Oakland Voters Await Results in Close Mayoral Election
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more innovative cultures, more creative design labs, and more courageous futures. Discover more at IDEO.com. That's I-D-E-O dot com. From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Guy Marzarati in for Alexis Madrigal. The results of the special election to pick the next mayor of Oakland is still up in the air. Former city council member Lauren Taylor holds a slight lead but says final results could take a while. We may not know

this week. But what we do know is that it is important that we count every vote, that everyone's voice is heard. Former Congress member Barbara Lee narrowly trails Taylor in the city's ranked choice election. It's going to be a long week, okay, but we're doing very well. We'll sift through the latest results and what it means for Oakland and the Bay Area political landscape. That's all coming up next after this news.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Guy Marzarati in for Alexis Madrigal. The race for Oakland mayor after the recall of Sheng Tao has been a sprint. Weeks of candidate forums, voter rallies, social media ads, and mailboxes stuffed with campaign mailers. And now we wait.

It could be days or even weeks before we know whether Lauren Taylor or Barbara Lee will hold the town's top job. But let's talk about what we do know from the initial results. And here to join me to do that, Alex Hall, KQED reporter covering the Oakland election. Hey, Alex. Hey, good morning. Good morning. Shomik Murkaji, who covers the Oakland for the Bay Area News Script. Shomik, so nice to have you. Great to be here. And Darwin Bond-Graham, news editor for the Oakland side. Hey, Darwin. Good morning. Good morning.

So, Alex, let's start. What can you tell us about the latest results in this wild race for mayor? Wild. Yeah, so it's pretty close. The latest results show that Lauren Taylor is leading with 51 percent of the vote. Barbara Lee is pretty close behind with about 49 percent. That's after you factor in ranked choice tabulations as a ranked choice election. But it's still really early. The registrar voter says there's about 49,000 ballots that have been processed.

A lot of those are early mail-in ballots or ballots that were cast in person. And the Alameda County Registrar says that there's an estimated 42,000 ballots that still haven't been processed. That's because a lot of people wait until the very last minute to vote. You know, they get a mail-in ballot and they drop it off at a drop box or at a voting center or they mail it in, you know, right at the very end. And so, you know, those mail-in ballots are

arriving now. And, you know, 42,000 ballots, while that's an estimate, it's a pretty significant number. You know, it puts turnout at roughly 36 percent with more, you know, mail-in ballots expected to arrive. And also, you know, it means that we're really only about halfway through counting the votes in this election. So a lot can change. 49,000 counted, 42,000 to go. Like we're really early in this process. What's the timeline from here?

Yeah, so we received a couple of early updates on election night on Tuesday. The next update is coming tomorrow, Friday, roughly around 5 p.m., and then there will be updates every subsequent Friday. When I talked to Alameda County Registrar Tim Dupuy yesterday, he said, you know, the

The first updates that we got, the results that we're looking at right now, you know, they had 29 days to process those ballots. So it could be a while before we really know who the winner is. And we heard Taylor up 51-49. That's taking in rank choice. So if you didn't vote for Lauren Taylor or Barbara Lee, but you had them elsewhere in your ballot, those votes are redistributed. Shomik, as you've talked to the campaigns, what are you hearing as they kind of now wait and

and wait to find out how this race ends up? Well, both campaigns are cautiously optimistic. The two candidates spoke on election night and both gave speeches thanking their supporters and going through the sort of kind of the stuff that people usually say on election night, but nobody declared that they'd won the election. And in some ways, we've been here before, right, in Oakland.

Lauren Taylor was ahead for several days in the 2022 election when he was taking on Sheng Tao, and then Tao surged past him and later returns. It's not a direct parallel to what happened on election night where Lauren was ahead in the first batch, then Lee's voters had narrowed the gap in the second batch because those votes that in the second batch were votes cast in person on election day. And the votes that we're going to from now on, the results we're going to see are all going to be mail-in ballots or ballots dropped off in ballot boxes.

But it does. I think this time around, Lauren Taylor's, I think like in 2022, it definitely seemed like his orbit felt like he'd won the election in the first couple of days. This time around, they're... They've been through it before. And Darwin, were you surprised just that the results that we've seen so far, kind of where we're at in these initial results? Yeah, not really. But had you asked me that question, you know, like in January, I'd...

I'd be very surprised. And I think most political observers on the ground in Oakland were, you know, in January when Barbara Lee declared her interest in running for mayor and then declared her campaign. I mean, our paper ran a story, a headline, clears the field or something like that, because

Everybody we talked to was like, you know, wow, a, you know, retiring congresswoman with massive name recognition and just like a ton of goodwill in the East Bay. She's going to come in and just sweep this thing. No one can stand against her. And then over the, you know, next few weeks, Lauren Taylor and his supporters put together a really energetic campaign.

So I think the few weeks right before the election, everyone that we were talking to was saying, this is going to be close. No one was predicting a blowout win for either candidate. How did Lauren Taylor Alex get this close? How did he make this a competitive campaign?

