Last week, former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced that she supports the removal of her successor, Sheng Thao, from office. In an interview with KQED, Schaaf said she’s endorsing the recall because of an accumulation of financial and public safety issues in Oakland, and the belief that Thao is incapable of directing the city off of this path.
“Oakland can’t afford another two years of continued damage,” said Schaaf, who is running for state treasurer in 2026. The former mayor was also recently in the news because of her role in orchestrating illegal campaigns targeting her political rivals and raising money from city contractors.
Schaaf’s announcement stood out because most other elected officials in Oakland who’ve taken a stance on the Thao recall are opposing it.
On the City Council, Carroll Fife, Dan Kalb, and Rebecca Kaplan have said no to the recall. Schaaf’s predecessor, Jean Quan, has also come out against it.
“I’ve seen first-hand how Mayor Thao (with her staff) have worked with determination to address the city’s serious challenges,” Kalb wrote in his ballot guide, calling the mid-term recall an “extreme” measure that would lead to an exorbitant special election.
Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson is anti-recall as well. Two of Oakland’s representatives on the state and federal levels, State Sen. Nancy Skinner and Rep. Barbara Lee, have both said they oppose the recall effort — and recall efforts in general.
“I oppose them on principle,” Skinner said on X. “Except in rare circumstances of serious misconduct, recalls are undemocratic and a waste of public funds.”
But Schaaf is not alone in thinking Thao’s actions meet that threshold. Former Councilmember Loren Taylor’s group Empower Oakland has endorsed the recall as well. Taylor, who lost to Thao in the 2022 mayoral election, has said he’ll run again if the seat opens up.
We asked Thao’s campaign and the recall campaign if there are other current or former electeds on their side.
William Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for Thao’s anti-recall campaign, said former state Assemblymember Sandre Swanson is also in the “no recall” camp.
Recall campaign spokesperson Seneca Scott replied to The Oaklandside: “Never email me again.”
Unsanctioned signs
Campaign signs are springing up all over grassy medians, neighborhood parks, and freeway onramps in Oakland. At The Oaklandside, we’ve spotted supporters and candidates alike plunging political yard signs into random plots of soil around the city.
It’s such a familiar sight during an election season that many people don’t realize it’s actually illegal to put signs on public property in Oakland They’re called “yard” signs for a reason; property owners or occupants of a property can place a sign on their own premises, or give someone else permission to, but that’s it.
When a sign is instead placed on public property, it becomes a free-floating advertisement on shared land, instead of an expression of an individual or group’s opinion on their own. And the signage quickly turns into election litter. In the post-Nov. 5 haze, when everyone’s busy celebrating or commiserating, who’s going to retrieve the spare signs?
Congressman accuses DA of “scurrilous” attack
Congressman Eric Swalwell claims that Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price made “false and scurrilous” attacks against him in a Facebook post earlier this month.
The post in question criticized Swalwell after he appeared at a rally to share his support for the recall campaign that has been hammering Price for over a year. Writing from her personal Facebook account, Price said Swalwell had “declared his allegiance to the Alameda County Republican Party.” She also claimed that Swalwell, a former Alameda County prosecutor, was potentially backing the recall to “shield himself” from Price’s investigation into the alleged practice of keeping Jewish and Black residents off death penalty juries.
In a letter dated Oct. 19, Swalwell’s attorney criticized Price for her comments and demanded that she produce evidence to support her claims. The letter went on to demand that Price retract her statements or face a defamation lawsuit.
Price’s campaign responded by criticizing Swalwell, saying his constituents would be better served if he “focused less on trying to overturn the will of the voters and more on defending our democracy,” according to the East Bay Times.
Money, money, money
Yesterday was the deadline for candidates and some PACs to file reports for how much money they’ve raised and spent on the election since September. Spending has skyrocketed in a few critical races.
Phillip Dreyfuss, a hedge fund executive who is almost single-handedly bankrolling the recall campaign against Mayor Sheng Thao, has given $760,000 to a committee called Foundational Oakland Unites since July. Most of this money was paid for signature gathering to qualify the recall for the ballot. Thao’s anti-recall campaign has raised $120,000, with major contributions from local labor groups, including SEIU Local 1021 ($50,000), IFPTE Local 21 ($20,000), and the Alameda Labor Council ($10,000).
