This is an edited transcript of Oaklandside 510. You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts.
Oakland voters weighed in on Tuesday on the mayor’s race, three City Council seats, three school board seats, local ballot measures and a regional transit tax. The count is not done. Everything in this conversation reflects results as of Wednesday morning, Nov. 4. The county has said it will keep posting results on Friday and next Monday, and outcomes may not be known for a week or more. Follow our latest election coverage and results.
To talk through what the results so far mean, I’m joined by four of our reporters. Eli Wolfe and Natalie Orenstein cover City Hall. Jose Fermoso covers roads and transit. Ashley McBride covers schools. They covered Election Day from polling places to watch parties, and for months they have been covering the issues and the people Oakland just voted on. — Tasneem Raja, editor-in-chief, The Oaklandside
Eli Wolfe, let’s start with you and the mayor’s race. Barbara Lee has almost 85% of the vote in a four-way race, and she raised about 16 times what her nearest challenger raised. You reported from a victory party at Hella Bees on Tuesday night, where Mayor Lee told supporters that voters had told her what they want: cleaner streets, affordable housing and a city hall that works for them. She said, “No excuses.”
Is it fair to say Lee has delivered on those promises?
Eli Wolfe, Oaklandside City Hall reporter: I don’t know that the mayor has delivered on everything, but I think she’s delivered on many of the main points she promised voters she would deal with in this truncated term, which started last year. Crime is way down in Oakland. That trend started before she was elected, and it has continued. She’s leveraged millions of dollars from philanthropic organizations to pay for services like illegal dumping. The budgets have stabilized in Oakland. We also had a bunch of really massive cultural events in the city over the past year and a half, and I think a lot of people credit Lee with that.
I hear people say again and again that Barbara Lee is the adult in the room. People really trust her, and I think the results speak to that.
Looking ahead over the next four years, what do you see her focusing on? And do you think her job just got easier or harder?
Eli: I think in some ways her job is going to get harder. She only had to serve a year and a half initially. In one sense, that was harder, because she had less of a runway to prove she was up to the job. It also meant that if she could squeeze in a few accomplishments, she had a lot of bragging points.
Now she’s going to have a full term, and she’s going to have to show more for it. There’s also more that can go wrong. She escaped the last year and a half with relatively few scandals. Her administration looks really stable right now, but as we’re seeing in this trial that’s underway in Oakland, all kinds of things can be happening behind the scenes, and we don’t know what we might see four years from now.
I also think her main focus will be continuing to show improvement in the bread-and-butter parts of government: continuing to reduce crime, continuing to make progress on illegal dumping, and continuing to try to leverage dollars for things like affordable housing and some of the nice-to-haves, like public safety ambassadors. That’s where you’re going to see a lot of her focus.
According to our read of the city charter, there doesn’t seem to be anything stopping Mayor Lee from running again. Do you think she will?
Eli: I don’t know. I haven’t asked her that. If I did, she’d probably say it’s premature to speculate. She would be going into her mid-80s if she ran again. People who talk about her say she’s a dynamo, so I could see it, but I also think that could pose challenges next round. Who knows?
Switching gears: Natalie Orenstein, one of our other City Hall reporters, let’s talk about Measure EE. This is the charter reform measure that gives Oakland’s mayor a lot more power. It’s at 74% yes, and it looks set to pass.
Under EE, what can a mayor do that they can’t do today?
Natalie Orenstein, Oaklandside City Hall reporter: The mayor will become more of a traditional executive. She’ll be able to veto legislation. That means if she doesn’t like the budget the City Council passes, she can strike all of it or even just pieces of it. She can do the same for any other policy decisions the council makes. That said, the council can override a veto with a two-thirds vote. The mayor will also be able to take control of more city departments, hiring or firing who’s in charge of them.
This won’t happen right away. The legislation says she and the city administrator will meet and hash that out. So we’ll see whether things really change day to day, but she has a couple more tools in her back pocket if she wants to use them.
The yes side had raised over $400,000 by mid-October, and the money came from a wide range of supporters, including the nurses union, Sutter Health, a real estate and tech PAC, and Empower Oakland. There was no formal campaign against it. What, if anything, surprised you about the support for this measure and how well it did?
Natalie: It’s both surprising and unsurprising. The wide range of support shows the broad coalition Barbara Lee has built, and the mandate she has to wield a bit more power in the city. The margin it’s passing by is pretty large.
