Barbara Lee, who is completing the term of recalled mayor Sheng Thao, is running for reelection against three opponents \u2014 six fewer than in 2025. Unlike last year, none of Lee\u2019s challengers have raised the kind of money past winning candidates have to fund their campaigns, nor do they sport many endorsements from powerful unions, business groups, or influential public figures who can help turn out the vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
District 2 Councilmember Charlene Wang is facing a competitor<\/a>, Nate Adams, who has raised tens of thousands of dollars and has endorsements from some East Bay elected officials and organizations, including unions<\/a>. But Wang still has significantly more money than Adams, and she has endorsements from far more political organizations and people.\u00a0<\/p>\n In total, nine people are running for a council seat or mayor this year. The last time these same seats were up for election, in 2022, there were 18 candidates. In the most recent general election, in 2024, there were a whopping 26 people seeking office in these races.<\/p>\n Many of the challenges in Oakland that drew waves of candidates in recent years are all still around. There is widespread frustration with crime, illegal dumping, homelessness, and lack of affordable housing. And as in past elections, many residents \u2014 fairly and unfairly \u2014 blame their elected leaders for their woes.\u00a0<\/p>\n So why aren\u2019t more people running?\u00a0<\/p>\n Money may be a barrier <\/p>\n Pecolia Manigo, executive director of Oakland Rising Action<\/a>, a progressive advocacy group, has spoken with a lot of people who were exploring running this year. According to Manigo, there were a couple of consistent reasons they shared for not joining the ticket, and money was the big one.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are feeling very defeated about the amount of money involved in Oakland politics,\u201d Manigo said. \u201cPeople are concerned about going into debt, they\u2019re concerned about losing, and what that would do financially for them.\u201d<\/p>\n All of the Oakland incumbents have stacked war chests. As of the end of September, Jenkins had over $123,000<\/a> in his campaign committee account; Ramachandran, who is running unopposed, had over $114,000<\/a>. Wang had over $76,000<\/a> as of mid-September.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wang is the only candidate with a well-financed challenger, and she has been spending more heavily on campaigning. Since January, Wang has raised nearly $124,000. Lee, who has three opponents, has more than $163,000<\/a> at her disposal.\u00a0<\/p>\n These sums aren\u2019t out of line with recent elections, but they are still daunting for potential challengers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last year, the council voted to temporarily increase<\/a> how much individuals and organizations can give to candidates. They did this because they had decided to pause the Democracy Dollars<\/a> program, which would have given qualifying residents vouchers to make campaign contributions to candidates of their choosing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Approved by voters in 2022, Democracy Dollars was billed as a way to help level the playing field of Oakland politics, where, historically, residents in wealthier neighborhoods have had lopsided influence<\/a> in elections. But in 2023, Oakland plunged into a budget crisis, and the city council decided it could not afford to pay<\/a> for Democracy Dollars and postponed the rollout of the initiative.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Oakland candidates can still avail themselves of Oakland\u2019s Limited Public Financing program<\/a>, which provides small sums of cash to candidates. But it\u2019s easy to run through the money: as an example, Manigo \u2013 who ran<\/a> for the OUSD board in 2022 \u2013 said it can cost $15,000 to buy mailers for one council district.<\/p>\n Warren Logan, who ran for City Council<\/a> in 2024, said councilmember salaries can also be discouraging, especially for younger people who might have student loan debt or lower savings. Councilmembers make about $114,000<\/a>; when Logan ran, it was a bit lower.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you are a talented young person looking to make an impact in your community and make the rent, running for office is probably one of the last things they should consider,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Progressives say would-be candidates may be too demoralized to run<\/p>\n Oakland\u2019s budget crisis and federal cuts<\/a> have meant that city leaders have fewer resources to work with.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pamela Drake, a longtime progressive politico in Oakland, is of the view that the busy Oakland ballots of the past were more surprising than the slimmer candidate list this year; and that a sparser election is to be expected in a small and challenged city.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s interesting that we\u2019ve had so many people run in local politics,\u201d said Drake, who\u2019s active in the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club<\/a>. \u201cYou can accomplish so little of what you set out to do, and now we have less money than we ever had to do it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Running for office might feel like a worthless task when many good ideas end up dying during budget negotiations, she said.