about why his son motivates him to run for mayor:

If I am mayor, I have 4 years to make the Oakland public schools safer and raise the education standards. Spouse always nagging me to buy a house in Alameda, Castro Valley, etc., but I don’t want to. I want my child to be able to go to the same public schools I went to and be proud of it. I am not going to escape from the problem.

I am sure his spouse is just thrilled to have been called out in this way. But his son is hella cute, and would almost inspire me too. Here's what he has to say about God:

God asked me to lead people to a world of peace and prosperity in 2003. I was a low ranking soldier on the battlefield in the Middle-East with bloods on hand, a sinner. Peace.pdf At the time I didn’t comprehend the task and God has put me through trials and now the understanding is complete. World peace and prosperity can be achieved with “Community Empowered Safety Plan”.

CESP is his platform. It involves concealed carry permits (and fees, to underwrite the rest of program), heavy surveillance, community policing, and a business center to develop and support new businesses.

The first element is no-go for me, and without researching CA gun law and public opinion polls, probably no-go for a lot of other people. It would be easy to mock his heavy surveillance program if our whole city council hadn't spent the past 2 years supporting and then frantically unsupporting one of the most comprehensive surveillance programs in the country. This is also no-go for me. Community policing, I give it a thumb's up generally, but I am not sure it should be as heavily militarized as his program sounds, being mobilized "when" an emergency is declared, especially since a lot of those folks might have concealed carry weapons and tons of personal information collected by the city. And that business center? We have a Business Assistance Center, and I found them to be very helpful when I started my business.