I think he tapped into a lot of, you know, voter frustration. I think that there's a lot of Oakland residents that were really disillusioned, you know, last year seeing former Mayor Shang Tao's house being raided by the FBI. You know, now she's been indicted. There's just a lot of questions about even with Oakland's financial situation, like how did we get here? Questions about mismanagement and what's really going on inside of City Hall. And I think that there's been a lot of public distrust here.

So I think that he's tapped into that a little bit. I think it has been just covering this campaign, covering this election. It's been hard to get a pulse from voters this election. There hasn't been a ton of independent polling. I feel like we're kind of just going off vibes the whole time. Half the time I'm wondering if people even know that an election is happening. But towards the end, it seemed like, you know, the consensus.

consensus was it's getting close and you know part of me was wondering like how do you know that but I think part of it might have had to do with you know San Francisco Chronicle editorial board endorsing Lauren Taylor and then you know we're talking about right before we came on the show how Barbara Lee went on Instagram and said you know rank these other candidates you know

Rank me number one and these other candidates below me. That to me, you know, just from the outside, I got to imagine, you know, that's not a decision that you make lightly. And so it gave a hint that maybe it was looking a little bit closer. Yeah. And Shomik, is this idea of like voter frustration, the overall kind of political mood helping Taylor? Is that have you heard you see it similarly?

Yeah, especially because I think in some ways Taylor, especially toward the beginning, was still running against Mayor Tao and was sort of framing his campaign around the notion that here's a mayor who broke Oakland City government or at least was a manifestation of a culture of rot at Oakland City Hall and was running against that notion. And I think as the race went on, both cities,

Supporters for both candidates tried to depict the other as as being a City Hall so or being sort of representative of the establishment You know Lee's Union supporters tried to call Taylor a City Hall insider They distributed a mailer where there's a photo of Taylor and Tao sitting next to her smiling Which you know struck people as disingenuous because Taylor and Tao did not were not did not get along and in some ways now the the race

As we got close to Election Day, people were still sort of focusing on the fallout of this alleged corruption case involving Tao. A few weeks before the election, the city released thousands of pages of documents that it had turned over to federal prosecutors last year that really illuminated corruption.

some of the context around Tao's administration, that sort of dominated headlines and captured the public's attention for a few weeks. So that shadow has sort of loomed over City Hall. And to Alex's point, voters, I think, in Oakland are a little bit fatigued. We've been in election mode now for like eight months. And there's a there's kind of a

there's kind of a feeling that people are a little bit sort of jaded by how poorly the Tao administration went, especially the end of it. I think that is kind of

How did you see Darwin, this dynamic where Taylor has been in City Hall, he was on the city council, but is running this race kind of against the establishment? How did he navigate that, given that he has been at City Hall more than Barbara Lee?

Yeah, so it's been a weird journey of sorts for Lauren Taylor politically, because if people remember, you know, he got onto city council 2018 election largely with the support of Libby Schaaf, the mayor at the time, who, you know, is very much a Democratic Party insider, kind of establishment figure in Oakland politics. Schaaf had, you know, gotten some supporters together to basically, you know,

back Taylor's run against the then incumbent district six city council member. They spent a ton of money. It was a very like tough fought campaign. Taylor gets on the council, spends four years there. And then, you know, sort of gambles runs for mayor doesn't make it. And I think Taylor,

reputation as an outsider, it comes together once he's out of office, you

Because he's able to position himself as like, you know, the opposition figure to and sort of the alternative reality figure of like, I could have been your mayor, but instead you guys picked this other person. And I think for a lot of voters that really like cemented his reputation as an outsider who, you know, was promising to come in and shake up government. Just the one other thing about that is...

So Taylor doesn't have union support and the support of the city worker unions is a big deal in Oakland politics. Not only does it signal that you like literally have the support of city workers and that, you know, if like budget cuts, if it comes down to budget cuts, which it has, you know, you're going to look out for those city worker jobs. It also signals generally a progressive political trend.

position amongst the candidates because a lot of the city unions their um rank and file have these progressive policies around like social and economic stuff um taylor you know hasn't gotten the endorsement of like any unions they all lined up behind lee um so i think the taylor campaign um instead of viewing that as like a liability or we don't have the ground game that the unions can offer um i think they positioned that as like you know again taylor's independent he's like this

outside figure who's going to come in and shake things up. And how do you see that kind of fitting within maybe the larger political moment in the Bay Area where we often see these kind of dynamics? Yeah, there was a very revealing and interesting moment. Was it a couple weeks ago now? Lauren Taylor showed up to Laurel neighborhood in Oakland with Matt Mahan and

It was trippy. They were wearing like the exact same clothes. They had like the same shoes on. They sounded like each other. And and, you know, maybe that was on purpose because the message behind the event was literally like, you know, Matt Mahan is like an outsider, a technocrat, a so-called centrist or moderate politician in the in the Bay Area scheme of things. And he's come in and he's shaking up San Jose politics.

