5th District Alameda County Supervisors Race Is Still Too Close To Call

New results from the 5th District Alameda County Supervisors race this week showed that Oakland City Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas is just barely ahead of Emeryville City Councilman John Bauters 68,736 votes to 68,630 votes. It’s one of the tightest County elections in the state right now, with the percentages being 50.04% to 49.96%. No matter what, it looks like it is going to be a recount.

However, the race isn’t just going to decide who is going to become the new County Supervisor. The result of either Bas winning or losing will create a chain reaction in the city of Oakland, resulting in finding out who becomes Mayor and triggering major City Council changes. But let’s back up first.

Both Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price were recalled in the election earlier this month. After narrowly defeating fellow Councilmember Loren Taylor in 2022, Thao went on to have a hard time addressing crime and public safety concerns, as well as struggling to deal with homeless issues. Her controversy around the firing of the police chief LeRonne Armstrong, and her failure to keep the Oakland Athletics from relocating to Las Vegas played a part. Also not so great was the FBI raid on her home, and her subsequent outburst. While a recall election was only iffy at that time last year, the FBI action spurred more people to put the recall on the election.

She soon became the first Mayor in Oakland history to face a recall election, with early polls not looking too good for her. By August, calls for her to resign grew, while polls showed that more and more in Oakland supported her recall. A poll that came out showed that she had a 69% disapproval rating, with 56% of Oakland voters supporting her recall. In the next few months, support for her recall remained high. While Thao did everything she could to win and not be recalled, she ultimately lost by a huge margin. According to the latest results she lost by over a 20 point margin, with 84,134 Oakland votes wanting her recalled and 54,480 voting no on the recall.

So what does this all have to do with the Supervisors race? Well, Thao will leave office once the election is certified – by December 17th at the latest. After that an interim Mayor will come in. Normally this is the City Council President, in this case, being Councilwoman Bas, who would serve until a special election next year. But Bas is currently in the Supervisors race – and either scenario for her means she wins no matter what.

One election, many results

Should Bas win the Supervisors election, she goes to the County. The Oakland City Council will not only have to pick another President, who then becomes interim Mayor, but also the Council suddenly has a few Council seats open in need of special elections. And for a city like Oakland majorly struggling right now, the last thing they need is a City Council light on members who may not be able to pass things quickly until sometime next year. And if Bas loses, she still gets the high position of Mayor, albeit in an interim role. However, this still means an open City Council slot and the Council still needing a new president.

Either way, a huge shift will happen in Oakland politics. This means that once the special election for Mayor next year happens, Oakland will have gone through 3 Mayors in two years, and 4 Mayors in 4 years. And that’s not even getting in the City Council, which is almost like a revolving door. In fact, the front runner for the Mayoral special election right now is Loren Taylor, who after his loss to Thao in 2022, was booted off City Council, and now may find himself back as Mayor. And that’s not even mentioning all the other changes at the County level, which includes a new election for District Attorney now too.

“Oakland has been in a mess for quite some time and, either way with Bas here, will continue to be in a big mess,” explained Alameda County pollster Nathan Martin to the Globe on Wednesday. “This is actually quite an impressive feat. Only a few elections are suddenly triggering more elections to the extent that not only Oakland but the entire County will have had a huge shift within the span of less than a year. Everyone here just wants things to be normal again. They want crime to be lowered and just want to live in a safe place with a reasonable cost of living. They didn’t want a political upheaval. But it’s what they got.

“And worse, the voters have themselves to blame. They picked Thao in 2022. They’re picking Bas right now. And they recalled Thao. And you wouldn’t think that a Supervisors race would be this important, but it very much is this year.”

A victor in the Supervisors race is expected to be announced soon.