Ron Dellums

Life & Legacy

Ronald Vernie Dellums (November 24, 1935 – July 30, 2018) was an American politician who served as Mayor of Oakland from 2007 to 2011. Previously, served in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing California's 9th congressional district from 1971 to 1998, after which he worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Before that, he was on the Berkeley City Council from 1967 to 1970. He was a member of the Democratic Party.
Born into a family of labor organizers, Dellums was a psychiatric social worker and political activist in the African-American community before being elected to public office. In 1967, he was elected to the Berkeley, California, City Council. A socialist, Dellums was first elected to Congress in 1970, when he was recruited by anti-Vietnam War activists to defeat incumbent Jeffery Cohelan in the Democratic primary. He is the first openly socialist non-incumbent elected to Congress after World War II.
During his career in Congress, he fought the MX Missile project and opposed expansion of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber program. He was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. When President Ronald Reagan vetoed Dellums's Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, a Democratic-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate overrode Reagan's veto, the first override of a presidential foreign-policy veto in the 20th century.
In 2006, Dellums was elected mayor of Oakland. He chose not to seek re-election in 2010.