I thought we might see a few more voters with cold feet, particularly because this measure gives the mayor of Oakland, both the current mayor and all the mayors to come, a lot more authority. And this is a moment when we’re seeing a recent former mayor, Sheng Thao, on trial facing corruption charges. So I wasn’t sure exactly how much of Oakland would want to give the chief executive that kind of authority.
Let’s move on to the City Council. District 2’s Charlene Wang had about 70% of the vote in the first batch, and she appeared to declare victory from the stage. Janani Ramachandran in District 4 ran unopposed, and Kevin Jenkins in District 6 had over 80% of the vote. If the trend holds, not one City Council seat changes hands. That’s interesting, because Measure EE came out of widespread frustration with the effectiveness of our city government, and voters look set to approve it. At the same time, they’re sending the same City Council back into office.
Eli, Natalie, does this seem like a paradox? How do you square those two results?
Eli: In my opinion, the success of Measure EE is largely tied to Barbara Lee. She is enormously popular in the city. I think people trust her in the executive office. I’ve been sitting in the Sheng Thao trial for the last few weeks. I think it’s colored some people’s perception of the mayor and the idea of giving her more power, but most people aren’t watching that trial. They’re just seeing Barbara Lee go out and be perceived as an effective leader. So I think it’s a little separate from the issue with the council.
Natalie: And I think the frustration behind Measure EE was really with the city’s systems and processes overall. Voters clearly wanted something to change. They wanted someone in charge who could respond to their concerns, and the question in front of them happened to be, “Should we give the mayor more or less power?”
Eli: One other thing I wanted to mention is that there’s not a lot of data, like polling, about the popularity of the council members. One poll that did come out from the Chamber of Commerce showed that individual council members are relatively popular in their districts. The council as a body isn’t. I think that’s another way to look at this. As Natalie was saying, there’s dissatisfaction with the abstract government process, not necessarily the people in charge.
Natalie: Voters also didn’t have a whole lot of people to choose from on their ballot this year. We did some reporting that readers can look up about several reasons why there weren’t many people running. So really, voters weren’t asked, “Do you want to change the makeup of this council?”
One interesting race with a challenger was District 2, where Nate Adams was backed by the Democratic Socialists. The DSA had a big night nationally, with five DSA members elected to the House, but in Oakland, Adams is trailing.
Eli, I know you talked to an Adams supporter who was looking at the early numbers and said, “Wow, that sucks.” Does this result tell us anything about the DSA in Oakland politics, or is one council race too small to read?
Eli: I’m leaning toward the latter. I think this race is a very specific instance of DSA organizing. Something I heard from speaking to a member last night was that they weren’t entirely surprised by the way the initial results were rolling out. They also saw this as part of a broader project to jumpstart the DSA as a political organizing body.
They’re definitely going to run more people in other races, and this gave them a ton of experience in organizing, so I wouldn’t be shocked to see them come back in 2028 to go after other council seats. Maybe they’ll go after the mayor, I don’t know.
Switching gears again, Jose Fermoso, you cover roads and transit for The Oaklandside. The regional transit measure, known as RTM, had more than 60% yes across five counties as of Wednesday morning. It only needed just over 50. I think that’s particularly interesting because back in June, Measure E, the public safety parcel tax, and Measure C, a tax holiday for small businesses, both lost, as did San Francisco’s so-called overpaid CEO tax. Yet this sales tax is ahead.
What do you think made this one different, according to the people you’ve been talking to in your reporting?
Jose Fermoso, Oaklandside roads and transit reporter: A lot of people were looking at the SMART vote in Marin, and that one passed earlier this summer. They were saying transportation is different; transportation will get money. That was one thing, and it seemed to be right.
The other thing is that I think people really started to think about what it would be like to lose public transit service and how it would affect everyone, including people driving cars. Everyone hates traffic. I hate it.
For example, I spoke to a volunteer at the party yesterday named Walter, who knocked on doors to convince people to vote for it. He told me that in places like Walnut Creek, where many people initially opposed it, he was able to change minds. And in other places, like Livermore, people realized they couldn’t afford to lose bus lines and have BART stations close. A lot of people there drive to San Francisco every day and already face insane traffic times. So just imagine how much worse it would be if public transit got shut down over the next few years.
The transit agencies were saying, “Look, without this measure, BART could close 10 stations, and AC Transit could cut up to 16% of bus service.” With this win, what do you think riders are actually going to see, and when? Where does the $14 billion over 14 years go?