Lauren Taylor is going to do the same thing in Oakland. Yeah. We're talking about the still unknown results of Oakland's special election on Tuesday that will decide the city's next mayor. That was Darwin Bond Graham, news editor at Oakland Side. We also have Alex Hall, reporter at KQED covering the election, and Shomik Mukherjee, Oakland reporter for Bay Area News Group.

And we want to hear from you, Oakland voters. Who did you vote for and why? And what do you think this election says about the state of the town? You can give us a call, 866-733-6786. Reach out to us, forum at kqed.org, or find us at KQED Forum on social media. We're heading into a break. When we come back, more about the Oakland mayor's race and everything else on Tuesday's ballot. Stay with us.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Guy Marzarati in for Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about the results of Tuesday's special election in Oakland, which included the race to be the city's next mayor. I'm joined by Alex Hall, reporter at KQED covering the Oakland election. Shomik Mukherjee, who covers Oakland for the Bay Area News Group and Darwin Bond Graham, news editor for the Oakland side.

And we want to hear from you, Oakland voters. Who did you vote for in this election and why? What would you like to see the next mayor of Oakland accomplish? And do you think the results, what we know so far, says anything more broadly about the state of the city and even Bay Area politics? You can give us a call, 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786.

733-6786. Email your comments, forum at kqed.org or find us at KQED Forum on social media. And Shomik, let's back up. This election was kind of set in motion by the recall of former Mayor Sheng Tao. How large did that recall kind of loom in this race?

Quite a bit. Yeah. I mean, literally, the candidate who emerges victorious in this election will complete Cheng Tao's term. Right. So just structurally, you can't get away from the fact that this is like we're still in the Tao era in some ways. Right. And that...

Her tenure in office was really chaotic. I mean, beyond the federal indictments that she's now facing, there were questions about the city's budget. She tried to kind of sell the Coliseum, the city's stake in the Coliseum, and put the revenue toward one-time expenses in Oakland. Crime went up quite a bit in 2023, it ticked down in 2024, but she was sort of blamed for it by her enemies,

There's a lot of negativity around Oakland in general that's kind of bled over into this election because the turnaround has been just so quick.

That people weren't, I guess, fully ready to dive into a three-month election cycle where they get to know two other candidates. And Lee, for her part, came in and distanced herself from Tao pretty much immediately, especially after the indictments. Taylor sort of went after her for having opposed the recall. She said, well, I oppose recalls generally as an electoral strategy. But I guess...

By the end, Lee was still trying to kind of pleading with voters to move on from Tao and sort of see her as this kind of leader and who in a very high minded way could bring people together in a way. And said that in a way where she was implying that Tao and Taylor were very partisan. And indeed, like at City Hall, these like really deep political divides emerged during Tao's tenure. And Taylor was on the other side of that.

So it would have been advantageous for Taylor to kind of make this race a referendum on the recall, given the recall success. But it doesn't seem like it totally turned out that way. And Alex, I want to play a cut from a voter that you talked to in West Oakland, Renee Hayes, who said that she voted for the recall and supported the recall last November, but says she's supporting Barbara Lee in this race. Because I know more of her, about her, than anybody else.

And because she's supportive of universal income and stuff like that. And then I think she'd be good for helping us get some things we need in Oakland. So this seemed like fundamentally part of Lee's bet in this race, that she would be able to be the unifying candidate, bring together supporters of the recall, opponents of the recall. How did that turn out?

Yeah, I mean, I think that Lee's bet was being Barbara Lee. I mean, there's a lot of people who, you know, were asking questions about like, OK, you said that you oppose the recalls. What's up with that? But, you know, at the time that she did, I think that, you know, there was a point last year when like elected officials kind of had, you know, progressive elected officials had an opportunity to either, you know, come out and

take a stand on the recalls or not and kind of stay quiet. And at that point, you know, the FBI had raided Tao's home. She hadn't been charged with a crime. Obviously, things changed, you know, in early January, a week and a half after Lee announced her candidacy, Tao was indicted. So and since then, any association with Tao has not been a good look for anyone in

And, you know, Lee has been asked about, you know, her why she opposed the recalls. She has given the same response every time, you know, that she supports the voters will the voters decision to recall Tao, that she's proud to have supporters from those who supported the recall and those who opposed it, but that she wants to move on. Yeah.

You know, but I think honestly, for a lot of voters, like a lot of that is really in the weeds in a way that like I think for a lot of voters, like they kind of just tuned in at the end. And even at the beginning, when I was talking to voters on the street, it was just like, yeah, I really care about public safety. And I love Barbara Lee. Like all of this other stuff was just kind of like, you know, a footnote. And Darwin, again, we don't know the results of this election, but it seems looking at the map.

of how votes are coming in. The map looks like a traditional Oakland mayor race more than it did the recall map. Is that fair?

Yeah. In terms of you're talking about like which precincts voted which way. Yeah. I mean, so the longstanding pattern in Oakland elections is that the more moderate or conservative candidate, if you will, will like carry the Hills districts. The more progressive candidate, the one who's favored by like renters or, you know, lower income people will carry the flatlands. Yeah.

