There are strict rules about how much money candidates for City Council, mayor, and other elected offices can raise and spend during a campaign. However, the rules are looser for political action committees, some of which are set up to support ballot measures, while others are created to influence voters’ decisions around both candidates and measures. These committees can raise and spend virtually unlimited sums of money, so long as they aren’t controlled by a candidate or coordinating with a candidate’s official campaign. Here’s an early look at the PACs gearing up for Oakland’s Nov. 5 Election, and the people and organizations behind them.
Oaklanders Together – For A Safer Oakland
Ten years ago, Oakland voters passed Measure Z, a parcel and parking tax that raised millions every year to help the city pay for violence prevention services. The Oakland Police Department gets about 60% of the revenue to boost its staffing, with the remainder going toward community-based violence prevention programs and the fire department. Measure Z was authorized for a decade, meaning it expires in 2025. There’s lots to be said about Measure Z and we’ll delve into it before November.
The Oaklanders Together PAC was created in February by Selena Wilson, the executive director of the East Oakland Youth Development Center, and it’s backed by city unions, the chamber of commerce, Oakland firefighters, violence prevention nonprofits that contract with the city, and other groups. The PAC is expected to lead the campaign seeking a renewal of Measure Z. So far, this committee has raised $638,000.
Oaklanders Together spent $129,000 from January to March, mostly on a company that helped them gather petition signatures to try to place the Oakland Community Violence and Emergency Response Act of 2024 on the November ballot. Most of this money was contributed by Youth Alive!, one of the violence prevention nonprofits that has been funded partly with Measure Z revenue, and the Golden State Leadership PAC, a statewide political committee that raises and spends money to “support diversity, civil rights, and equal opportunity,” according to its recent filings with the Secretary of State.
From April to June, Oaklanders Together raised lots more money in their final push to gather petition signatures. Major contributors included the health insurance company Blue Shield of California ($100,000), Clorox’s employees PAC ($100,000), Kaiser Permanente ($100,000), SEIU Local 1021 ($100,000), PG&E ($50,000), the developer Holland Residential ($30,000), and the violence prevention nonprofits Youth Employment Partnership ($20,000), Urban Peace Movement ($15,000), Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth ($10,000), and several other groups and individuals.
Service Employees International Union Local 1021 Issues PAC
The Local 1021 union represents the largest group of city employees, as well as public sector workers across the Bay Area. They’ve long been a force in Oakland politics, backing measures to increase the minimum wage, early childhood education, 2022’s progressive business tax, rent control, and just cause eviction laws, and candidates like Nikki Fortunato Bas and Sheng Thao. This year, SEIU’s issues PAC has contributed $100,000 to the Oaklanders Together committee for the Measure Z renewal campaign.
East Bay Rental Housing Association PAC
This political action committee was set up by a group of Oakland landlords about 15 years ago to support and oppose candidates and ballot measures. The group hasn’t raised any money this year, but they used some of the $24,000 they had in their account to contribute to the March Primary Election campaigns of Nate Miley, who successfully held his seat as Alameda County Supervisor in District 5, and Chris Moore, a Piedmont landlord who ran for the District 4 county supervisor’s seat. Moore, who is also a leader in the campaigns seeking to recall District Attorney Pamela Price and Mayor Sheng Thao, came in fifth of nine candidates. The East Bay Rental Housing Association PAC also backed Michael Johnson in his unsuccessful run for a spot as an Alameda County Superior Court judge. The group’s new campaign finance statement shows that its only recent activity was making a $5,000 contribution to a statewide landlord advocacy campaign called Californians for Fair Housing.
Committee for an Affordable East Bay
Flush with a $100,000 contribution from the ride-hailing company Lyft, and thousands more from tech investor Ron Conway, landlord Riaz Taplin, the East Bay Rental Housing Association, and others, this PAC was very active in the 2020 election supporting Derreck Johnson and opposing Rebecca Kaplan in the City Council at-large race.
Since then, the Committee for an Affordable East Bay has wound down its spending on Oakland elections and it’s unclear if it’ll get involved in any future contests. But the committee remains active, primarily because it’s paying the Minardi Law firm for what appears to be legal bills related to a Public Ethics Commission investigation into former Mayor Libby Schaaf’s alleged role in controlling the committee and using it to go after one of her main political rivals, Kaplan. Schaaf gave the Committee for an Affordable East Bay $1,000 in January of this year and the committee has paid Minardi Law $24,508.
Families for a Vibrant Oakland, Sponsored by Effective Government
According to its recent filings with city election officials, this committee hasn’t raised any money yet, but Families for a Vibrant Oakland is probably gearing up for a big campaign.
The committee was created in May by San Francisco resident Todd David. David is one of the key organizers behind what the San Francisco Examiner called the “moderate takeover of San Francisco government.” He is the political director of Abundant SF, a group funded by tech-industry leaders and closely associated with the YIMBY movement to remove restrictions on building housing. David is also the former executive director of the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition and a member of State Senator Scott Weiner’s inner circle.
Abundant SF’s financial backing of a slate of candidates for the San Francisco Democratic Party Central Committee—it spent $813,000, far more than the opposition—is considered key in helping wrest control of the party from self-described progressives.
This committee appears to be related to Abundant Oakland, a group recently launched by cryptocurrency entrepreneur Jesse Pollak that aims to “structurally fix the city’s biggest challenges.” Abundant Oakland is part of the Abundance Network that David helps lead.
