Pamela Price reluctantly stepped down as Alameda County’s district attorney earlier this month after an overwhelming majority of frustrated voters ousted her in November’s historic recall election.
Under the county Board of Supervisors’ recently determined schedule, those interested in the two-year position have until the first week of January to apply. The board will then select a replacement to start in early February and serve until voters select a new DA in 2026 to finish out the remainder of Price’s term, ending in 2028.
For those considering the county’s top prosecutor gig, Price’s rapid downfall will likely serve as a cautionary tale.
Support for the progressive prosecutor plummeted in her less than two years in office, from 53% in 2022 — when she defeated DA veteran Terry Wiley — to just 37% this year.
And while the recall campaign against Price was heavily funded by wealthy white and Asian donors, her support fell most sharply among voters in many of the county’s lowest-income, predominantly Black and Latino communities, where crime rates are often disproportionately high.
That dramatic shift is particularly evident in flatland communities in Oakland, San Leandro and Hayward. In one precinct along Oakland’s crime-plagued Hegenberger commercial corridor, Price’s support plunged by 41 percentage points — from 77% in 2022 to 36% this year.
Like many of her neighbors, Hayward resident Patricia Harris voted for Price in 2022, swayed by her campaign pledge to reduce sentences for some nonviolent offenders – particularly those convicted as juveniles.
“Over-incarceration is a real thing,” Harris said. “So, for that reason, what she was saying was appealing.”
But she soon lost faith in the DA after Price reopened the case of the man who shot and killed Harris’ son, Jarin Purvis, three years earlier.
In June 2023, just six months into her tenure, Price reduced the man’s sentence from murder to involuntary manslaughter, concluding that the shooting was “clearly a mistake.”