Again, we don't have all the results, but that map is basically playing out kind of perfectly right now. Lauren Taylor's got the hills all the way from the Berkeley border through Montclair all the way down to the hills in Deep East Oakland.

Barbara Lee Scott, West Oakland, north part of North Oakland, you know, like lower Rockridge area and then down around the lake and through East Oakland. Just the hills are not like a monolith, though. It's not like entirely a bunch of like rich white people. Right. Like there's actually quite a bit of diversity in the hills, too.

The deep East Oakland Hills have like a pretty large African-American population. But for the most part, there is a really interesting split in like the demographics of like who voted for who. And it does break down geographically. Whereas the recall, it seemed like that kind of blurred a lot of the traditional lines, right? Yeah, the recall...

It was, you know, just almost the entirety of the city, except for, correct me if I'm wrong here, I think it was parts of West Oakland and North Oakland. Some of those precincts were against the recall. Got it. Let's go to the phones now. Isabel is in Oakland. Good morning, Isabel. Thanks for calling. Hi, good morning. How's it going? What's on your mind? Good.

So, first of all, I'm a Latino female who comes from a low-income background, just to that. And I came to college in the '90s here at UC Berkeley, and I ended up staying in Oakland. So I've seen all the mayors over the years and the ups and downs in Oakland, and I still love Oakland. But when it comes to this mayoral election, it's really disappointing that there was such a low turnout for this race.

and i think it's really important that people show up and i'm so many people took the time to vote our last mayor out but where are they now when we need a vote a new person in and in turn i voted for barbara lee because we need a really experienced politician with lots of connection and um... in office and um... i think it's uh... really interesting to that back

In the day, Libby Schaaf, who supported Lauren Taylor at one time, she recently has supported Barbara Lee in this mayoral race. And so there's a lot to think about when it comes to that. Thanks so much, Isabel. I really appreciate that thought. And it's worth noting, I think Libby Schaaf, when she came out to support the recall, I remember her, she was on KQED and she said, you know, if we have this special election, there will be a huge turnout because it'll be the only show in town. Everyone will be focused on the mayoral election. Didn't totally turn out that way.

Yeah. I mean, I think that just, you know, talking about all the support that Lee has gotten, all the endorsements, that's been another really big part of this, especially like on the city council. It seems like there's this narrative that like,

You know, Lee is the mayor that Oakland needs because she would really be able to, you know, move her agenda forward in a way that Lauren Taylor wouldn't because, you know, city council members haven't really, you know, come out in support of him. And like the caller said, Lee's experience, you know, she talked a lot about how her, you know, how she would leverage her contacts to get Oakland the outside help that it needs, outside investment from public

private partnerships. And so I think for a lot of voters, that was a factor. And for Taylor, you know, they were kind of like thinking that, you know, I think age was kind of a factor for them. They saw Taylor's more as like, you know, this is like young blood coming in with new ideas. And so all of that, I think,

played a role. What about as far as the low turnout? Is that just the function of April election? What should we make of that? I think so. I think, you know, any any kind of special election. I don't care that your mayor mayor was on the ballot. Okay, big deal. But like, there was no, you know, we just had a presidential election. I think voters are like, you know, I voted in November, you know, what, why am I, you know,

I'm going to vote again in April. Maybe I'll sit this one out. Special elections and primaries in general have low turnout. Also, you know, there's not a lot of confidence in Oakland government right now. The budget is a mess. You would think that would mean that people are engaged. But maybe I wonder to what extent it means that people are just sort of pessimistic in general about government and not engaging with it. And I'm also...

Personally, just curious about, you know, the city council a while back created this democracy dollars program and they wanted to like, you know, like try to juice participation, particularly amongst low income people in the elections by giving everybody vouchers that they could then give to candidates who could spend that on like advertising and canvassing and stuff. It was, you know, supposed to level the campaign finance playing field and give voters.

you know, people who don't have a ton of money, a little bit more like skin in the game to like shape the elections. Council cut that program. It's never gotten off the ground. So, you know, at the same time, anything that the city could be doing to increase participation, they just haven't been doing it.

We have a listener, Katie Casey on Discord, who says I voted for Lee because of her humane approach to homelessness, her thoughtful approach to the Oakland Police Department, her commitment to small business development and her transparency in addressing the budget problems our city faces. But Shomik, I felt like there wasn't on a lot of these issues, a ton of daylight on the policy positions. Is that fair? Like what what did you hear from voters on what they were thinking about to make their choice?

