Spirituality author turned candidate revels in energy, vibe at East Bay church
After a grueling stretch on the presidential campaign trail, Marianne Williamson began her Oakland town hall rally by saying, “There’s no place I’d rather be than California. I feel understood here.”
Likewise, many in the audience of 275 that filled the East Bay Church of Religious Science on Wednesday night understood the 67yearold Los Angeles transplant like few do in the Democratic presidential campaign that plays out on cable TV, Twitter and in rural Iowa. The energy — a word dropped more frequently here than in most political rallies — in the room was somewhere between revival meeting and an episode of Oprah Winfrey’s “Super Soul Sunday.”
Some clutched copies of the 13 books Williamson has written, four of which were bestsellers. Many have been following her since before she skyrocketed into public consciousness as Winfrey’s spiritual adviser. Winfrey has not yet endorsed anyone in the race.
Walnut Creek resident Joan
na Truelson, holding a book so worn the title was barely visible, said: “Marianne saved my life 35 years ago.”
It’s not the type of affirmation heard at say, an Amy Klobuchar event. But as Williamson reminded her audience over her 35minute talk, her campaign isn’t just about politics. It’s about healing America.
“If all we do is defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box, the things we need to be most concerned about will be back in 2022 and 2024,” Williamson said. “The bigger problem was not created by Donald Trump so much that the bigger problem created Donald Trump.”
To change, Williamson said, “You lift the energy higher . ... You lift the vibration higher.”
While this racially diverse Bay Area audience understood that vibe, Williamson has a way to go with the rest of America. She is polling at less than 1% in the RealClearPolitics.com amalgamation of major polls. She has until only Aug. 28 to qualify for the next round of presidential debates in September — she’ll need to poll at least 2% in four major surveys and prove that she has 130,000 unique donors.
She doesn’t spend a lot of time ticking off her solutions to issues, many of which echo progressive themes that wouldn’t sound out of place at an Elizabeth Warren rally. Then again, to Williamson, the issues aren’t the issue. Literally. There’s a section on her campaign website called: “The Issues Aren’t Always the Issue.”
“Life is made up of two dimensions: things on the outside and things on the inside,” Williamson writes there. “As people, we not only think, we also feel: we care not only about what is happening to our bodies but also what is happening to our souls.
“America is not just having problems with what is happening to our economy, our environment, our educational system and so forth. We have a problem with the psychological fabric of our country, as a lowlevel emotional civil war has begun in too many ways to rip us apart. In order to deal with that, we must address it on the level of our internal being.”
It isn’t the type of riff you can launch at a presidential debate when the moderator says, “Marianne Williamson, you have 30 seconds to respond.” But before this kind of friendly audience, Williamson expanded.
“We have to build a new house,” she said. “We have to build a new political house. We have to build a new house in our hearts. We have to build a new house in our minds.”
The four pillars of that house included rebuilding the nation’s economic system to put a greater burden on the wealthy — she favors rolling back the 2017 GOP tax law and raising taxes on billionaires, much as Warren does. She called for helping children by improving schools and expanding earlychildhood programs.
Williamson also outlined how she would offer $200 billion to $500 billion in reparations over 20 years to African Americans. The distribution would be overseen by a council of black leaders, like the author TaNehisi Coates — even though she has not asked him yet. She said it was important to give reparations rather than just create policies that would help those hurt by the legacy of slavery. “A mea culpa,” she said. Williamson’s newly elevated political profile has brought questions about stances that few scrutinized closely when she was only a spirituality author. In particular, she has been haunted by her description of mandatory childhood vaccinations as “Orwellian.”
“I should not have said that, and I’m sorry that I did,” she said Thursday on The Chronicle’s “It’s All Political” podcast.
On Thursday, CNN reported that on a radio show Williamson hosted in 2012, she advised listeners to “do your due diligence” before vaccinating their children.
“I refer you to what year that show was,” she told The Chronicle. “That was before all this business about measles. That was before all this business about reducing the personal and religious exemptions. I think in 2012 what I said was totally reasonable.”
She declined to say when she would grant exemptions to mandatory vaccinations.
“I’m not a scientist,” Williamson said. “That is not for me to say.”
Several in the audience Wednesday night acknowledged that while Williamson’s candidacy may be a long shot, they’re glad she’s in the race. They said she is talking about the pain and hurt in the country in a way that no other candidate is.
All the candidates “are full of s—,” said HuNia Bradley of Oakland. “So if you’re going to roll with someone, let’s roll with someone who is talking about the power of love.”
“We have to build a new political house. We have to build a new house in our hearts. We have to build a new house in our minds.” Marianne Williamson, Democratic presidential candidate