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Rod Gilmore, the husband of recently defeated
Alameda Mayor Marie Gilmore, repeatedly
labeled the new mayor as Sarah Palin.
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ALAMEDA CITY COUNCIL | ESPN college football analyst Rod Gilmore calls it like he sees it, but at a fundraiser last month he approached new Alameda Mayor Trish Herrera Spencer and repeatedly referred to her as “Sarah,” as in, the often-mocked former vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.
Gilmore is also the husband of former Alameda Mayor Marie Gilmore, who was narrowly defeated by Spencer last November.
In an interview, Spencer said didn’t recognize Gilmore when he approached her as she was in line for a glass of wine at a crab feed Mar. 21 sponsored by the Alameda firefighters and local teachers union.
Bewildered by the exchange, Spencer told Gilmore “You must have me confused with my daughter.” Spencer has a daughter also named Sarah. Gilmore then referred to Spencer as Sarah Palin. “No, I’m not Sarah Palin,” said the mayor, which Gilmore responded, “I know you’re Sarah Palin because I saw how you debate.”
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Trish Spencer, left, defeated Marie Gilmore by
just 129 votes last November.
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Spencer said she remained calm during the incident. “I think he was trying to make me feel intimidated and I thought to myself, ‘I have to try and not respond in that way.’”
The discomforting scene ended when an Alameda political operative quietly pulled Spencer out of line, she said. Later that evening, Spencer encountered Gilmore and said hello, but he ignored her greeting, she said.
Tales of Gilmore’s bullying tactics have been passed around the Island in recent months and its not the first time he has engaged Spencer or her supporters in a boorish manner.
Preceding a mayoral candidate forum at the Rotary Club last fall, Gilmore told Spencer, “I’d wish you good luck, but I’m not going to.”
On the campaign trail, Gilmore was known to harass Spencer supporters canvassing door-to-door. During one such encounter Gilmore attempted to vigorously debate a campaign volunteer on the street. She was later surprised to learn the man was the then-mayor’s husband.
In addition, following Spencer’s surprise victory over Marie Gilmore by a scant 129 votes, the Gilmores snubbed the mayor-elect when they chose to leave the Alameda City Council Chambers right before she was sworn-in to office last December.
Most shocking, Gilmore’s bad behavior may have reached its low point when he aggressively got in the face of an 85-year-old supporter of Spencer last summer at the Harbor Bay Club. The gentlemen, a well-known member of the community who was playing tennis, told the East Bay Citizen last year, that Gilmore was so upset by his decision not to support his wife in the coming election that he rushed towards the man. No physical contact occurred, said the Bay Farm resident, but “I was so sure that he was going to hit me that I balled up my fists.”
Gilmore played football at Stanford and was part of the 1982 Big Game versus California featuring “The Play.” His father, Carter Gilmore, was the first African American ever elected to the Oakland City Council.
ebcitizen.com 
Even though this is an old article, seeing these slanderous comments about Rodney is not far from watching a scripted reality show. Even the alleged high school tale, seriously?! You people obviously do not know him AT ALL. He is not a bully by any means. And now that Spencer has been in office, you can easily see that if anything it was apparent she was and is in far over her head!
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Simply amazed at the amount of slanderous comments! Rod Gilmore being an alcoholic is humorous at best, to make that statement, you no nothing about him.
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By MW:
Relating to the post of 1:30PM.
QUESTION: What do lawyers use for birth control?
ANSWER: Their personalities.
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I remember him from high school. He was a jerk then and it sounds like nothing has changed. He asked me out on a date to the movies. He instead took me to his brother's apartment and tried to have sex with me. I refused and he then took me home and burned rubber dropping me off at home.
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Rod Gilmore is just a bully plain and simple. He has hurt his wife politically more than helped her. What a bozo!
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Thank you, MW. Lawyers' addiction problems may explain Spencer's odd speech and muddled thought. You're suggesting she's tipsy at the dais?
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By MW:
A few minutes ago I checked the websites of the California State Bar (and which is “calsb.org”), Martindale Hubbell (“martindale.com”), and “avvo.com,” and all three list a lawyer by the name of Rodney Gilmore, and who is supposedly with a Palo Alto law firm by the name of Doty Barlow. From the info on those websites, it appears that the Rodney Gilmore they mention specializes in such items as real estate, and he is also the only Rodney Gilmore in California they have listed as a lawyer. Still furthermore, both Martindale and Avvo have pictures of the listed Rodney Gilmore which look extremely similar to the picture of the Rodney Gilmore in this article.
So it seems that this might relate to the post of 10:44AM.