<\/p>\n The council and the mayor both want more police, she noted as an example. But they put millions into training academies and still end up with far fewer cops than their stated goal.<\/p>\n Manigo said some would-be candidates are also discouraged by the current composition of the council, which has lost its progressive bloc.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere are some real concerns that folks who want to run for council have about what agenda is driving the council,\u201d Manigo said.\u00a0<\/p>\n As an example, she pointed to the council\u2019s 7-1 vote to approve a contract<\/a> with the controversial surveillance company Flock Safety, despite scores of residents who showed up urging them to not do it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Seth Olyer, head of Oakland\u2019s firefighter union, also said a general lack of trust in government has led to a lot of people sitting out this election.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve heard some folks who would be potential candidates, or talked about it in the past, that it feels like the luster is kind of gone right now,\u201d Olyer told The Oaklandside. \u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s national politics rubbing off on the local level, I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s vibes \u2014 I\u2019m not quite sure.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Oakland\u2019s unions usually play a major role<\/a> in city elections, both in terms of fundraising for and endorsing candidates for office. Earlier this year, unions spent heavily to support the failed parcel tax, Measure E. While endorsements have begun trickling in, labor groups have been less noticeable in campaigns this cycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n Olyer said his union, Local 55, hasn\u2019t actively tried to recruit anyone to run this year. This is partly because the firefighters are generally satisfied with the support they\u2019ve received from the incumbents. But it\u2019s also a bandwidth issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve just been so focused on trying to make improvements in the fire department with regard to staffing and contract negotiations and everything else,\u201d Olyer said. \u201cThere just hasn\u2019t been time to get out there and plant the seeds and grow a candidate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Olyer said he told the candidates that Local 55 isn\u2019t endorsing anyone until there\u2019s some movement on the union\u2019s contract, which expired in July. But Olyer said he\u2019s impressed with Lee, whom he likened to an \u201cEnergizer Bunny.\u201d According to Olyer, Jenkins has been very supportive of the fire department, as has Ramachandran. Olyer said he didn\u2019t have anything to share about Wang.\u00a0<\/p>\n As for the mayor, Drake thinks Lee has effectively convinced the city\u2019s opposing political factions that she\u2019s on their side. While she\u2019s associated with progressive causes, the mayor is actually \u201crunning from the center,\u201d Drake suggested. Indeed, Lee took care to place both a labor leader and a business leader at the helm of her transition team<\/a> last spring, promoting a message of \u201cunity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo why would you try to run someone from either angle?\u201d Drake said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Groups that supported the recalls say the incumbents are all right<\/p>\n The advocacy groups Empower Oakland<\/a> and Revitalize East Bay<\/a> spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past two elections in Oakland, focusing on recalling former District Attorney Pamela Price and former Mayor Sheng Thao, and supporting candidates for council, school board and mayor. This cycle, Empower is mainly focusing on the school board races. The group has endorsed<\/a> all of the incumbents running for city council and mayor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Isaac Abid, a real estate developer who is involved in both groups, didn\u2019t have much to say about the candidates running for council, aside from noting that Jenkins and Ramachandran don\u2019t govern \u201cfrom an ideological slant,\u201d which he sees as an important feature of their performance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n He told The Oaklandside that Lee has been a very competent leader \u201cat a time when the city is coming out of a lot of incompetence,\u201d which may account for her low number of opponents.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lee has also made a point of working with the business community. She participated in a ribbon-cutting for a business development district that Abid and his wife Puja Abid launched last year in the Uptown neighborhood; and her office supports<\/a> a downtown development corporation<\/a> Puja Abid created to drive investments in the struggling downtown. Abid\u2019s company, Lakeside Group, owns multiple properties in the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n Abid also said that the mayor asked Revitalize to participate in the discussions about charter reform; his organization and Empower both support Lee\u2019s proposed \u201cstrong mayor\u201d system, on the ballot as Measure EE<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n These groups don\u2019t align with Lee on some important issues, though. Notably, Empower opposed the Measure E parcel tax (not to be confused with Measure EE), which Lee was counting on to raise money for various city services. And Abid gave money to a committee that fought the initiative.