Local political force Swanson to retire

■After serving Reps. Dellums, Lee for more than 30 years, shief of staff to write book

By Cecily Burt
STAFF WRITER

OAKLAND — Sandre Swanson was 21 years old and student body president at Oakland’s Laney College when he caught the attention of a candidate for Congress. Ron Dellums.

It was 1970. Swanson was leading a brigade of students carrying a wooden coffin to protest the Ohio National Guard shooting at Kent State University. Dellums, who would later electrify the crowd at a rally, was marching just ahead with a friend. The coffin bumped the friend, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Three years later. Swanson went to work for Dellums, eventually becoming his chief of staff, and stayed on when Dellums retired in February 1998 and Barbara Lee filled his seat.

Now, 30 years later, Swanson is stepping aside to finally catch his breath, reflect on his life and career, and write the book he started after Sept. 11, 2001.

The void, Lee says, will be huge. I can’t believe it.” Lee said. It’s been amazing, his service. I value his insight, his Judgment, his memory... He was here for me every day. What am I going to do?

“Thirty years, can you imagine? Thirty years of public service. It really speaks to his character.” Lee said.

His could have had a very different role. Swanson lost a close race for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in 1982, and again in 1986, when he was defeated by Don Perata, now a state senator from the East Bay. Yet Swanson says he was content to have worked for two of the East Bay’s most prominent politicians.

Swanson certainly didn’t start out behind the scenes. As Laney’s student body president in 1970, he got the attention of college administrators by threatening to protest unless they addressed student concerns about overcrowded classes, budget cuts that limited the curriculum, steep textbook prices and unheated buildings.

The next year he was elected East Oakland representative for the Oakland Anti-Poverty Board. In 1972, he went to work for New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's presidential campaign. Barbara Lee was also working for Chisholm, and she recommended Dellums hire the brash young Swanson.

His first assignment for Dellums was less than prominent, to be sure, traveling to events in advance to scout out a parking space and setting up orange cones so no one else would grab it.

Every time his car drove up, I was standing there and he would notice me and say. ‘Who is that guy?’ Swanson said with a laugh. “Eventually, he figured if I was going to be at all these events, I might as well be his driver. Then he took me under his wing and taught me politics."

Swanson became so adept at organizing that community members sought his help. In 1977, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Lionel Wilson, soon to become Oakland’s first black mayor, asked Dellums if his young assistant could be spared to run his campaign, which he won.

But when Wilson wanted to hire Swanson, Dellums said no way. Wilson settled for appointing Swanson to Oakland’s Civil Service Commission.

In 1990, Dellums invited Nelson Mandela, just released from prison after 27 years, to Oakland. Community and church leaders asked for Swanson to coordinate the events — a 60,000-strong showing at the Oakland Coliseum, and a $100-a-plate dinner for 3.000 later that night. The events raised $300,000 to $400,000 for the Free South Africa Movement.

”I just want to commend him on an effort well done, he spent a long time in public service,” Dellums said. “I hope the next door that opens as this one closes will be equally challenging and equally rewarding.”

It wasn’t all good times. It was a dark day when the Democrats lost the U.S. House of Representatives In 1994. Swanson also worked eight years to bring a regional commissary to the Army Base in West Oakland, only to see it fall through. But the accomplishments outweigh those moments.

Most Bay Area folks recognize Swanson for his thoughtful work on the Oakland and Alameda base reuse during the painful era of military base closures starting in 1993. He crafted the structure of Oakland and Alameda's base reuse authorities to transfer control of the Oakland Army Base and Alameda Naval Air Station to private use.

The complicated process — a collaboration between the military, local governments and civilians — took 10 years of complicated deals, endless community meetings, and cost $50 million in planning and environmental cleanup before ownership of the Oakland Army Base and Alameda Naval Air Station were transferred to the respective cities for private use and development.

Swanson considers himself fortunate to have had a job where his public service was so closely aligned to his personal life experiences and beliefs, with one influencing the other and vice versa.

And never have those two been more intertwined than in the past few years. He lost a younger brother to AIDS as he and Lee worked to elevate the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

And on Sept. 11, 2001, Swanson’s cousin, Wanda Green, died. She was a flight attendant on ill-fated United Airlines Flight 93, seized by alQaida terrorists and crashed into a Pennsylvania field, killing all 44 on board.

Still, when Lee sought his counsel before voting to oppose military retaliation for the terrorist attacks, Swanson told her he thought she should vote no and not give the president the power. He was never more proud of her, he said.

Swanson said he never really thought about making the government his lifelong work, He just liked helping people and he found he was of the movement.

Now his youngest daughter is heading off to college, and he’s going to take a long vacation and work on hi book. He is being feted by Dellums and Lee at a gala event March 20, with excess proceeds going to support small business loans for under-served areas, such as West Oakland and West Alameda.

I really can’t believe It.’ Swanson said. It’s kind of like I started this when I was 24 years old and I never really thought about it. It was just event after event, and campaign after campaign, and crisis after crisis. Then all of a sudden you start getting retirement notices from the AARP, and notes reminding you about retirement planning.

“It’s flown by, but it has been fun.”