Candidate for
Mayor; City of Oakland

I was born on the kitchen table of a South Side Chicago tenement, in the weeks between the Supreme Court's school desegregation ruling and the lynching of a neighborhood boy, Emmett Till. I've lived in the worst housing project in the country and in working class homes. My mother passed several years ago, and I remain close to my father and my siblings, all of whom live in the Chicago area.

I'm no stranger to how my fellow citizens live, having resided in and visited nice homes in Hawaii, Marin County, San Francisco and La Jolla, yet also remembering well the vermin-infested slum dwellings of family and other friends.

Reading books from the age of three, I earned top grades from elementary school through college. I graduated from the U.S. Navy Electronics "A" School and afterwards completed a program in business planning and development at the San Francisco Renaissance Entrepreneurship Training Center. I earned a B.A. from Golden Gate University in 1988 and a J.D. from San Francisco Law School in 1993, joining the California Bar in 1994. From my pre-teen years to now, I've created small businesses and have plans for new products.

I've been lucky to be married for 23 years to my attorney wife, Daphne Yeldell, whom I met in law school. We have been self-employed attorneys since 1994, occasionally practicing in the areas of bankruptcy, employment, criminal law, landlord-tenant, and personal injury. My wife now primarily does bankruptcy, while I practice only sporadically and assist her. I also work for a nearby city full-time as an electronics technician, and served ten years as a Union Steward for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 1245.

My son is a standout flute and tennis player, and has always been on an honor roll in schools. He's attending a college back east. All three of us are athletic and studied martial arts, and are life-long Catholics. My wife and I are long-time practitioners of Transcendental Meditation. After several years of effort and setbacks, we've recently finished the complete renovation and building of a large addition to our home.

I enjoy listening to my collection of vinyl records - a broad representation of musical styles ranging from Coltrane to Tammy Wynette. I'm a movie buff and also watch televised documentaries as well as history and science shows. I spend as much time with my family as is possible.