Oakland Mayoral Special Election: Loren Taylor Holds Narrow Lead Over Barbara Lee

The Oakland Mayoral Special election was held in Oakland on Tuesday, with results on Wednesday showing former City Councilman Loren Taylor holding a narrow lead over former Congresswoman Barbara Lee, albeit with no clear winner.

The latest results have Taylor with the lead across all ranked-choice voting, with Lee a close second. First round voting currently shows Taylor ahead with 23,391 votes, followed by Lee with 22,174, withdrawn candidate and Oakland Library Advisory Commission member Tyron Jordan with 753 votes, community activist and educator Mindy Pechenuk with 570 votes, and the other 6 candidates failing to crack 500 votes.

However, as ranked choice votes moved through the rounds, and second choice candidates started receiving the votes of ousted candidates through the rounds, the gap between Taylor and Lee barely budged. The latest results on Wednesday show the final round total being 24,347 votes, or 51.2%, for Taylor and 23,229, or 48.8%, with just over 1,000 votes separating them. Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis confirmed that more than 49,000 ballots were counted on Tuesday, but they were little more than halfway there as there are an estimated 42,000 additional ballots still need to be counted.

Despite this, Taylor remained cautiously optimistic of his lead on Tuesday night.

“We knew that Oaklanders were hungry for change, hungry for something new that would solve the problems and not just see those same problems reoccur time and time again,” said Taylor. “It’s great to have the lead but we have been here before.

“We’re feeling good about where we are and we’re cautiously optimistic that things will stay with what we’ve seen and we’ll maintain the advantage in the next update.”

Taylor leading Lee

Meanwhile Lee remained steadfast that voting was not over and that it could change during the next vote count update on Friday.

“If I am so fortunate as to be the mayor, we can pull this city together with people with different points of views living in different parts of the city to really find common ground to move this city forward,” said Lee. “This is gonna be a long week, but we are doing very well. Having been through this before I realize there are things that are within our control and things that are not. It feels different from before, we feel as though we will be able to maintain this lead.

“I ran this campaign like I want to run this city as mayor. That’s about being inclusive, by going into our neighborhoods with our councilmembers, by making sure we have the input of every neighborhood. We’re going to do this differently.”

“With ranked choice voting, we know counting will continue as more ballots come in,” added Lee spokeswoman Stephanie Ong. “This is democracy at work and every vote counts. This is a critical election for Oakland.”

While there were 10 candidates on the ballot, it has been mainly between Taylor and Lee ever since the recall of former Mayor Sheng Thao in November. While Taylor was the early favorite, being seen as the guy who wanted to take back the office he narrowly lost a few years before, Lee’s entrance shifted things.

Having been a Congresswoman for the area from the late 90’s to January 2025, Lee brought in a big name, even though she just came off an embarrassing loss in the 2024 Senate primary in which she placed a distant fourth. She was seen as almost a shoo-in for a few months…until around mid-March. While some of her unpopular past actions, like her time with the Black Panthers and being the only member of Congress to vote against authorizing force following the September 11th attacks, have always loomed, the 2025 special election brought out some surprises. Most notably, it was found in late February that she received political donations from Andy and David Duong, the recycling business owners who were recently indicted in the same scandal involving former Mayor Thao. Lee did give back the donated funds, but the fact she received so much from them for campaigns over the years shook many in Oakland.

Now a race, both Taylor and Lee raised money like crazy, amounting to nearly $600,000 in donations between the two of them coming in by the end of March. Lawmaker endorsements, which was Lee’s forte, was now heading the other way with people like San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan backing Taylor. A new poll released late last month also found that Lee’s large lead over Taylor in the Oakland Mayoral special election dropped dramatically between mid-February and Mid-March, with Lee now only 4 points ahead of Taylor in the race. According to the poll, Taylor is at 41% as of mid-March, with Lee only at 45%.

This all led to the election on Tuesday where initial vote counts have confirmed what the polls were showing with Taylor slowly moving back up in support. Friday’s vote tally update is expected to be significant, with the leader on Friday likely being the one who will be elected in as Mayor.