Yeah, like I think Alex said, vibes. There's a lot of vibes around the election. Taylor's seen as young and in some corners as this kind of like this policy wonk who would lean into specificity, who'd be good with the numbers. And Lee's seen more as this kind of

stabilizing force for the city where there's a crisis, a vacuum of leadership. I think one of the council members, Janani Ramachandran, who frequently clashed with Tao, told me that Lee would be like the elder in the room who could get us to sit down and shut up. And so I think, but as far as policy goes,

There actually wasn't a whole lot of daylight between Lee and Taylor. They both say that Oakland needs way more police officers. Oakland currently has, like, I think 675 sworn officers, and they both say that number should be well over 800. You know, Taylor has been—has said, oh, I'll be able to hire officers quicker because we'll do this and that, but—

they get into the weeds pretty quickly when they, when they, um, when they get past what really are broad, what really is broad agreement on, on policy. I think the biggest policy disagreement they had, um, is over the, the budget where, uh, Taylor has kind of promised to take a wrecking ball to some of the spending that, that Oakland's racked up over the years. Whereas Lee says layoffs, uh, worker cuts would be a last resort. Um, and there, and,

That's kind of given room for Taylor supporters to say that Lee would be kind of would give the unions a blank check. At the same time, the mayor who is elected, I think it's important for people to know, they'll play at best a supporting role in the budget that the city council is about to approve in the summer. The interim mayor, Kevin Jenkins, the council member, is going to be the one handling that proposal. The new mayor might be able to come in and sit.

suggest amendments to that budget. But when they're, when it's really their budget, uh, will be next year when, uh, when they're proposing amendments to the budget cycle. And by then we'll already be back in, uh, election mode because there's an election in November 26 for, uh, for the mayor's office.

My take on this just really quickly is, you know, it's really easy to get like super specific about policies and what you want to do when there's money to do that stuff. Oakland's facing a $130 million deficit this fiscal year. The next two fiscal years, it's like an even bigger crater in the city budget. So I think when the candidates were out on the campaign trail, like, what are we going to do? Let's get specific. I think they actually shied away from specificity because it's all going to be negative.

It did seem to make a difference to at least one voter, Vertus Whitaker, who, Alex, you talked to in West Oakland. Let's hear what Vertus had to say about his vote. I needed to hear people who had a forethought, right or wrong, on how they believed they were going to get things fixed. When you use political language like we're going to talk, we're going to hold a discussion, I'm going to talk to... I understand that's translation for, hey...

Within four to six months, we'll get people together. Then another four to six months to implement what we talked about. This is a short-term election. So that means we got to get things rapidly fixed. I don't want a person who comes in, does a lot of talking, and then when it's time to get reelected, nothing has changed other than maybe some parks have gotten flowers. So that was Virtus.Whitaker's take. I think it led him to vote for Taylor in this race. What was your reaction to that, Alex?

I mean, I thought it was fascinating. I mean, I've, you know, kind of had similar observations just, you know, listening to candidate forums, hearing both of, you know, all the candidates talk. And I think that it really highlights the difference in Taylor and Lee's approaches. Lee definitely seemed to, I think, her...

The way that she talked about the job of mayor was like it kind of felt like they were applying to two different jobs. Like Lee was speaking from a high level, kind of vague on the details view, not really getting into the granular level of like what she would do with the financial situation, seeing the role of mayors being more of like an executive who hires a team of people who worry about the specifics.

Whereas Taylor was like, I'm going to roll up my sleeves. I'm going to be crunching numbers. He was really talking about more of the specifics. And I remember there was this moment during the KTVU debate when Lee, one of the only times that Lee has directly publicly criticized Taylor and said, you know, this is a race for mayor, not for a city staffer. And it was like,

Okay, that's actually a really interesting point. Let's hear from another Taylor supporter. We have Maya on the line in Oakland. Maya, good morning and thanks for calling in. Hi, good morning. Thanks so much for having me. Sure. So tell us a little bit about what went into your decision on Tuesday.

I think it's exactly what you all are just now talking about in terms of the debate. For me, that debate made it very clear who needs to be the next mayor of Oakland, and for me, that was Taylor. There was a lot of talk from Barbara about, like, the division and bringing people together, and that is not, like...

We may be divided, but I think we're very much on the same page in terms of the city being a city that is failing right now. And I appreciated that Lauren called that out. The city is failing. And I think it's important, first and foremost, to recognize that there is a major problem with the city and it needs to be fixed.

and i'm not found like you know i'm not some person who just moved to oakland i'm born and raised in the city and i love this city and i think that it is failing right now and i think that it's ridiculous and i think that we need someone who recognizes that as a problem and has ideas on how to fix it i think that the other uh... the other uh...

person who you played, Ferdis Whitaker, completely agree with him as well. I think the status quo is very much what got us here. There's a lot of talk. And right now we really just need action. This city is in bad shape. And I feel like we need the data-driven approach that Lauren was talking about. We need to stop placating and just get to work. So I am very much in favor of Lauren Taylor. And to me, it's very clear who needs to be the next mayor of the city.

Awesome. Well, Maya, thank you so much for calling in and sharing your perspective. Shomak, Darwin talked earlier about the support that Lee got in this race from organized labor. And I think it was an open question for a bit whether a lot of the money that had supported the recalls last year would ultimately get behind Taylor. About a minute till break. Did that end up happening in the end?

Yeah, I mean, the money breakdown was kind of what we've seen in Oakland politics, where labor galvanizes entirely around a single candidate. In this case, it was Lee. In previous elections, the labor unions had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Tao when she was elected in 22, and then spent tens of thousands of dollars to fight her recall, which at some point looked like a fait accompli. But Taylor got a lot of support from, I think,

wealthier people, you could say an independent committee that was backing him got a major got $70,000 from again, a Max Hodak, who's a San Francisco based crypto entrepreneur. And that kind of gave an opening for Lee's backers to approach to kind of accuse Taylor of being backed by by big tech and by crypto and by wealth.

