From Paul L. Cobb, Publisher

The Post will make free editorial space available for any candidate running for Mayor, City Council, School Board and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors if you have a plan, a solution or some answers to the problems facing Oakland and the county.

We are especially seeking your solution strategies for homelessness, crime and hate violence, affordable housing, economic and business opportunities for women and minorities and environmental conditions.

We expect you to use your campaign funds to introduce yourselves and educate the voters about your views and history of experiences and service. We also expect you to support, patronize and utilize minority media and other minority businesses and services as you conduct your campaigns. Space will be provided based upon proposed solutions, not on ads purchased. There will be no connection with endorsements by the Post and any amounts expended for advertisements.

Please do not send us negative remarks about your opponents to be published in the Post. If you want to engage in negative campaigning and/or diatribes against the incumbent or any out-going official, you should pay for that kind of messaging and clearly indicate your identity with those charges.

Since you have announced your intention to seek our approvals, then honor and respect us and the voters with your solutions.

In these troublous times with our streets teeming with thousands of homeless people and with fear gripping all of us from home invasions, drive-by shootings, smash-and-grab robberies and a short-handed police force, we need leaders who are unafraid to support increased public safety staffing. In short, we need to defend the police plan led by Chief Armstrong while calling for more community-oriented services such as those in the MACRO plan. But that is not enough, because unless we as citizens become more involved in anti-crime voluntary activity, matters will get worse. Activism matters.

While you might think your list of endorsements is the end-all and the be-all for your success, Y’all should be wary, because the Post/El Mundo News Group will be looking at your list of endorsed solutions for the residents.

We are big on solutions, answers and action plans.

Therefore, come big, or stay at home.

Thank you,

Paul Cobb

Oakland Post

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