\u00a0<\/p>\n Logan, who serves on Empower\u2019s endorsement committee and the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee, said he\u2019s generally pleased with the performance of the three council incumbents up for reelection this year and hears similarly from their constituents.\u00a0<\/p>\n That the incumbents have a lot of fans is one straightforward explanation for why they didn\u2019t attract many challengers. Josh Chase, who owns the cannabis business Oakanna, is one of them. Chase endorsed Ramachandran when she ran for the district in 2022. In a recent interview, Chase told The Oaklandside he hasn\u2019t followed Ramachandran\u2019s legislation, but he\u2019s impressed by how she communicates with residents in her district and promotes local businesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI see a lot of her social media content,\u201d Chase said. \u201cI feel like she cares, and that\u2019s the most important thing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In Logan\u2019s view, Oakland is in a political \u201cholding pattern,\u201d with strategists and voters waiting to see what the mayor and the largely aligned council will do before shaking things up again. If voters approve Measure EE, adjusting the city charter to make the mayor more powerful, Lee will have a chance to carry out her agenda with more force than she\u2019s been afforded during this first, shortened term.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEffectively, we\u2019re all hoping this rockstar of a woman can fix some of the most intractable issues that other mayors and other city councilmembers have not been able to address,\u201d Logan said. \u201cI wonder how much that has caused outside money, or even inside money, to say, \u2018Well, let\u2019s give her a chance to figure this all out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n If Measure EE, on charter reform, passes, Logan, who works in public affairs and lobbying, hopes more types of people will feel moved and able to run for council.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt that I had to weigh my ability both to run the city and also be good at policy,\u201d Logan said about his 2024 campaign. \u201cWhat the strong-mayor position is saying is: council isn\u2019t running the city; the mayor is. Your job, dear council, is to provide guardrails and oversight and policy.\u201d<\/p>\n The measure would set a new process for determining councilmembers\u2019 salaries, likely raising them. This, Logan said, could also encourage more candidates.<\/p>\n Drake opposes Measure EE, saying that concentrating power in the mayor\u2019s office is \u201ca move toward authoritarianism.\u201d<\/p>\n Across the ballot, she thinks Oakland is setting its sights too short by not preparing people to run in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the sad part \u2014 we don\u2019t have a bench,\u201d Drake said. \u201cHow many years can we go out looking for a celebrity elder person retiring from public office to come and run for mayor? From Elihu [Harris] to Jerry [Brown] to Ron [Dellums] to Barbara [Lee].\u201d<\/p>\n School board races are the exception <\/p>\n While the city\u2019s election is relatively quiet this year, the school district\u2019s is more dramatic: Each of the incumbents in districts 2, 4, and 6 is running again and has drawn challengers.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the District 2 race<\/a>, the incumbent and current school board president Jennifer Brouhard faces Arielle Fleisher. In District 4<\/a>, two candidates, Kathryn Camp and Sylvia Williams, are challenging Director Mike Hutchinson. And in District 6, Alexandra Williams and LeAna Powell have lined up to face incumbent and board vice-president Valarie Bachelor.<\/p>\n![\"Campaign](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Campaign-ads-2024.jpg\")
Getting your message across in an election costs money. Credit: Natalie Orenstein\/The Oaklandside<\/p>\n![\"nate](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/nate-adams-canvassing-2.jpg\")
The Democratic Socialists of America are running a candidate, Nate Adams, and campaigning for him in D2. But other progressive groups are less visible in this election than usual.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/4-images.jpg\")
Incumbents (clockwise from left) Charlene Wang, Janani Ramachandran, Kevin Jenkins, and Barbara Lee all secured endorsements from Empower Oakland this year. Credit: Roselyn Romero, Florence Middleton, Dorean Raye, Jungho Kim<\/p>\n![\"OUSDLayoffPlan-JK-10\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/OUSDLayoffPlan-JK-10.jpg\")
Money and endorsements are flowing into school board races at a quicker clip than the City Hall campaigns. Credit: Jungho Kim for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n