OAKLAND — Former City Councilmember Loren Taylor took a very slim lead in early results in Oakland’s special mayoral election on Tuesday against former Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee in a race prompted by a series of recent scandals that culminated in the recall of the city’s mayor in November.
The race to lead the Northern California city remained too close to call late Tuesday night. But Taylor’s strong early showing is the latest plot twist in a race that many expected Lee, a progressive icon who spent nearly 30 years representing the East Bay in Congress, to easily win after she declared her candidacy in January.
Oakland, a city of 436,000 people with roughly 250,000 registered voters, uses ranked-choice elections, which allows voters to select multiple candidates by order of preference. It could take several days before final results are tallied and a winner is declared, but Taylor’s supporters were already celebrating the early results at a campaign party in downtown Oakland.
Down the street from Taylor’s party, with the night still very young, hundreds of Lee’s supporters remained upbeat while dancing to a live band at Ceremony, a downtown music venue. Green and gold balloons, Oakland’s official colors, decorated the room, while dozens of people formed a long line to get a plate of soul food.
Lee, wearing a dark green suit with a gold shirt, also struck a resilient tone during a speech at the party, where she spent more time thanking campaign supporters than she did talking about results.
“We all know this is going to be a long week,” she said. “But we are doing very well.”
The special election was triggered by the ousting of Mayor Sheng Thao, whom voters recalled from office in November amid deep frustrations with crime, homelessness and the general sense that Oakland was in crisis.
Thao, a progressive elected in 2022, was roundly criticized for failing to more aggressively address so-called smash-and-grab robberies and car thefts or dismantle the city’s sprawling tent cities. She also faced accusations of bungling the city’s finances, contributing to a dire budget shortfall this fiscal year that will almost certainly require sweeping cuts across government departments.
Efforts to recall Thao from office were already underway when, in June, FBI agents raided her home as part of an investigation into an alleged sprawling corruption scheme involving Thao’s boyfriend and a father-son team who runs the company that provides Oakland’s recycling services. That probe energized the recall, which easily passed with more than 60% of the vote. Thao, her boyfriend Andre Jones, and Andy and David Duong of California Waste Solutions were indicted on federal bribery charges in January. All four defendants pleaded not guilty.
Thao’s ouster, along with concerns over crime and the city’s financial crisis, fueled deep voter resentment over perceived incompetence by government leaders, said Dan Lindheim, a former city administrator for Oakland who now teaches at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.
“There was a perception that things were out of control, coupled with this financial crisis,” said Lindheim, who endorsed Lee.
The election created an unexpected career opportunity for Lee, who left Washington in January after losing her bid for Senate in last year’s primary to fellow Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who went on to win the seat in November. With Oakland in sudden need of a new mayor, a broad coalition of business groups, labor organizations and elected leaders spent last fall calling on Lee, 78, to run in the special election and save their city from collapse.
Since announcing her campaign in January, Lee has run on a message of unity as a veteran politician with decades of experience forging connections across all interest groups. She has touted the hundreds of millions of dollars she has brought home to the East Bay during her time in Congress, where she advocated for anti-war policies and promoted legislation that targeted racism, sexism, poverty and labor exploitation. Those values stem from her roots as a Black Panther activist and her educational training at Mills College and UC Berkeley.
She promised on the campaign trail to “make life better for everybody” in Oakland, while vowing to fight crime and encourage the estimated 5,400 homeless people in Oakland into shelter and housing. She has pledged to hire more police officers, curb government spending and increase transparency into decisions made at City Hall.
Taylor and Lee were only two candidates in a crowded field of 10 people, though one person dropped out of the race in February to campaign for Lee. But the race was largely seen as a competition between Lee and Taylor and their competing visions for Oakland.
Taylor effectively chipped away at Lee’s advantage in recent weeks with an aggressive campaign strategy that relied in large part on turning her strengths against her.
He has often described his hometown as “broken” and in desperate need of a chief executive with on-the-ground experience in City Hall who could make tough decisions without fear of disappointing long-time political supporters. And at 47, Taylor appealed to voters disillusioned by career politicians who were looking for someone younger to steer their city in a new direction.
“People want ideological statements and positions from their representatives in national government,” said Keally McBride, an Oakland resident and politics professor at the University of San Francisco. “But when it comes to local government, they just want things to work.”
He received a financial boost by tech and business leaders who funneled tens of thousands of dollars toward electing Taylor through independent expenditure committees backing his candidacy.
Taylor represented portions of East Oakland for four years on the City Council before narrowly losing to Thao in the 2022 mayoral election. In that race, Taylor held the lead for several days before a wave of mail-in ballots pushed the vote in Thao’s favor.
