Rebecca Kaplan was furious.

The Oakland councilwoman wanted to talk about the city Department of Transportation’s June 7 decision to close more than 1,000 citizen requests for service that were more than 30 days old.

“It’s such an insult to the public,” Kaplan told me Thursday morning, as she revved up.

The city has a complaint-driven strategy for clearing garbage and responding to other problems. Kaplan has called for the city to dump its current system, which she believes is inequitable. She’s pushed for a system to address repairs and cleanup that assigns workers to zones.

“When you fix things based on complaint rather than need, you tend to default to the wealthier neighborhoods,” she said. “So then to say we’re just deleting over a thousand complaints from the system, I want to know who authorized that.

“Is this this administration’s policy that after you tell people to file their complaints by these various methods, the department heads are just allowed to delete them?”

Kaplan’s fury was short-lived. On Thursday afternoon, the transportation department announced on social media it will reopen the closed cases.

Regardless, Kaplan sounds, at times, like she’s on the campaign trail. That’s where she was expected to be this fall — on a third campaign for mayor.

But to the surprise of many, Kaplan announced at the Joyce Gordon Gallery in downtown Oakland this month that she will not mount a third campaign for mayor.

Instead, she endorsed the nascent campaign of Cat Brooks, the former co-host of KPFA’s “UpFront” morning news show. Brooks is a co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, a community activist group that can often be found on the front lines of protests against police brutality.

Like Kaplan, Brooks has a powerful voice, which is often amplified by a megaphone or speakers anchored on a flatbed truck.

Like Kaplan, when Brooks is inspired by an issue like displacement and homelessness, her exuberance can be captivating.

And, like Kaplan, Brooks isn’t shy about criticizing Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf.

Brooks announced her candidacy in May, and it seems to me that she’s putting together a grassroots campaign to attract disenfranchised voters who aren’t plugged into the city’s economic boom, the people who can’t afford to pay market rate for the housing units being built around the city.

From what I’ve seen, her campaign will be a referendum on what Schaaf hasn’t accomplished in Oakland.

That made me wonder: Why isn’t Kaplan running when the person she’s endorsed is using her blueprint to thwart Schaaf?

Kaplan said she saw the turnout and excitement at Brooks’ campaign events.

“I came over that period of time to be convinced that her campaign ... as a manifestation of activism and community engagement, was one that I felt I should be supporting and that I feel can win,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan said she also looked at the performance of Pamela Price in the Alameda County district attorney race this month. Sure, Price lost to Nancy O’Malley, but she also dominated in Oakland, which suggests to Kaplan that a black progressive candidate could have a strong showing in the mayoral election.

Price’s “grassroots, people-movement campaign very much focused on issues of police accountability, and kicked butt in Oakland,” Kaplan said. “That also strengthens my feeling about the power of the Cat Brooks campaign.”

In November 2010, Kaplan placed third in ranked-choice voting for mayor, behind Jean Quan and runner-up Don Perata. In 2014, she finished second in a field of 15 candidates, but well behind Schaaf.

Schaaf will be campaigning with momentum. In February, she used her office to alert the public to a federal immigration sweep, which immediately made her a target of the president’s supporters. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, introduced the Mayor Libby Schaaf Act of 2018, which proposes prison terms for officials who disclose Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps.

These days, getting hated on by the president and his supporters is a stamp of approval for Democrats.

Schaaf has gained a national profile, emerging as a critic of the administration’s anti-immigration policies, while cementing her status as a fierce defender of a sanctuary city with a large immigrant population.

In a column my colleagues Matier & Ross published before Kaplan announced her decision not to run, Doug Linney, an East Bay political consultant who ran two of Kaplan’s campaigns for City Council, said Schaaf was made “a hero to a lot of people who may not have paid attention to what she was doing.”

Still, Kaplan is not buying that Schaaf’s popularity is insurmountable, especially with the growing number of homeless people crowding sidewalks and streets in Oakland. Kaplan pointed out that data released by Schaaf’s campaign showed that 49 percent of voters would vote for the mayor, which she thinks proves Schaaf is vulnerable.

“It’s interesting that a majority of voters are not with her for a sitting incumbent who’s not yet in the heat of the campaign,” Kaplan said. “I certainly think the signs are not actually particularly favorable for her, as well as the actual tangible results of the failures on police accountability and homelessness and anti-displacement funding.”

In response, Ace Smith, Schaaf’s campaign spokesman, said: “Being at or (near) 50 percent for an urban mayor in America today is pretty damn spectacular.”

You know what would really be spectacular? If Oakland made significant strides toward solving its displacement and homelessness crisis.

That, of course, will take much, much more than words.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr