Barbara Lee, Oakland’s Next Mayor, Is Ready to ‘Govern in a New Way’

Barbara Lee doesn’t need any reminders; she’s got a tough job ahead of her.

“We’ve been working very hard,” she told KQED on Tuesday, a week before she is set to be sworn in as Oakland’s next mayor.

The hometown progressive hero, who represented the region for nearly three decades in Congress, takes the helm at a particularly fraught moment for this perennially underdog city, where crime has remained stubbornly high, the school district is in disarray, and homelessness and encampments have reached crisis levels.

“We need to reset,” she said. “Right now, I’m looking at what needs to be added, what needs to be deleted, what needs to be restructured.”

Lee, 78, said her transition team has been busy assembling working groups to help address the bevy of formidable challenges the city faces.

The groups will consist of “community members, nonprofit leaders, people who have the pulse of Oakland and what needs to be done in terms of our 100-day plan,” said Lee, who will replace interim Mayor Kevin Jenkins to finish out the final year and a half of recalled Mayor Sheng Thao’s term.

“These working groups are going to be essential to how we govern in a new way,” Lee said.

Asked about her top priorities, Lee recited a laundry list of critical issues, including public safety, affordable housing, homelessness and encampments, and economic development.

“It’s a big agenda,” she acknowledged. “But it’s an agenda that everybody in the city can embrace.”

Lee said she intends to restore the city’s depleted police force to 700 sworn officers and double down on violence prevention initiatives and mental health interventions.

“We have many public safety issues that people are very aware of,” she said. “They’re not safe in many respects in many parts of the city, and we have to get this under control.”

On the city’s growing unhoused population, which numbered some 5,500 people in last year’s point-in-time count, Lee offered a compassionate approach centered on prevention.

“I’m looking at how we can try to help people find jobs, training. Because the best predictor of people becoming sheltered is financial assistance,” Lee said.

The homelessness situation in the city is “an issue of safety. It’s a humanitarian issue. It’s a moral disgrace,” she added. “And we have to do something, and we must do it quickly, at least begin to turn this around quickly. It’s going to take a while.”

Lee also spoke of reducing evictions and “preventing people from ending up on the street.”

“I’m looking at how we can establish a revolving fund for first and last month’s rent for people who are living on the edge who may need to have their city help them,” she said. “They would pay it back when they got on their feet.”

It’s unclear, though, where that money will come from.

Lee will soon be engulfed in tough budget decisions, as the city’s leaders scramble to close the current shortfall while simultaneously trying to piece together a new budget that aims to eliminate a projected $265 million deficit over the next two years.

“It depends on the members of the City Council,” Lee said of that process. “I’m working with all of them, and we have to have consensus on what we would want to do. And so, at this point, we’re analyzing the full budget to make those determinations.”

During her campaign, which focused on a message of unity at a time of bitter political division in the city, Lee emphasized her congressional track record of bringing federal funding to Oakland, while also pledging to use her political connections to generate more investment for the city through public-private partnerships.

Following a failed 2024 U.S. Senate bid, Lee threw her hat in the ring for mayor in January, just weeks after ending her storied stint as one of the most consistently progressive voices in Congress.

Backed by most of the City Council, the interim mayor and labor unions, Lee was considered the heavy favorite. But the race turned into an unexpectedly tight contest between her and former Councilmember Loren Taylor, who challenged Lee’s progressive approach to governance and gained support from voters in the city’s whiter and more affluent hillside communities.

Now, stepping into her partial first term as mayor, Lee has less than two years to tackle the prodigious set of goals she campaigned on.

“Well, she knew what she signed up for. And so far, it looks like she is putting in place a transition team and a staff that is going to be able to address those big, complex, thorny problems that have plagued Oakland for quite some time,” said Justin Berton, who was former Mayor Libby Schaaf’s communications director.

Nearly every mayor in the city’s modern history has formed a transition team, Berton added, with the notable exception of Thao.

“None of her incoming staff worked with the [previous] administration to create that transition. So when her administration started, she literally just showed up on day one and started hiring the staff and started learning on the fly what the job entailed,” he said. “I think that followed her throughout her two years in office. People didn’t feel confident that her and her team were prepared.”