The Plot to Take Down Michael Tubbs
The young Black mayor of Stockton, California, was a progressive superstar. Then a feisty local blog decided he had to go.
The plot against Michael Tubbs, the first Black mayor of Stockton, California, and the youngest person ever to run a major U.S. city, was conceived even before he took the oath of office, at the age of 26, on January 9, 2017.
The mayorship was not a job for the faint of heart. The former incumbent, Anthony Silva, whose antics included donning medieval-style armor during a state of the city address and giving God a key to the city, had left office under a cloud — accused of everything from financial improprieties to hosting a teenage strip poker game. Meanwhile, the city once dubbed America’s “most miserable” had struggled to emerge from the devastating blow of the 2008 financial crisis and by 2013 had become the biggest U.S. municipality to declare bankruptcy. Poverty, food insecurity, illiteracy, homelessness, and other societal ills seemed intractable. Due in part to geography — Stockton is a convenient way station for Bay Area–bound narcotics traffic — the city clocked a homicide rate nearly triple the national average.
The city’s governing structure would complicate the challenge even further: Stockton has a “weak mayor”…
