Who are the Oakland candidates challenging Mayor Barbara Lee?

Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee is running for a full term in this year’s election. Compared to the crowded special election in 2025 to fill out the remainder of Sheng Thao’s term after her recall, Lee faces a much smaller field of candidates this year. None of them have matched her in terms of fundraising, endorsements or governing experience.

But Lee’s opponents are undeterred. All of them have ideas for how to make the city a better place to live, if they can convince voters to give them a chance.

The Oaklandside spoke with Brenda Grisham, Mindy Pechenuk and Julius Robinson to learn what their priorities would be if elected to run the city. The candidates are presented in alphabetical order.

Brenda Grisham, victims rights advocate

Brenda Grisham. Credit: Courtesy of the candidate.

Grisham is probably best known for her work as a victims rights advocate, work she began after her son, Christopher LaVell Jones, was killed in 2010 outside the family’s East Oakland home. Police never solved the killing.

Grisham has worked as an executive officer in the Violence Prevention Coalition, a network of groups that focus on public safety problems in Oakland. She is on the executive board of Family Support Advocates, which has worked with the Oakland Police Department on training for how officers interact with families affected by violence. Grisham has collaborated with participants in Oakland’s Ceasefire program, worked with victims of human trafficking, and has served as a counselor through the organization Love Never Fails.

She is the founder of the nonprofit Christopher LaVell Jones Foundation, and has advocated for gun control legislation in the nation’s capitol for the past 13 years. And she is also a business owner who has run several companies, including a financial services firm, located on International Boulevard.

In 2024, Grisham led the campaign to recall District Attorney Pamela Price, who was accused by Grisham and other detractors of failing crime victims and mismanaging the DA’s office. That campaign succeeded, marking the first recall of a district attorney in Alameda County history. More recently, Grisham has been an advocate for Flock Safety automated license plate readers, urging leaders in Oakland and Alameda County to adopt and maintain these surveillance systems.

Grisham said she has known Barbara Lee for a long time and believes Oakland needs someone with a different style of leadership.

“We’re not running against each other,” Grisham said. “We both have something to offer Oakland, just on a different level.”

Grisham said her leadership style involves being out in the community talking to people. As examples, Grisham said she’s worked extensively with people who are homeless and victims of sex trafficking, which helps her to see what they need: comprehensive care from community-based organizations. Yet in Grisham’s view, some of these organizations are not currently being held accountable, which means vulnerable people sometimes fall through the cracks.

Grisham said if elected she would meet with city staff and discuss how to get Oakland on the right track. This would include making sure community-based organizations have the resources to do their jobs and are getting work done.

“I’m going to implement some things to hold people accountable, because if they’re not doing their job, we need to find somebody who is going to do their job,” Grisham said. “Our fiscal healthiness is at stake here.”

Grisham’s biggest priority is public safety. Grisham said she wants OPD staffed with the full 700 officers mandated by Measure NN, and believes the city needs many more. She thinks the city needs to take a broader approach to public safety, and to rethink some of its strategies.

“I want to work a little bit closer with the city council, who implement the policies because that’s their job,” Grisham said. “I want us to be a team. And I want them to be a team.”

Grisham said she thinks Barbara Lee is doing a great job bringing in philanthropic dollars. As mayor, Grisham said, she would go further, creating a department dedicated to raising money for the city through state and federal grants. She would also make sure departments were using money from tax measures appropriately.

Grisham is opposed to Measure EE, which would change Oakland’s governing system to create a “strong mayor.” She doesn’t believe the mayor should operate like a CEO who decides everything.

As mayor, Grisham said, she would introduce budgets that focus more attention on the infrastructure needs of other parts of Oakland outside of the downtown area. She said she believes that adding bike lanes that take away parking spaces ends up harming businesses.

“I’m really excited about the people here in Oakland, they are just wonderful,” Grisham said. “My campaign is about the people; I’m not running against nobody, I’m running for the people.”

Grisham’s campaign website.

Julius Robinson, former banker

Julius Robinson. Credit: Courtesy of the candidate.

A former banker who first moved to Oakland roughly 40 years ago, Robinson previously led corporate social responsibility for MUFG Union Bank, where he helped ensure that financial services reached low- and moderate-income communities.

He was also chairman of the bank’s foundation, which dispensed tens of millions of dollars to small businesses, first-time homebuyers and others. Robinson said his organization worked extensively with community-based organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic, which helped sustain some businesses in Oakland.

Robinson said he’s jumping into politics because he’s concerned about what he sees as an economic reversal in Oakland’s fortunes in recent years.

“There’s been a strong misstep in terms of economic development and promoting businesses to come to Oakland,” Robinson said. “We’ve really kind of lost our mojo in that regard.”

As an example, Robinson said city leaders have failed to properly manage some of Oakland’s critical real estate assets, such as Jack London Square and the Coliseum. If Oakland were a corporation, Robinson said, there would be a “shareholders’ revolt” among residents.

Permitting in the city still takes too long, Robinson said. The more the city can shorten the time it takes to approve permits for new developments, the faster Oakland can build projects that will bring more money into the city’s coffers, he said.

“We should be staffing to the max in those areas,” Robinson said. “Give the people there the materials they need in order to make the engineering decisions that advance these projects and developments in the city.”

Robinson said he is eager to use his experience in the financial realm to attract economic investments to Oakland. He would also serve as an “ambassador to business” and talk with private equity firms and investors about opportunities in the city. Robinson said he would also meet with companies and encourage them to relocate to Oakland.