That's Joe McMurker. He covers Oakland for the Bay Area News Group. We're talking about the results of Tuesday's election. And Oakland voters, we want to hear from you. What were your thoughts? What went into your choice for mayor? You can give us a call 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786 or 866-733-6786.

Email us, forum at kqed.org, or find us at KQED Forum on social media. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll tell you about a surprising result from Tuesday's Oakland election you may not have noticed. Stay with us.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Guy Marzarati in for Alexis Madrigal. We're looking at the results of Oakland's special election this week, including the race for mayor. Still tens of thousands of ballots left to count. With me, Alex Hall, KQED reporter covering the Oakland election, Darwin Bond Graham, news editor for the Oakland side, and Shomak Merkerji, who covers Oakland for the Bay Area News Group. And Shomak, one result may have been a little bit surprising. Measure A, this increase to Oakland's sales tax, where does that stand?

Yeah, voters, I think in the last results, were favoring Measure A by 64%. And that really tracks with Oakland. Oakland voters usually pass, usually approve tax measures. This is a half percent sales tax measure.

And there seemed to be, Alex, some doubt about whether or not

Oakland voters would support a sales tax in this climate, but it seemed like both mayoral candidates certainly saw this as important to the future of the city's finances. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think we were talking about earlier how both of the candidates, you know, we're in, well, all of the candidates were in a tough spot with the city's budget crisis right now. You know, anything that they propose, a new idea for this program or hiring this person, the follow-up question is like, how are you going to pay for that? And so,

With Measure A, you know, obviously the city was really pushing for passing Measure A, for getting voter support for Measure A. And that was something that the candidates could really stand behind and say, like, you know, this is how we could help solve this structural budget deficit. Right.

I think, you know, there were some speculation that like maybe, you know, voters weren't going to support it. There was a Budget Advisory Commission survey that found that like over 40 percent of residents surveyed said that they wouldn't vote for it. So now that it looks like it's headed for victory, I think city officials are definitely, you know,

Feeling a sigh of relief. Yeah. I mean, every dollar counts right in this in this kind of budget shortfall. We talked a little bit about the budget earlier and like how much whoever wins this race might be able to impact that. Darwin, what's your insight into like, are these candidates already back channeling about the budget? How because I.

When they take office, it seems like a pretty short runway before the new fiscal year. Yeah, I get the impression Lawrence Taylor understands the budget pretty well from his background on city council. And from what I understand, Barbara Lee was talking to...

current elected officials and some city staff, you know, during the campaign to try to get up to speed on the city's budget problems. So, you know, they're probably both in a pretty good position to come in and have a grasp of it and know kind of what needs to be done. Unfortunately, what needs to be done is like some really deep cutting. And it's, I think,

Most most people are like questioning whether or not they can get away with with not cutting into the police department and the fire department. I mean, those two departments are just, you know, the majority of general fund spending. So how do you how do you address a budget deficit? That's, you know.

10% to perhaps, you know, even higher of your general fund spending, like that's a huge deficit. How do you address that without cutting into those departments? It's really not clear. I want to catch up on a few of the comments folks are writing in about their choice for Mayor Mulzaho on Discord Rights. I really appreciated Barbaralee's work representing us in Oakland.

But to go from big picture politics to small town mayor just doesn't fit. I think Oakland needs a less liberal approach to its economic and safety issues. I don't believe her connections will help us, nor will her negotiating skills. Taylor seems to have more focus on the town since he's been on city council. Another listener writes, when I voted for Barbara Lee, I was thinking about who would best represent Oakland and Bay Area values in the face of a national shift to right wing authoritarianism.

And David writes simply, I don't understand why it takes so long to count 100,000 ballots. If 100 employees were to count 1,000 ballots a day, this would be done in one day. Alex, remind us, folks just tuning in, why is this taking so long? I think it's primarily because of the mail-in ballots. We have universal mail-in ballots sent to every registered voter in California. And so...

Like I said, you know, most people tend to wait until either Election Day or the day before, you know, to drop off their mail-in ballot, to send it in the mail or, you know, drop it off at a drop box or at a voting center. And so, you know, the registrar voters does have to allow for all of those mail-in ballots to come in. And, you know, that does take time. I'm going to go back to the phones. Kate in Oakland. Kate, good morning. Thank you for calling into the forum.

