OAKLAND — The city’s highest-ranking official abruptly resigned Friday after newly surfaced text messages revealed he had described women who worked at Oakland City Hall in lustful, suggestive tones, according to records.
Jestin Johnson, the city administrator since June 2023, submitted his resignation to Mayor Barbara Lee after his exchanges with another top city staff member appeared in a vast trove of records made public for the first time last week.
Lee, who had kept Johnson on staff after taking office last year, said Sunday she had learned just before the weekend of “certain degrading and unprofessional communications” involving the administrator, characterizing them as “wholly incompatible with the values of this administration.”
“Under my watch, I will not tolerate transgressions of this nature,” Lee said in a statement.
The city administrator, an unelected position appointed by the mayor, oversees thousands of city workers and has the final say in how policies are implemented, services are carried out and most other officials are hired.
Johnson, a hire of former Mayor Sheng Thao, was a rare top staffer who remained on the job after Lee took office a year ago, having proved himself as a collegial presence at Oakland City Hall amid an era of turmoil.
But the city administrator’s casual demeanor took on a new light in communications released this week that were first reported by The Oaklandside.
City Administrator Jestin Johnson announces the sale of a key infrastructure bond during a press conference at City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
In text messages in 2024 between Johnson and former Assistant City Administrator G. Harold Duffey, the two men use suggestive language while discussing women colleagues.
During one exchange, in March of that year, Duffey tells his boss that a woman official “got the old player mesmerized,” referring to himself. Johnson responds that “you have to sit next to her… I have to force myself to look into her eyes.”
“She had me a little giddy yesterday,” Johnson tells Duffey.
Later, in June 2024, the two describe different women staff members as “kryptonite,” clearly referencing their appeal.
“My goodness, she has a helluva walk,” Johnson writes about an official.
Neither Johnson nor Duffey responded Sunday to requests for comment about the messages or Johnson’s ouster over the weekend.
Duffey, who left the city earlier this year, was hired in April as the city manager in Antioch. Before his departure from Oakland, he gave a key interview to federal agents in the investigation that led to criminal charges against Thao, the ex-mayor.
Johnson’s untimely exit, meanwhile, leaves the city without a top official just months before voters in the November election may decide on a new governance structure that would reduce the city administrator’s day-to-day authority by elevating the mayor’s legislative power.
A native of Atlanta who previously served in a deputy role at the city government there, Johnson had carved out a role as a diplomat in an otherwise contentious Thao administration.
New mayors often replace the city administrator upon taking office, but Johnson remained as a leader expected to guide the city’s leadership transition.
Lee, who replaced Thao last May, kept Johnson in his role and often appeared beside him publicly, including at a news conference last week where both praised the benefits of a tax measure that will go before voters in the June 2 election.