More recently, Dreyfuss’ Foundational committee gave a cash infusion to an independent expenditure committee that supports two council candidates: Len Raphael for D1 and Ken Houston for D7. This committee has received $135,000, which comes entirely from Dreyfuss. Chris Moore, a Piedmont landlord active in the mayoral and DA recalls is the treasurer for Foundational Oakland Unites and also helps run the committee backing Houston.
This money could make a big difference in the D7 race, where a committee backed by SEIU Local 1021 has spent a relatively modest sum ($6,600) supporting candidate Iris Merriouns. It’s unclear how Foundational’s spending will affect the D1 race, where Zac Unger is supported by a PAC, Oakland Citizens for Public Safety, that has spent $32,000 of dollars.
Families for a Vibrant Oakland — a committee established by a San Francisco-based political organization called the Abundance Network — has raised $557,000 since September. This PAC is funded by the Oakland Police Officers Association, Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, and a committee that was set up to support the recall against DA Pamela Price. The committee’s “anchor donor” is a crypto entrepreneur named Jesse Pollak who’s contributed $145,000.
Families for a Vibrant Oakland has spent over $128,000 to support Brenda Harbin-Forte’s campaign for city attorney. The committee has also given $100,000 to two PACs that back Warren Logan’s candidacy for the D3 council seat. One of them has paid for attack ads against incumbent Carroll Fife.
Families also gave $50,000 to the Champions for Education PAC, a committee that backs pro-charter school political candidates.
A committee backed by IFPTE Local 21 and the Alameda Labor Council that is supporting Fife and city attorney candidate Ryan Richardson has spent nearly $240,000 on mailers and ads, including materials that attack Harbin-Forte. Quinn Delaney, a Piedmont resident who also runs the Akonadi Foundation, also put up $10,000 for this committee.
Empower Oakland, a political organization established last year by former councilmember Loren Taylor, raised $382,000 this year. Empower spent about $80,000 on advertising and a voter guide that it mailed to residents, leaving a healthy chunk of money in reserves.
Over half of Empower’s funding came from three individuals and a PAC: Coinbase executive Jesse Pollak ($50,000), tech startup founder Gagan Biyani ($50,500), Credit Karma executive Ryan Graciano ($50,000), and a committee called A Better Bay Area that is funded by fast food franchise owners ($50,000). Empower also received substantial funding from tech investor Ilya Sukhar ($25,000), realtor Joe Ernst ($25,000), Charles Freiburg, board member of the Life Insurance Consumer Advocacy Center ($15,000), land tech CEO Abhinav Shashank Jyotika Gupta ($10,000).
Congressional candidate loses LGBTQ endorsement after social media remarks
On X last week, a journalist posed a public question to Jennifer Tran, who’s competing against Lateefah Simon for Barbara Lee’s seat in the House of Representatives.
The journalist, Mark Misoshnik, asked Tran why she hired activist Seneca Scott to work on her campaign. Scott has drawn criticism and condemnation for making transphobic remarks and baseless claims that a gay city staffer is a pedophile.
“Thanks for the good question, Mark,” Tran responded. She proceeded to defend Scott, saying he is not anti-LGBTQ (Tran herself is queer). She then repeated Scott’s unfounded claims about the mayoral staffer, saying that if the staffer is a “minor attracted person” then he should “he should expect criticism for it.”
In the same post, Tran wrote that she and Scott agree that young people should not be permitted to medically transition until they’re adults. The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have both stated that gender-affirming care can be medically necessary for youth and have cautioned that restricting such care can have tragic results.
The next day, LPAC, a political committee supporting LGBTQ candidates, withdrew its endorsement of Tran, saying she’d “promoted harmful myths and misinformation.”
Tran lashed back, telling the San Francisco Chronicle it’s “borderline tyrannical” for LPAC to think “they hold the only moral and ethical position on the subject” of trans youth medical care.