Yeah, thanks so much for taking my call. We're Oakland voters here in East Oakland, and Barbara Lee was our congressional representative for years and years, and we had a lot of respect for her. But as others have mentioned, you know, we were really looking for a candidate who could provide concrete information

And something that really turned us off was the mailer we received with a photo of Donald Trump next to Lauren Taylor. It just seemed so duplicitous and really unkind.

really negative. I was so disappointed to receive that mailer. Another thing that was disappointing was Barbara Lee's strategy of trying to encourage people to vote for these other candidates who barely got 1% of the vote, not even, to have them

you know, use the ranked choice option to divert votes from Lauren Taylor. And I think there was a quote in the Oakland side about her calling them, you know, these are candidates of great integrity. These are people who want the best for Oakland. And it's just totally obvious they weren't viable candidates at all. And it just seemed like a real blatant strategy to try to take votes away from Taylor. Yeah.

Kate, thank you so much for calling in and sharing that. I really appreciate it. Darwin, I thought ranked choice voting was supposed to end negative campaigning. Yeah, right. I think that mailer in question, I could be wrong, but I believe that mailer was sent by what's called an independent expenditure committee.

And what's fascinating in Oakland politics is it took a little while. Oakland was a little bit behind the national trajectory on this. But, you know, the Citizens United ruling that allows, you know, organizations from corporations to labor unions to wealthy individuals to spend unlimited amounts of money on political speech is.

It has come to Oakland in a big way in the past few election cycles. This election cycle, I did quick math this morning, so the numbers I have are not fully accurate, but ballpark, I think they're on. Lee and Taylor both raised a combined about $930,000 for their campaigns. I think Taylor maybe outraised Lee just a little bit.

These outside, these independent expenditure committees which don't coordinate or they're not allowed to coordinate with the candidates,

And they just do stuff on their own, right? They raised also close to a million dollars and they paid for a flurry of advertising, including those mailers, including, you know, video ads, social media, billboards, all kinds of stuff. And the independent expenditure committees frequently put out very negative advertising.

And I think a big question that, you know, is confronting Oakland politics is like, to what extent, like how are going to how are candidates themselves going to like adjust to and deal with this like new era where these independent groups are like actually outspending the candidates themselves, putting out messages the candidates may very well not like. Well, it also lets the candidates kind of outsource the nasty to some extent, right? Like,

They can let these IEs handle the ads that Kate was kind of talking about. Kate was also brought up ranked choice voting, which we should talk about. This was a ranked choice election. So you could rank, I think, up to five candidates. If, you know, let's say you voted for a candidate that was eliminated and you had Barbara Lee or Lauren Taylor lower on your ballot, those votes would be redistributed and ultimately counted in this instant runoff.

Alex, how did you see the campaigns and the candidates approach this election through the lens of this is a rank choice? I didn't really hear anything from them about rank choice until the very end. You know, we've talked about the Instagram post from Barbara Lee.

There was another post of Lauren Taylor and Elizabeth Sweeney where they kind of just like encourage voter turnout. And if they actually asked for voters to rank them in any specific way, but it kind of like implied that there was some sort of like, you know, agreement there or collaboration there.

You know, I also forgot Mindy Pachinuk said that she actually asked people to rank Taylor second, telling Republican registered voters and no party preference voters to to vote accordingly, to vote that way. You know, she received.

over 4,800 votes in her run for the at-large council seat last year. So down the road, if this becomes super, super close, like that could have an impact, I think, you know. Why do you think, I mean, when Barbara Lee sent out that video kind of last second about rank choice, it felt like someone running and grabbing diapers before a baby shower, like needed something last second. Why do you think that's the case?

Why was that the case? Why do you think we didn't see more strategic partnerships under this ranked choice system? I think Lee at the very beginning was unfamiliar with the culture of ranked choice voting in Oakland. When she spoke at the very first forum, she said, I'd like voters to vote for Barbara Lee and rank nobody else. And then I guess...

I can only assume that the staff went and told her, no, no, no, actually, ranked choice strategy is really popular. It's a very progressive idea in Oakland. So don't tell people to just vote for you. Tell people to kind of rank candidates based on their preference, which is sort of the ethos of ranked choice voting, that voters will have...

uh, more of a kind of a canvas to express their, uh, their preference. Um, and it's supposed to encourage collaboration. It sort of did in the 2022 election where Lauren Taylor had an outright alliance with another candidate, Treva Reed. And that election of course helped Shanghai win the mayorship because she got third place vote transfers from a candidate named Elisa victory. And, uh,

even though Tao didn't get the most first place votes. So I think this time around, you saw none of that. Ranked choice was not a theme of the election. And at the end, the strategy, like the caller mentioned, it seemed a little bit

Like it was not sort of maybe not, maybe not intended to indicate a philosophical alliance, uh, based on politics, but rather maybe Lee's camp was, uh, was, was looking at the field and looking at who might be getting votes and seeing who she could potentially get second choice votes from or third choice votes from. And, um,

That sort of cynical look at ranked choice voting is among the reasons why it's become so controversial. And in fact, Taylor, this nonprofit he co-founded, Empower Oakland, was using money at a certain point to explore the idea of repealing ranked choice voting, which if it does, as Alex said, if those vote transfers play a role in deciding this extremely close election, you can bet that ranked choice will be...

But we'll kind of be in the political crosshairs again. What about from the voter side of it? Did you all hear anything from voters about confusion or do you feel like people have gotten the hang of it after a few ranked choice elections in Oakland? I think it remains to be seen if there's going to be like large, large scale like voter complaints this time around. Yeah.