“I would be calling on my former partners to think more critically about how those resources could be directly applied to stimulate affordable housing and capital back into Oakland to support its economic growth,” Robinson said.

Robins has drafted a 100-day fiscal accountability plan to implement if he’s elected. This would include publishing a transparent baseline about the city’s finances, including revenue and expenses, the structural deficit, overtime spending, vacancies, major contracts and long-term pension obligations. As part of the plan, departments would publish performance measures and priorities, and assign officials to be held accountable for meeting results. And Robinson said he would launch a public accountability dashboard that would let residents track progress toward these goals.

The bedrock of Robinson’s plan is improving public safety. He agrees that OPD needs at least 700 officers to meet the Measure NN requirements. Acknowledging that the department is shedding officers faster than it can replace them, Robinson said he would work with Oakland’s police union and leadership in the department to find ways to make the best use of the available police. One idea he has is to hire civilians to handle more of the desk work, so sworn officers can spend more time on the street.

Robinson said he would pour more money into OPD, but hastened to add he’s not looking to create a police state. “It’s giving the police the right amount of resources and technology to do their jobs more effectively,” he said.

Homelessness, on the other hand, shouldn’t be solved by more spending, Robinson argued. Instead, he believes Oakland should look at how other cities have successfully reduced their homeless populations and adopt their cost-effective solutions.

He’s critical of how the city has approached illegal dumping, noting that the use of drones to spot trash piles “seems like closing the barn door after the horse is out.” Robinson would focus more energy on collecting on fines issued to illegal dumpers, as well as other unpaid taxes and fines.

When it comes to governing, he said he’d work collaboratively with the city council, whether or not the “strong mayor” ballot measure passes.

“I think the power is in how you use your authority, how you’re able to influence and incentivize people to do the right things,” Robinson said.

Robinson has pitched himself to voters as a dramatic change from the status quo, and he emphasized during his interview with The Oaklandside that the hallmarks of his administration will be transparency and accountability.

“You will not have to ask the question, ‘Where does the money go? Why are we doing this?’” Robinson said.

Robinson’s campaign website.

Mindy Pechenuk, an educator and GOP activist

Mindy Pechenuk. Credit: Courtesy of the candidate.

Pechenuk is a Republican activist and educator and a self-described student of the “American System of economics,” a school of thought emphasizing more centralized control of the economy developed in the 18th-century United States. She ran unsuccessfully for mayor last year and for the at-large city council seat in 2024.

Pechenuk said she’s running for mayor again because she wants to restore Oakland as a great and beautiful city, a status she believes was lost due to decades of failed leadership.

“I can’t sit by and let Oakland be destroyed,” Pechenuk said.

To accomplish that goal, Pechenuk said, she would cut red tape so people can obtain permits for various kinds of development projects within 30 days.

She wants to entice manufacturers to come to the city. She says this will open the door to creating apprenticeship programs for youth and the unemployed. Pechenuk is excited by Tesla’s robotaxi project in West Oakland; the Prometheus Project’s lease of warehouse space, also in West Oakland; and a proposed data center downtown, saying these developments promise to bring economic fortune to Oakland. Campaign videos she’s created using AI show a gleaming Oakland of the future with hi-tech factories and labs.

“We need to rebuild almost all of Oakland; we need to rebuild East Oakland, West Oakland,” Pechenuk said. “I was in Chinatown, and, oh my God, it’s just turned into hell.”

She also wants to “cut out a lot of this environmental nonsense” that she claims hinders development. Pechenuk supports construction of the coal terminal that’s been proposed in West Oakland; it’s been opposed by city leaders and community and environmental groups for over a decade. In July, she issued a press release saying the coal terminal would “ship up to 12 million tons of coal annually and other dry goods, supercharge Port activity, create construction and long-term jobs, and generate critical revenue for a city drowning in a $265 million deficit.”

As in her previous campaigns, Pechenuk has vowed to eliminate “drug cartels” and said she would enlist the help of the federal government to do this work. She wants OPD to increase the number of officers to 800. To give police more leeway, she said the civilian-led Police Commission, an independent oversight body, needs to be restructured.

She said she wants to revamp the city’s approach to homelessness by focusing on treatment for drug addiction and mental illness first and foremost. To pay for treatment programs and an expanded war against drugs, Pechenuk said she would hire an outside auditor to make sure Oakland is spending its dollars appropriately.

Pechenuk dismisses the philanthropic money that Lee has raised, saying that it doesn’t scratch the surface of Oakland’s problems.

“We don’t need money for little projects — we need money to rebuild the city from the top down,” Pechenuk said.

Pechenuk said she is not a fan of Lee’s proposed “strong mayor” system, and she is urging residents to vote against Measure EE.

Even though she is a Republican who embraces Donald Trump, Pechenuk said she doesn’t believe it would be difficult to forge relationships with political leaders in a strongly Democratic city, arguing that she can sit down with anybody.

“The question is, what are you going to do to develop Oakland in the American way, back to the 21st century, where every Oaklander has a good standard of living, their children are well-educated, the city is thriving and building again, and we become a great beacon on the hill?” Pechenuk said. “If you’re willing to have that conversation, and not a war of ideologies, I can work with anybody on the council.”

Pechenuk’s campaign website.

Correction: the American System has its origins in the economic program advocated for by Alexander Hamilton in the 1700s.

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