Jose: We have to understand that’s $14 billion for a lot of different transit agencies. For AC Transit and BART, it’s going to be about a billion, and most of that will go to BART. About a fifth will go to AC Transit. When it comes to the actual money, it really is filling in service. AC Transit specifically has a $200 million deficit from the pandemic, so it will fill that in.
What will that mean? It might mean hiring more bus drivers. Over the last month, we’ve heard from a lot of readers, and we reported on really poor reliability from AC Transit. We’re getting a lot of buses that are being canceled five minutes before they’re supposed to arrive. People are waiting an hour for their bus. It’s really kind of a disaster. In the AC Transit analysis of why that was happening, it was because sometimes the bus drivers were sick. There weren’t enough available to operate those buses. So I think it will go into hiring and reliability. The other thing, once that gets patched up, is expansion of service, which could be beneficial.
Somebody yesterday was telling me that, and I kind of forgot because I haven’t been to the city on a Sunday morning, but BART’s earliest train on a Sunday is at 8 a.m. That is not that early if you really want to have a full day in the city. In the past, you could take a train at 6:30 in the morning from MacArthur or Rockridge and have a full day in the city. Those two hours could make a difference. A lot of people also work in San Francisco really early in the morning, so having that option could be really great with this money.
In your reporting, one of the things that was interesting to me was that advocates told you Oakland voters were “surprisingly receptive,” and that transit-first voters are a growing constituency, an emerging bloc. There are also indications that they’re already lining up to work with the state on more funding for transit, potentially for high-speed rail. Do you see this as the start of a voting bloc? And if so, what do you think is their next big fight?
Jose: People at the party told me yesterday that they’re going to work with the state and the next administration, about to be run by Governor-elect Xavier Becerra, to get direct funding from California for lots of different projects, including new lines, potentially for AC Transit and BART.
High-speed rail is another huge issue several people brought up. I was a little surprised by that. We’ve already invested in it as a state for about 20 years, and the project lost millions of dollars just last year from the Trump administration, which rescinded federal money. So transit advocates want high-speed rail to be completed, and now the purse of the United States government is in the hands of Democrats, so they might get it. That’ll be interesting to see.
In terms of the constituency, I think if you’re a politician anywhere in the state, maybe even anywhere in the country, that should be a giant light that people pay attention to. I’ve seen this grow just this decade as I’ve been a reporter here. It’s a constituency that seeks to improve not just service for transit, obviously, but also a whole system that makes it safer and cheaper to get around. That means fixing potholes, adding speed bumps to slow down drivers, and other stuff. Advocates have become very good at protesting when collisions that lead to serious injuries and deaths happen in Oakland and in other cities.
I ride the bus regularly, and I’ve really appreciated your reporting on RTM, Jose.
Turning to Ashley McBride, our schools reporter, let’s talk about the school board. We had school board races this year in Districts 2, 4, and 6, and challengers are currently leading in all three, with ballots still to count. New results are due Friday. Three of those challengers are current OUSD parents who want the district to move in a different direction on finances and academics.
What have they been saying they will do differently?
Ashley McBride, Oaklandside schools reporter: Several of the candidates feel the board isn’t taking seriously enough the budget burdens facing the district. They want a more detailed vision for the district’s spending decisions that are tied to academic outcomes.
So instead of continuing to fund the same programs year after year, or making sweeping cuts year after year just to meet a target, they want the board to discuss which programs are moving the needle, prioritize those, and maybe get rid of the ones that aren’t.
If these results hold, and they may or may not, because there are probably thousands more votes to count, it would definitely signal that voters wanted a real change in the leadership of the district.
Getting into more specifics, I know from your reporting, Ashley, that candidates have been talking a lot about literacy and math in the early grades and having a baseline of staffing and resources at every school. They’ve been talking about competitive teacher salaries and what to do with the district’s many vacant facilities.
You have covered several Oakland elections over the last six years. Are these issues that you tend to hear about over and over with each election cycle, or were you hearing new things come up this year?
Ashley: I think these issues come up each election year. One thing that was different this year was the level of attention on the school board races. I hear more from parents and others on a regular basis, sending me emails, who are paying close attention to the board’s decisions and their implications, and they’re in touch with me with a frequency I haven’t seen in the past.
I also think the lack of competitiveness in the City Hall races with the mayor and council has maybe created a vacuum where political organizations and individuals who hadn’t paid much attention to the school board in the past got involved this year.
Were you surprised to see so many parents running this year? I know from your reporting that that has been unusual.