There were complaints in the 2022 election. Some people felt confused about it. And there was a pretty large number of exhausted ballots, you know, ones that basically like people filled out in a manner in which their votes ultimately weren't transferred to either Lauren Taylor or Shane Tao, indicating that either...

Either that those voters just really didn't like those two candidates or they were they were confused and didn't fill out the rank choice ballot all the way to make their vote count in the end that way. After 2022, a bunch of groups around town did a good deal of like voter education around rank choice. So I think it will be interesting to check in with the electorate and see if some of that voter education work like paid off.

Let's go back to the phones with Jim in Fairfield. Good morning, Jim, and thanks for calling. Thank you very much. So, Oakland has a $130 million structural deficit, but all cities have a structural deficit. So, my question is, what

What is it about the root cause? What is it about city financing that creates these structural deficits? Setting mayoral politics aside, is it the servicing of pensions? Is it Prop 13? Is it bloated salaries? What is it about...

cities in general and what is it about Oakland specifically that creates these deficits? Thank you so much, Jim. I don't know, Darwin, D, all of the above?

Yeah, all of the above. You know, things are really expensive in California. Labor is really expensive in California. Labor is the biggest single cost for municipal governments. That's paying firefighters and cops and other people to like do their jobs. And it's really expensive because you've got to pay those people to live in a really expensive place. There's also, you know, tax laws on the books that make it really hard for municipalities to like raise the money they actually need. What makes Oakland unique is

Yeah, and the caller is correct. There's a bunch of cities in California right now that are facing huge deficits. But what makes Oakland somewhat unique is that Oakland has deeply entrenched poverty and other social problems, gun violence, homelessness, drug addiction, that a lot of other cities don't face or don't face in that intensity. And so the level of resources and the budget deficit that Oakland is facing is a unique problem in the sense that Oakland is

is particularly screwed over and not having the money to address its problems, which are much more intensified and worse than what a lot of other cities face. And Shumak, you talked about earlier, this is a two year term to begin with, right? So how much can we expect whoever wins this election to actually do around some of those more structural issues?

Yeah, I mean, both candidates have spoken at length about the idea that Oakland needs to be structurally fixed. Lauren Taylor has gone as far to discuss zero-based budgeting, which is this really, really extensive process of having each department justify how much it's spending each year and starting from scratch, basically, with the budgeting process. Barbara Lee has called for a

a full-blown forensic audit of the city's finances. Those things take months to complete. And whoever's going to be mayor is going to be in office for 17 months. One other thing that they're actually discussing structurally, not necessarily related to the budget, is they're discussing how...

how, how many power, how much power the mayor would actually have. This is kind of on the back of this essay published by a former city administrator, Steven Falk, uh, that says Oakland's mayor is basically, uh, has their power sort of, um, uh,

blunted by the fact that the city council has the final legislative say in the budgets that are approved. And whereas the mayor can hire and fire the city administrator who keeps the city running, other cities like San Francisco have a much stronger mayor who actually has legislative power and not just the bully pulpit, which is to say, not just sort of being a cheerleader for the city. And then in San Jose, you have the mayor sitting on the city council,

Yeah, and Taylor said he wants to bring this...

to the ballot, to the voters, Alex, but that would be in 2026, right? So that's not a kind of a short-term thing either. Yeah, I mean, both candidates have said that they're interested in that. Leah talked about that super early on. She brought up, you know, Oakland's

government structure and, you know, how she would be open to different forms of government, not necessarily strong mayor form of government, that she would put that to the voters. You know, just a few weeks ago, Interim Mayor Kevin Jenkins wrote this Facebook post where he was talking about how one of the main reasons why he's endorsed Lee and not Taylor is that

She does have alliances on the city council and specifically with charter reform that, you know, she's the only one who could really like get the council behind her to bring that kind of change forward. I'm not really sure why Lee is the only one who can do that. And, you know, I imagine that Taylor could do that, too. But I think that whoever wins charter reform is going to be like, you know, once the budget changes.

is passed and approved like late summer, I think they're going to start talking about charter reform quite a bit. That will be kind of top of the agenda. Interesting. Darwin, we got about 30 seconds left. What would you say, no matter who ends up winning this in the next few weeks, would be at the top of the list as far as what they're going to take on and what they could reasonably hope to accomplish before 2026? Yeah.

It's just going to be really interesting to see how they deal with the city's labor unions. To fix the deficit they're facing, it's hard to imagine how they do that without layoffs. And the unions are going to be very opposed to that.

That's Darwin Bond Graham, news editor for The Oakland Side. Also with us, Alex Hall, KQED reporter covering this election in Oakland. And Shomak Mukherjee, who covers Oakland for the Bay Area News Group. Thank you all so much. I learned so much from these three reporters throughout this whole election. Really appreciate you joining us. Likewise. Thank you. And thank you to all of our listeners who took the time to call in. I'm Guy Marzarati, in for Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with guest host Scott Schaefer.

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