Oakland Mayoral Situation Grows More Chaotic Following City Council President Elected Out

Oakland City Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas narrowly defeated Emeryville City Councilman John Bauters in the 5th District Alameda County Supervisors race this weekend 71,136 votes to 70,721 votes, pushing who becomes interim Mayor of the City into even more of a messier situation.

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 86,450 Oakland voters wanting her recalled and 56,175 voting no on the recall.

4 Oakland Mayors between now and April

Thao is currently going to stay in office until the election is certified by the City Council on December 17th. Following that, she is out. Had Bas remained on City Council, she would have, as President, been moved up to interim Mayor. However, following her win officially being called over the weekend, Oakland’s road towards new leadership became far less certain. Council President pro tempore Dan Kalb is currently in line to be interim Mayor after Bas, and will hold that position until January 6th. Since he opted to run for state Senator and not for Councilman again earlier this year, that will be the day he is out as new members are sworn in. And then it is anyone’s game.

The new Oakland City Council will select who becomes Council President that day, and with it, becoming Mayor of Oakland for several months before a special Mayoral election is held. But, for that person, it could mean getting a jump start on the Mayoral election if they decide to run for the position too, with them technically being the incumbent Mayor in the race. Currently, the front runner for the Mayoral special election is Loren Taylor, who after his loss to Thao in 2022, was booted off City Council, and now may find himself back as Mayor. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) is also a favorite, although she hasn’t announced if she will run yet as she is currently finishing up her last few months in office. But should the person selected as President decide to enter the race, it could create something of a dogfight for the job.

“You would think that no one would want to be Mayor of Oakland,” explained Alameda County pollster Nathan Martin to the Globe on Monday. “But whoever is selected as President, well, they’ll get a good start on the election if that’s what they want.

“You mentioned in your last article on this that Oakland will have gone through 3 Mayors in two years, and 4 Mayors in 4 years. Well, with Kalb only getting a few weeks as interim Mayor, it’s now more like 4 Mayors in 2 years and 5 Mayors in 4 years. And the race will be very open. So expect every lawmaker in Oakland, or former lawmaker, who has higher aspirations or wanting a sunset position to go after it. Taylor is in. Lee might. Many will be crawling out of the woodwork.

“Bas really screwed things up even more with that win.”

Currently, the special election is currently set to be held sometime in April.