King

The Chronicle’s Matier & Ross reported this morning that former KPIX anchor Dana King has taken out papers to run for Oakland City Council this November. They reported:

“I’d been working on issues in the neighborhood for a while,” King, 53, said Tuesday. “When I heard Pat was retiring, it just came in a flash: ‘I can do this.’ ” 

Since leaving KPIX-TV in 2012, King has moved from a houseboat in Sausalito to a shared artists building in Oakland’s San Antonio neighborhood. 

She has been pursuing her sculpture art, teaching journalism at Dominican University in San Rafael and volunteering with the Alameda County Probation Department. 

Like a lot of Oakland neighborhoods, the San Antonio area has its problems: crime, graffiti, illegal dumping and the like. 

But at the same time, King said, “it is about to explode with development in the next five years. You can’t stop it, but you can argue that it be equitable so that the people here don’t get pushed out.”

(Photo credit: Russell Yip, Chronicle)