No joke: Candidates for Alameda mayor include 'Kenny the Clown'

2 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Oct 2, 2006 | by Kelly Rayburn, STAFF WRITER

ALAMEDA -- In a city said to be at a crucial point in its history, November's highly anticipated mayoral contest pits incumbent Beverly Johnson against slow-growth City Councilmember Doug deHaan.

And then there's the clown.

Kenneth Kahn, also known as "Kenny the Clown," is running a long- shot campaign for City Hall's top spot.

The 41-year-old professional funnyman is also lifetime Alamedan, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, a substitute teacher and the son of a woman who has been active in local politics for decades.

And though he says he's serious about his mayoral aspirations, he admits that wherever he goes on the campaign trail, people have the same question.

"People ask me, 'Do we really want to elect a clown for mayor of the city?'" he said. "I say, 'That's an excellent question.'"

Stranger things have happen-ed than clowns being elected to office, but when the Alameda political landscape is sized up, it's clear Kahn's election-season challenge will be more difficult than juggling fire torches at a street fair.

On her way to work at a phone bank for a City Council candidate, Kahn's mother, Barbara, said her son doesn't have a chance.

"I think he's quixotic," she said.

She speculated he could draw protest votes from people unhappy with both Johnson and deHaan and said she was "contemplating" voting for him.

Kahn's sister is less charitable.

Sylvia Kahn, a teacher in Alameda, said her brother's candidacy is a "mockery of our system."

"I don't think it makes any sense because, to me, running for mayor is not where you start as far as community involvement goes," she said.

Kahn has not previously run for an elected position, nor has he ever sat on a public board.

Kahn acknowledges his family's misgivings and says, "They think it's premature."

For his part, he says he's the right man for the job -- although he sometimes has difficulty keeping a straight face in saying so.

He says he decided to run after pondering Alameda's position in history.

The Island is bracing for a number of large-scale development projects. The largest question is what will be done at Alameda Point, on the former U.S. Naval Air Station, after a group of developers in September abandoned plans to build housing and retail space on the old base.

With other projects moving forward, Kahn regrets that Alameda seems to be losing its "small-town feel," but at the same time said, "We can't go back to 1950."

To that end, he acknowledges that while a proposed Target for the Alameda Towne Centre may not be aesthetically pleasing, he believes Alameda may need to jump on the big-box retail bandwagon, lest the city lose out to other communities on tax-dollar windfalls.

He also supports the renovation of the downtown Alameda Theater. He said Measure A, the city's landmark low-density ballot initiative of 1973, should be amended.

What may truly set him apart from Johnson and deHaan is not his stance on issues but his style of campaign.

If it can be called a campaign.

Kahn doesn't have a campaign manager. He's also not taking a dime in donations. What little expenditures there are -- so far only a couple hundred dollars -- are coming out of his own pocket.

Kahn himself is holding out that he can win -- or so he says.

When asked last week for an honest assessment of his chan-ces, he had trouble keeping from laughing. On the third or fourth try, he managed to hold in his chuckles long enough to complete the sentence, "If Alameda stops and thinks about who the best candidate is, I think I can win."

(Kahn insisted he was laughing because he had been reminded of a humorous story, one he couldn't repeat.)

He admits: "The concept is pretty funny -- a clown running for mayor."

He fell into clowning five years ago, after a friend suggested he give it a try.

He does not have a wife or children and held a number of jobs after graduating from UC Berkeley in 1989 with a degree in sociology. He still works as a substitute teacher in Alameda schools a few days a week, he said.

He performs as a clown at birthdays, weddings, street fairs and farmer's markets. His web site, kennytheclown.com, carries the slogan, "We take being silly very seriously!"

It's an idea, Kahn said, that fits his mayoral campaign.

When he gets the question about a whether a clown should be elected mayor, he said he reminds voters they elected an attorney, Johnson, as mayor four years ago, and nobody seemed to think that was strange.

Then he'll tell them that as a substitute teacher he's entrusted with something far more valuable than the city's government: its children.

He wouldn't say whether his clown candidacy was a comment on the city's current leadership.

He smiled and said, "I'm going to leave that open to the voters."