However, he has a rating of “7.1” with Avvo, and which is somewhat higher than most lawyers have, and that rating is supposedly based on such things as competence and integrity, so unless the legal profession, and rather than being a legitimate profession, is instead primarily a big sleazy mafia in which the most extreme and politically connected scumbags recommend each other and put the fix in for each other, then I am sure he is a wonderful person and of the very highest ethics, integrity, and sobriety. (NOTE: Ratings by Martindale and Avvo for each individual lawyer are normally primarily based on the comments those organizations receive about the individual lawyer from judges and other lawyers.)
Still furthermore, if he is actually a licensed lawyer and not merely an employee of a law firm, obviously the probability that he is alcoholic, and as I have referred to in other posts, would be extremely small, and including since obviously the California State Bar, in other words that sleazy organized crime ring that has a secret set of two sets of books and also sells pardons and coverups for lightly disguised bribes that it pretends are fees for courses, certainly would not keep in good standing a lawyer who was an alcoholic and/or a drug addict and/or a scumbag, phony, leech, parasite, and pathological liar. (NOTE: To learn more about the real and actual “standards” of the totally corrupt CSB, in other words that sleazy organized crime ring that pretends its primary reason for existence is to protect the general public from crooked lawyers, but which actually primarily exists to protect and put the fix in for politically connected lawyers, review the fact that the CSB has never done anything to openly and publicly discipline Nadia Lockyer, and no matter how much of a proven pathological liar and extreme drug addict she is.
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By MW:
Some of the previous commenters suspected one or more of the participants at the get together were drunk. However, I myself refuse to believe that a social event which included politicians and elected officials and their closest associates could have been infested with alcoholism, since politicians, elected officials, and their very closest associates are not a bunch of big windbags and sleazy phonies but instead very superior people.
And concerning the post of 10:44AM, and in which the commenter said Rod Gilmore works for a Palo Alto law firm, if RG possibly works for and maybe regularly associates with a bunch of extreme alcoholics and drug addicts, er, excuse me, I mean typical Bay area lawyers, then the probability he himself is an alcoholic would obviously be “extremely small.”
(NOTE; Lawyers have far and away the highest rates of alcoholism and drug addiction of any major profession. Furthermore, some lawyers who are drug addicts but decide they do not want to be drug addicts anymore then intentionally drop out of practicing law and associating with other lawyers, since they are convinced the only way they might be successful in kicking drug addiction is to: one, get out of that sewer and cesspool that calls itself the “legal profession;” and two, stop associating with other lawyers.)
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Rodney Gilmore works for a Palo Alto attorney firm that has a commercial real estate practice.
That should tell you a lot about his discontent, his wife's agenda for Alameda, and the people that come to this forum to trash-talk Spencer and her supporters.
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Yeah, but he's basically right. Spencer has the boundless and groundless self-belief of Palin, and doesn't seem to do any thinking before she speaks. And Spencer's base (not all who voted for her) are the very nasty old guard of Alameda (they are very like Palin's Tea Party backers), whose views after a cocktail or two makes Gilmore's outburst look very mild.
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Rod Gilmore is a clueless a__hole.
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The current rumor is that Rodney Gilmore was too drunk at the event to recall what he said to Spencer, and that's part of the reason he's denying it happened…
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Shame on Gilmore supporters for trying to make this about race when it's not, and there are real race issues in Alameda that should be addressed. (Witnessed how people panicked at the suggestion of combining the two high schools – one mostly white/asian, the other mostly black/brown.)
The paragraph about the incident at the club makes no mention of Gilmore's football past.
The closing paragraph is standard journalistic practice to wrap up a story with some broader context – Rodney Gilmore's identity is wrapped up in his sportscaster persona, and his football past is germane to that.
Stop trying to distract from the issue which is that Gilmore tries to bully and intimidate people who won't support his wife or who oppose her.
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The ending description of the elderly, frightened gentleman being aggressively rushed by the big former football player plays on racial stereotypes. Makes the rest of the piece incredible.
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In regard to the Crab Feed: Rodney Gilmore “thinks” he is clever – but he is definitely not. Too bad that ESPN and Rodney don't see what a fool he is making of himself. Pretty sad. And, come on Zac, don't make stuff up, especially at a public event where everyone sees and hears what's happening.
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Sounds like Rod has had too many drinks or is just a bully. Sounds like the ex mayor
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Nobody needs to make these stories up about Rodney Gilmore, because these stories and more have been making the rounds in Alameda for months now. Any such story about him is entirely believable.
And, it has nothing to do with race, it's entirely about his behavior.
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Racial profiling!
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Gilmore shows no class!
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Trish Spencer and Sarah Palin have a lot in comment. But Sarah is cuter! Is this high school, people?
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I was present when the above event occurred and your account is inaccurate. Rodney was talking to me and she came up to us twice and interrupted us.
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