Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:01:09] Eli, what do we know right now about the results of the special mayor election in Oakland?
Eli Wolfe: [00:01:17] Technically the ballots are still being counted, but the race is pretty much over.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:01:23] Eli Wolf covers City Hall for the Oaklandside.
Eli Wolfe: [00:01:28] Former Congresswoman Barbara Lee has beat former councilman Loren Taylor by about 53% to 47%. It’s narrower than I think some people thought, but it’s pretty decisive. And Barbara Lee, has declared victory and Loren Taylor has conceded. There’s some relatively small number of ballots that are still being tallied. There are also going to be ballots that need to be cured. Those are ballots where like someone’s signature doesn’t match up with their You know, the envelope they return their mail ballot in or there’s some other problem, but it’s such a small number that it’s highly, highly unlikely that it’ll change the outcome of the race.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:02:10] Are you surprised by these results?
Eli Wolfe: [00:02:12] You know what, I would be lying if I said I knew how this election was going to turn out. I think that if you asked me in January, like a lot of people, we thought that Barbara Lee was going to kind of have a cakewalk. Barbara Lee had such enormous name recognition and respect in Oakland and so many endorsements that came in so quickly. But Loren Taylor then ran a pretty energetic campaign and there weren’t a ton of polls that were circulating, but the ones that did, especially in the last few weeks. Showed that he was neck and neck with Barbara Lee. So I think that if you ask most people now, they’ll say that they thought that Lee was still gonna pull it out, but election night, it felt very unclear to me.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:02:52] And of course, this was a special mayoral election. We know voter turnout for things like this is usually pretty low. What can we say about what we know about how voter turnout looked this time around?
Eli Wolfe: [00:03:06] About 36% of registered voters came out. That’s not great. I think it’s decent for a special election. People generally vote at a lower frequency in special elections than general ones. For perspective, 126,000 people voted in the last mayoral election in 2022. That’s about 52% of register voters. In 2018, it was 69%. So, I mean, for a mayoral elections, even if it’s a special elections, I mean it is significant.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:03:41] Eli, what do we know right now about how the city voted, meaning which areas leaned more so in favor of Lee or more so favor of Loren Taylor?
Eli Wolfe: [00:03:53] It is a very classic division of votes in Oakland. It’s Hills versus Flatlands. Based on the data that we’ve seen so far, it looks like the Oakland Hills went heavily for Lauren Taylor and Oakland’s Flatlands, which is most of East Oakland, West Oakland, Downtown, went for Barbara Lee.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:04:17] What kind of platforms did the two candidates run on? Like what were the central issues to each of their campaigns and the key differences really?
Eli Wolfe: [00:04:26] The big themes that I think both the candidates were talking about because people were talking about were homelessness, crime, public safety, and the budget. And I would say public safety really was the paramount issue for most people. I think something people probably picked up on is that on a lot of important issues, it was hard to tell the difference between the candidates. They aligned on a lotta stuff. Loren Taylor’s campaign was really focused on, on a thematic level, this idea that Oakland was broken and that someone needed to step in and fix it. Barbara Lee was approaching it as Oakland needed to unify. Barbara Lee’s proposals focused on sort of what she could leverage as a former member of Congress who has a ton of allies out there.
Barbara Lee: [00:05:19] I’ll govern with the same leadership that I’ve engaged in my entire career. With transparency, integrity, and accountability, and with an unwavering focus on the results.
Eli Wolfe: [00:05:33] She had a press conference where she appeared with the head of the Alameda County Labor Council and with the Head of the Chamber of Commerce sort of like hitting that unifying theme and talked more in detail about this 10-point, 100 day plan for Oakland.
Barbara Lee: [00:05:50] We made sure that these were actionable items that weren’t just promises, but promises that we could keep to address our challenges. So let me just go over some of these. Bringing together the police department leadership and representatives.
