This is an edited transcript of Oaklandside 510. You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n
Oakland voters weighed in on Tuesday on the mayor\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n To talk through what the results so far mean, I\u2019m 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. \u2014 Tasneem Raja, editor-in-chief, The Oaklandside<\/p>\n Eli Wolfe, let\u2019s start with you and the mayor\u2019s race. Barbara Lee has almost 85% of the vote<\/a> 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<\/a> 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, \u201cNo excuses.\u201d<\/p>\n Is it fair to say Lee has delivered on those promises?<\/p>\n Eli Wolfe, Oaklandside City Hall reporter: I don\u2019t know that the mayor has delivered on everything, but I think she\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Now she\u2019s going to have a full term, and she\u2019s going to have to show more for it. There\u2019s 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\u2019re seeing in this trial that\u2019s underway in Oakland, all kinds of things can be happening behind the scenes, and we don\u2019t know what we might see four years from now.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s where you\u2019re going to see a lot of her focus.<\/p>\n According to our read of the city charter, there doesn\u2019t seem to be anything stopping Mayor Lee from running again. Do you think she will?<\/p>\n Eli: I don\u2019t know. I haven\u2019t asked her that. If I did, she\u2019d probably say it\u2019s premature to speculate. She would be going into her mid-80s if she ran again. People who talk about her say she\u2019s a dynamo, so I could see it, but I also think that could pose challenges next round. Who knows?<\/p>\n Switching gears: Natalie Orenstein, one of our other City Hall reporters, let\u2019s talk about Measure EE. This is the charter reform measure that gives Oakland\u2019s mayor a lot more power. It\u2019s at 74% yes, and it looks set to pass.<\/p>\n Under EE, what can a mayor do that they can\u2019t do today?<\/p>\n Natalie Orenstein, Oaklandside City Hall reporter: The mayor will become more of a traditional executive. She\u2019ll be able to veto legislation. That means if she doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s in charge of them.<\/p>\n This won\u2019t happen right away. The legislation says she and the city administrator will meet and hash that out. So we\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n Natalie: It\u2019s 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\u2019s passing by is pretty large.<\/p>\n 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\u2019re seeing a recent former mayor, Sheng Thao, on trial facing corruption charges. So I wasn\u2019t sure exactly how much of Oakland would want to give the chief executive that kind of authority.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s move on to the City Council. District 2\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019re sending the same City Council back into office.<\/p>\n Eli, Natalie, does this seem like a paradox? How do you square those two results?<\/p>\n 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\u2019ve been sitting in the Sheng Thao trial for the last few weeks. I think it\u2019s colored some people\u2019s perception of the mayor and the idea of giving her more power, but most people aren\u2019t watching that trial. They\u2019re just seeing Barbara Lee go out and be perceived as an effective leader. So I think it\u2019s a little separate from the issue with the council.<\/p>\n Natalie: And I think the frustration behind Measure EE was really with the city\u2019s 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, \u201cShould we give the mayor more or less power?\u201d<\/p>\n Eli: One other thing I wanted to mention is that there\u2019s 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\u2019t. I think that\u2019s another way to look at this. As Natalie was saying, there\u2019s dissatisfaction with the abstract government process, not necessarily the people in charge.<\/p>\n Natalie: Voters also didn\u2019t 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\u2019t many people running. So really, voters weren\u2019t asked, \u201cDo you want to change the makeup of this council?\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Eli, I know you talked to an Adams supporter who was looking at the early numbers and said, \u201cWow, that sucks.\u201d Does this result tell us anything about the DSA in Oakland politics, or is one council race too small to read?<\/p>\n Eli: I\u2019m 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n They\u2019re definitely going to run more people in other races, and this gave them a ton of experience in organizing, so I wouldn\u2019t be shocked to see them come back in 2028 to go after other council seats. Maybe they\u2019ll go after the mayor, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n