Very early election results Tuesday evening showed a majority of voters favoring the recall of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, the labor-backed progressive who has struggled to build trust around the city during the first two years of her term.
The first set of results released by Alameda County election officials included about 147,000 votes cast on the recall question, a very small portion of all the ballots that will be counted by the election’s end.
Still, the early returns indicated that Thao, who was elected in 2022 to a four-year term, may be in jeopardy of being removed from office, with voters supporting her recall by nearly a two-to-one margin — the culmination of an expensive recall effort that has focused primarily on Oakland’s crime woes.
William Fitzgerald, a Thao spokesperson, said after first results Tuesday the campaign felt “confident” about the numbers, despite how bleak they looked for the mayor.
Thao also trailed another candidate early in the 2022 election, Fitzgerald noted, though the margin then was much smaller in a 10-candidate race.
The eventual outcome will mark a modern precedent in the politics of the East Bay, where the recalls of both Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price represent a new phenomenon of voters seeking to remove elected leaders before their terms are up.
In Oakland, it reflects a growing toxicity around the clash between leaders who are perceived as being more progressive versus and their outwardly tougher-on-crime opponents.
For Thao in particular, the election may serve as a referendum on her ability to foster and keep relationships in one of California’s most diverse cities, where the office of mayor has often been intertwined with the state’s Democratic power players.
Oakland mayor Sheng Thao enters the room during a press conference at Oakland City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, June 24, 2024. This was the mayor’s first public appearance since her home was raided by the FBI two days ago. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
The recall is expected to help reveal the willingness of mostly liberal Bay Area voters to support such efforts, which Thao and her supporters have described as a mostly right-wing cause.
The signature gathering required to bring Thao’s recall before voters was bankrolled by a single Piedmont resident, Farallon Capital hedge-fund manager Philip Dreyfuss, who poured at least $1.9 million into the Alameda County elections this past year.
The mayoral recall launched in January with an aggressive focus on crime, plus residual backlash to Thao’s electoral victory in 2022, which she secured under a ranked-choice format without having received the most first-place votes in a crowded field of candidates.
Thao aggressively fought to defend her accomplishments, but found it difficult to drown out a chorus of disapproval stemming from her firing of the former Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong and the city’s bleak financial outlook.
A still-unexplained FBI raid on her home in June further eroded trust among voters of the mayor’s ability to lead, while discouraging poll results appeared to diminish her once-formidable financial backing by labor unions.
The atmosphere around the recall grew so worrying in the late stage that rumors began swirling among Democrats in Alameda County that Rep. Barbara Lee, who’s leaving office after 26 years, might consider a run for mayor in the event Thao were removed.
At a virtual news conference earlier Tuesday, Lee declined to address whether she has ruled out a run in the scenario of a successful recall. She has endorsed against both recall efforts in the East Bay.
“I have just been so focused on Nov. 5,” Lee said, adding, “I have been against the recall — it’s costly, it’s chaotic and it is disruptive.”
Oakland, meanwhile, has seen a year of broad decline in crime in nearly every relevant category, despite widespread concerns about public safety among voters.
The city saw no deaths investigated as homicides in the month of October — a particular surprise even amid an extended stretch of reduced violence this year.
The mayor’s critics, who seized on higher crime rates in 2023 to pursue the recall, have suggested that more recent declines are a reflection of voters being too fed up with the city’s notoriously slow 911 response to report actual crimes.
As Election Day was in full swing, Thao continued asking voters for the chance to serve out her term through the next mayoral election in 2026.
“When I took office less than 2 years ago, we had major challenges to address,” she wrote in a social media post Tuesday afternoon. “But the seeds of progress we have planted together are sprouting with positive change.”
“Now,” she added, “is not the time to reverse course.”
Staff writer Jakob Rodgers contributed reporting to this story.
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at [email protected].