Eli Wolfe: [00:06:07] She said that she’s gonna make sure that the city gets its fair share of homelessness dollars from Alameda County. She also had some very specific and sort of like smaller issues that are still important. Talked about like deploying vegetation management crews to clear hazards in the city’s high-risk fire zones. I remember there was a pretty scary fire last year. So getting money to make sure that we don’t have a fire like that again is important. I could go on here. I mean, she’s talked about like, you know, auditing city contracts, modernizing the city charter.
Barbara Lee: [00:06:41] And ensure that public funds are spent effectively and responsibly by contractors and non-profits.
Eli Wolfe: [00:06:49] Pretty ambitious things. It’ll be interesting to see if she can achieve them in 100 days.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:06:54] But also beyond, I guess, her promises, Eli. She’s inheriting a lot of problems in Oakland, including the budget. I mean, what are some of the biggest decisions she’s gonna kind of be forced to make just by virtue of taking on this job?
Eli Wolfe: [00:07:13] She is coming into a very, very grim budget situation. The latest figures that I had from the city’s finance department were that the city is facing a $265 million structural deficit over the next two years. Oakland’s next budget cycle begins on July 1st. So when Barbara Lee is sworn in, which will probably be in roughly a month, a little, somewhere in mid-May, Oakland’s interim mayor, Kevin Jenkins, will theoretically have already introduced his proposed budget. So she is going to step in office with a mostly complete budget that the city council will have to approve. And unknown for me is whether she’s gonna have a chance to tinker with that budget. I imagine she probably will, at least a little bit. But the big stuff on the table is gonna be what gets cut. I think that something everybody is looking to right now is how she is going to deal with the city’s labor unions. They backed her really heavily this election. During the campaign, she said that everything was on the table as far as things that could be cut, but she said the layoffs would be a last resort in her administration. So I think people are really curious to see if she’s going to stick with that because I think it’s going to be, frankly, very difficult to resolve the budget situation without taking some very painful cuts.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:08:46] What Barbara Lee’s win means for Oakland, and when there’ll be another mayoral election. Stay with us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:09:00] You mentioned she will be coming into office around mid-May. How long will she be serving as mayor and will she potentially have to run again if she wants to do this job?
Eli Wolfe: [00:09:16] Yeah, so she’s finishing up, in case people have been sleeping under a rock, she is taking over for Shang Thao, who was recalled by voters last November. So she’s finishing out Thao’s tenure, which runs through 2026. So if she wants to serve a full four-year term after this, she will have to campaign, run, and, you know, be whoever runs against her. That is less than two years away. And campaigns start real early. So if she decides that she is going to run again, I mean, she’ll probably have to start campaigning. I mean gosh, it wouldn’t surprise me if she starts campaigning towards the end of this year.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:09:57] Oh, my goodness. I don’t know if I’m ready for that, Eli. I mean, just wrapping up here, Eli, Barbara Lee, I mean she’s an icon of the East Bay. She’s a well-known name. What do you think her win ultimately says about what Oaklanders want right now?
Eli Wolfe: [00:10:16] When I talk to Oaklanders, when I talk to people who voted in this election, a common theme that comes up is that people are really sick of divisiveness in Oakland. They’re tired of political instability. I think that a lot of people voted for the recalls, but also, you know, like now they want to move forward. They want someone who really can unify the city and can sort of achieve a pre-COVID normality. I think that the last five years have been so topsy-turvy for people that they are just looking for a person who can lead the city and really make them feel grounded and like they don’t have to worry as much that, you know, the city is going to go bankrupt or that crime is going explode again. I don’t know how reasonable it is to put all of that hope on one person. I think that this is a way that Barbara Lee’s legacy might work against her. I think a lot of people really expect a lot from her. I think she’s gonna be able to deliver on a lot practical things that the mayor is responsible for. I also think that there’s a lot of things that are out of her control or that are gonna take a long time to fulfill. And it’s gonna interesting, especially as the next election approaches, seeing whether people are willing to accept that some of her solutions will take time. I think that’s gonna be a really critical piece of sort of seeing whether people are gonna like stick around with her for the ride.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:11:46] Well, there’s a lot to watch Eli, thank you so much for taking the time to join us, I appreciate it.
Eli Wolfe: [00:11:52] Thank you for having me.
