Elihu Harris

Elihu Mason Harris is a U.S. Democratic Party politician. He served as mayor of Oakland, California from 1991 to until 1999. He gained national attention by being the first major party politician to lose a state legislative race to a Green Party candidate, when he lost a race for California State Assembly to Audie Bock in 1999.[1] Harris received a Master of Public Policy from University of California, Berkeley in 1969 and law degree from UC Davis School of Law in 1975.[2] He had occupied the office of Mayor of Oakland from 1991 until 1999. He has also served as a California Uniform Law Commissioner since 1981.[3] In the early 1990s Harris co-owned Vallejo, California radio station KDIA along with then California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. In 1992, the late Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey returned to the Bay Area to work with Harris and Brown as public affairs director and newscaster on KDIA. Bailey later became the editor of the Oakland Post who was murdered on the streets of downtown Oakland.^[1] In the '99 election, Harris sent targeted mailers to households in selected precincts, mostly African American, urging voters to vote for him and receive a fried chicken meal if they presented a voting stub at selected supermarkets. There was voter backlash because of the perception of vote buying and had a subtext of racism. [4] His legacy in Oakland includes the naming of the Elihu M. Harris State Building after him, which was built downtown near the pre-existing Federal Building and City Hall. The three proximate structures form a large triangle of massive government buildings in a larger business redevelopment area. Since 2004, Harris has been Chancellor of Peralta Community College District. He had been interim chancellor from 2003 until receiving the post on a permanent basis.[5]

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