Ashley: There have been parents who have run in the past, but this year they have been very competitive. I do think a lot more parents are paying close attention to what’s going on with the school board this year.
Regardless of who’s elected, what are the first issues the next board is going to have to take on?
Ashley: The next board will have to pass a budget, and I’ll be paying close attention to how they depart from the strategies the current board has advanced, or whether they start by establishing a vision that many candidates say OUSD lacks.
They’ll have to search for and select a permanent superintendent, a process the current board hasn’t started yet.
The school district is also currently in negotiations with its administrators’ union. That includes principals and assistant principals. I published a piece earlier this week showing that salaries for those jobs are lower in Oakland than almost anywhere else in the East Bay. The board doesn’t do the negotiating, but they do have to approve the eventual contract, so they’ll also have to figure out how to afford those raises. There will be a lot on their plates in the next year.
Tell us more about this new slate this year. Are they all, for example, backed by the teachers union?
Ashley: The Oakland Education Association, the teachers union, has been pretty consistent in the last few elections. They fundraise and support different slates of candidates that tend to support OEA’s priorities, which are things like higher salaries for teachers, no school closures, and shrinking administration at the central office.
OEA endorsed Jennifer Brouhard in District 2, Sylvia Pfeiffer Williams in District 4, and Valarie Bachelor in District 6. Then Empower Oakland, an existing political organization that got very involved in the school board races this year where it hasn’t in the past, endorsed essentially all of the other candidates OEA did not endorse: Arielle Fleisher in District 2, Mike Hutchinson and Kathryn Camp in District 4, and Alexandra Williams and LeAna Powell in District 6.
Alongside Empower Oakland, there was a new PAC that popped up called Oakland Parents for a Quality Education. They have also endorsed the same slate Empower Oakland did, and as it stands, it looks like the Empower Oakland candidates are winning. But there are a lot more ballots to be counted. I was looking today at the 2022 races, and if the numbers are the same, there might be about 40% of the ballots left to count in the school board races.
Thank you, everybody. This is my last question, rapid-fire style. Natalie, Eli, Jose, Ashley, feel free to take on any or all of it.
What surprised you most this week? What did not surprise you at all? And what are you looking ahead to next? What do you know you’re going to report on next?
Natalie: What surprised me most was more on the national level than locally. My colleagues and I have covered a lot of elections at this point, and often the atmosphere at these watch parties is one of trepidation, or eyes glued to very different results coming in in the background as we’re covering local races. So it was a pretty different scene last night.
What did not surprise me, and I’ll be a little glib here: in District 4, Councilmember Janani Ramachandran ran completely unopposed. So I can’t say I was particularly shocked that she won her race.
City Hall reporter Eli Wolfe, what about you?
Eli: I was definitely most surprised by the spread of Measure EE. I thought it would probably pass, but not be a blowout. I was not surprised that Lateefah Simon’s election party was lit. It was insane in there. When they started playing “Blow the Whistle,” the entire room went insane.
And something I’m eyeing next is just who is going to be setting up for the next run in 2028. What I’ll honestly be looking at, although it’s far out, is who’s holding themselves out as a potential next candidate for mayor.
Okay, Jose, you cover roads and transit. What surprised you most this week? What didn’t surprise you? What are you looking ahead to?
Jose: I tend to be a little bit cynical about politics, so I was surprised by the enormous voting numbers that came out nationally for the Democrats. I’m not sure I was necessarily surprised by anything in the local races. The one milestone I’m eyeing next will probably come from the Oakland Department of Transportation, given the Democratic wins across the country.
OakDOT usually gets between $60 million and $80 million a year from grants, and in the last couple of years, I think they have not gotten as many grants because of the Trump administration. So I’m super interested in hearing what they have planned for the next two years in terms of grants. They could actually get a lot more money from the feds to build better roads in Oakland.
Okay, Ashley, let’s close out with you.
Ashley: As far as surprises, I didn’t really have predictions for the school board, but I am surprised to see all of the incumbents potentially losing their races. I’m not surprised at how close the races are. Something I’ll be paying attention to is the next school board meeting. It’s next Thursday, so we’ll probably have a good sense of who will be keeping their seats and who will be replaced, and I’m sure it will be tense.
Thank you so much to Ashley McBride, Jose Fermoso, Natalie Orenstein, and Eli Wolfe for joining us today, and for all of their reporting this week, these past few months, and this whole year, in helping everybody in Oakland vote confidently.
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