Oakland Settles Suit Alleging ‘Staggering Government Dysfunction’ in 2022 Mayor’s Race

Oakland will pay more than $200,000 and implement a series of election reforms to settle a lawsuit alleging that former Mayor Sheng Thao and several other candidates missed the filing deadline to be eligible to run in the 2022 mayoral election.

The City Council voted Tuesday afternoon to approve the settlement, more than two years after the Alameda County Taxpayers’ Association filed its lawsuit accusing the city of a litany of election-related blunders, violations and coverups stemming from the Oakland City Clerk’s office inadvertently giving mayoral candidates the wrong deadline to submit their candidacy applications.

Upon realizing the mistake, on the afternoon of the actual deadline, the office “frantically” called Thao and other candidates who had yet to submit their paperwork, instructing them to come to City Hall to file before the 5 p.m. cutoff, the suit alleges, leaving candidates “scrambling to gather signatures and organize their paperwork at the last minute.”

Of the four candidates — Thao, Monesha Carter, Seneca Scott and Allyssa Victory — who showed up to the clerk’s office on the afternoon of Aug. 12, 2022, only Scott turned in his paperwork by the 5 p.m. deadline, the suit alleges, arguing that Thao and the two others should have been disqualified.

The suit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, also claims that the clerk’s office had to manually operate its malfunctioning timestamp machine and incorrectly timestamped all of the paperwork to make it appear that it had been filed prior to 5 p.m., “when in fact, it had not.”

“An overall lack of election integrity, lack of public accountability, and staggering government dysfunction are at the heart of this lawsuit,” the suit states.

Thao went on to win the election by just 677 votes, narrowly defeating then-Councilmember Loren Taylor. Just two years later, voters removed her from office in an unprecedented recall. She now faces federal bribery charges after a grand jury in January indicted her — as well as her romantic partner and the father-son team overseeing the city’s recycling contractor — on several charges related to an alleged corruption scandal.

Oakland Attorney Marleen Sacks, who led the suit for the tax foundation, initially demanded that the city redo the mayoral election, alleging that it had also flubbed the ranked choice voting process by only allowing voters to rank five candidates, despite having 10 names on the ballot.

Sacks also claimed city officials didn’t respond to her California Public Records Act requests in a timely manner, and accused them of violating state law by deleting surveillance footage that she said would have shown candidates entering and leaving City Hall on the day of the deadline.

The Alameda County Taxpayers Association, no stranger to legal challenges against Oakland and Alameda County, also filed suit against the city in 2022, challenging the validity of Measure Y, a parcel tax to help fund the city’s zoo, which voters approved that November.

In a separate suit, Sacks and the group sued the city over alleged illegal public contracting and violations of the state’s Public Records Act. The city settled in February, paying the group roughly $250,000 to cover legal fees.

Ironically, the City Council on Tuesday, during the same meeting, also approved a resolution to recognize “Municipal Clerks Week,” praising employees at Oakland City Clerk’s office.

The City Council initially authorized the settlement during a closed-door session last month, in which it agreed to pay nearly $208,000 to reimburse attorney’s fees, “without admitting fault or wrongdoing.”

The agreement, however, is silent on whether Thao or any other particular candidate should have been listed on the ballot.

The City Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the settlement.

As part of the settlement, city leaders agreed to a spate of election reforms, including no longer accepting late paperwork from candidates seeking office, providing accurate information about filing deadlines, retaining camera footage at the City Clerk’s office for at least a year and “making best efforts” to ensure timestamp machines at the clerk’s office are functioning accurately.

The city also agreed “under certain circumstances” to request that the county registrar offer more than five ranked-choice options for city elections.

“It’s a satisfactory result. But there are still fundamental issues of accountability and transparency that continue to exist [in Oakland],” Sacks said after the vote. “It shouldn’t require a lawsuit for the city to investigate what led to these problems. But it did.”