Richard Parks/The Bay Citizen

Oakland City Council member Rebecca Kaplan announced her candidacy for mayor June 30, 2010

Oakland is home to one of the highest per-capita lesbian populations in the U.S. It also boasts a higher proportion of places of worship than nearly any other American city. Out-lesbian City Council member Rebecca Kaplan, who has a rabbinical degree, underlined both points Wednesday as she announced her candidacy for mayor of Oakland.

“That is a beautiful thing,” said Kaplan, who wore her usual outfit — a dark tailored suit and pressed button-up shirt — while addressing a group of supporters at the Joyce Gordon Gallery in downtown Oakland. “It is possible for us to build the Oakland renaissance.”

Kaplan, a former AC Transit board member who was elected to the City Council’s at-large seat in 2008, would be the first openly gay mayor of a major Bay Area city. In Oakland, where elections are typically won with coalition support, her campaign is poised to deliver a significant LGBT base.

“The concern that both Perata and Quan should have is that she has, of the three, the largest identifiable base in the LGBT community,” said Jim Ross, a longtime Bay Area political consultant who has been hired by Kaplan’s campaign. “Outside of the African-American community it’s the largest voting base in the city of Oakland.”

Neither of Kaplan’s rivals — fellow City Council member Jean Quan and former State Sen. President Pro Tem Don Perata — are gay. None of the three candidates is black.

But the LGBT-friendly Bay Area has never elected an out-gay mayor. Just one other openly gay politician — former City Council member Danny Wan — has been elected to citywide office in Oakland. Endorsements from the African-American and labor communities have thus far been split among the three candidates, producing no clear front-runner.

“This will be a highly contested race,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California. “I think Rebecca is a really strong candidate and a lot of people in the LGBT community are really excited about her running.”

Demographic studies show the city ranks among the top LGBT communities, according to Gary Gates, a Williams Distinguished Scholar at UCLA and the author of “The Gay and Lesbian Atlas.” In Alameda County, there are twice as many lesbians as gay men, and Oakland ranks fifth in the nation in lesbian population, Gates said.

Five percent of all Oakland females reporting identified themselves as gay or bisexual in a recent California Health Interview Survey. The number of female same-sex couples in Oakland, according to an American Community Survey, was nearly five times the national average.

“The Bay Area is the gayest area of the country,” Gates said. “Given that fact, that the Bay Area hasn’t had an LGBT person in a mayoral position is curious.”

Kaplan, who must court a broad citywide voting base to win a majority during a tough election year, has picked up significant endorsements in recent months without officially announcing her candidacy until Wednesday. She outlined a platform of economic growth, public safety with fiscal responsibility and government reform.

She also ripped the state prison guard’s union for funding the distribution of literature critical of Kaplan and Quan. Perata, who denied involvement in the mailers, has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from the prison guards’ union since being termed out of the state Senate in 2008.

Brandishing what she called a “lying deceptive mailer,” Kaplan said she was taking an opportunity to “correct the record.” The mailer depicts a uniformed police officer in line for California unemployment insurance and invites the public to contact Kaplan and Quan—and City Council members Pat Kernighan and Desley Brooks—to protest police layoffs approved by the City Council.

Kaplan emphasized that she voted against the layoffs at a meeting last week.

“I have no problem if the prison guards want to debate me,” Kaplan said, saying she’d extend the same offer to other out-of-town interests. “The voters of Oakland deserve an honest debate about our future.”