Oakland Education Association Political Action Committee
The Oakland teachers union often backs candidates running for the school board. The group has raised $42,696 this year but has yet to make any ad buys or contributions to other committees.
In the 2022 General Election, OEA spent over $158,000 backing Pecolia Manigo, Jennifer Brouhard, and Valarie Bachelor’s campaigns for the school board. Brouhard and Bachelor were elected to the District 2 and 6 seats while Manigo was unsuccessful. This year, the school board seats for Districts 1, 3, 5, and 7 are up for grabs.
Oakland Citizens for Public Safety, Supporting Zac Unger for City Council 2024
Zac Unger has worked as an Oakland firefighter and paramedic since 1998 and serves as president of the Oakland Firefighters Union. The Oakland Citizens for Public Safety PAC was set up in January by J.P. Elias, an Alameda County firefighter. So far, the committee has raised $1,279, all from the Oakland Firefighters Union. Unger is running for the District 1 seat on the Oakland City Council, which Dan Kalb is stepping down from in January.
Citizens For A Brighter Oakland Future – Armstrong for Council 2024
LeRonne Armstrong was Oakland’s police chief from 2021 to 2023. He was fired by Thao after he publicly criticized OPD’s federal monitor and demanded his job back during an investigation involving his leadership and a bizarre string of misconduct by a police sergeant. He later filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Oakland that is still pending.
Now, Armstrong is running for the at-large City Council seat. The Citizens for a Brighter Oakland Future committee was set up in July by Sandre Swanson, a former state Assemblymember with strong links to many of Oakland’s Black political leaders. The committee hasn’t reported raising or spending any money yet.
Free Oakland Independent Expenditure Campaign
Established last year by lobbyist Greg McConnell, this committee’s stated purpose is to support and oppose candidates. So far, Free Oakland has only raised around $15,000. The largest contribution was from the McConnell Group, McConnell’s lobbying firm.
McConnell, who lives in Danville, has represented a range of small and large companies and real estate developers who have business before the city. His current clients include Insight Terminal Solutions, the company that has tried for years to build a coal export terminal in West Oakland, and Argent Materials, which operates a gravel yard in East Oakland. McConnell also leads the Jobs and Housing Coalition, a business advocacy group whose members include major Oakland real estate developers and industrial companies like Radius Recycling. The McConnell Group has also represented California Waste Solutions, the city’s recycling contractor whose offices were raided by the FBI in June.
OAK PAC
The Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce’s committee raises and spends lots of money to support candidates for City Council and mayor and to back or oppose ballot measures. The business advocacy group hasn’t raised much so far this year, just $4,000 from a few local companies like ABC Security, which has the contract to provide security guards at City Hall, and Holland Residential Group, a developer that helped reshape downtown Oakland in recent years. OakPAC supported Ben Bartlett and John Bauters in the Alameda County Supervisors D5 race back in March. Bauters now faces Nikki Fortunato Bas in the November election to decide that race. The pro-business group also successfully backed Nate Miley in his bid to stay on the board of supervisors.
Coalition to Reclaim Oakland Committee to Repeal Ranked Choice Voting
Loren Taylor’s narrow loss to Sheng Thao in 2022 led some Oaklanders to conclude that ranked-choice voting was partly to blame. Used since 2010 for city elections, ranked-choice allows voters to rank candidates running for City Council, mayor, and other city positions, from their most favorite to least favorite. Then these rankings are tabulated to determine the candidate with the most support from the broadest slice of the electorate.
Critics have called ranked-choice confusing, rigged, a form of voter suppression. Now, there’s a group gearing up to ditch ranked-choice voting as the city’s election method. Pamela Ferran, who worked as Loren Taylor’s chief of staff when he was the District 6 councilmember, created the Coalition to Reclaim Oakland committee in February to support a ballot measure that would repeal ranked choice.
While the Coalition to Reclaim Oakland hasn’t reported raising any money yet, another PAC that’s leading the effort to recall Mayor Sheng Thao has already raised $125,000 toward the cause. The money, provided to Foundational Oakland Unites, comes entirely from one man: Philip Dreyfuss, a hedge fund manager from Piedmont who is also bankrolling the recall campaign against Thao to the tune of $480,000.
There won’t be a measure on the November ballot to repeal ranked-choice voting—that deadline has passed—but proponents could qualify the measure for a future election, including possibly a special election next year—if Thao is recalled and the city needs to elect a new mayor.
Oakland United To Recall Sheng Thao
The campaign aiming to remove Sheng Thao from the mayor’s office is led by Oakland United to Recall Sheng Thao, or OUST, which was established in January by Brenda Harbin-Forte, a retired superior court judge and former member of the Police Commission. OUST has raised about $573,000 this year and it spent a lot of this money gathering petition signatures to qualify the recall measure for the November ballot. A lot of the money for OUST has been provided through another committee called Foundational Oakland Unites.
Foundational Oakland Unites
Set up in February by Tanya Boyce, a planning manager from Fort Worth Texas who also runs an Oakland environmental nonprofit, Foundational Oakland Unites described its mission statement in a filing with elections officials: “to counter the Radical Activist Class’ grip on Oakland.” FOU says it will do this through “open debates, transparent policy, repealing [ranked choice voting], a citizen’s commission for City Charter rewriting, and endorsing candidates.”
