The Oakland Mayoral Special Election: One Week To Go

The 2025 Oakland Mayoral Special election is now only a week away, with former Congresswoman Barbara Lee just a few points ahead in polling of former Oakland City Councilman Loren Taylor.

For the City of Oakland, they need the stability. While Oakland wasn’t exactly the most stable city beforehand with Jean “Unable to handle a protest” Quan and Libby “Campaign finance violations” Schaaf at the wheel, Sheng Thao piloted the city more into a nosedive when she took over. After defeating Taylor in an election so close they needed a recount in 2022, she went on to struggle with public safety and homeless issues, worsened the city’s fiscal outlook, fired police Chief LeRonne Armstrong amidst controversy, lost the Athletics to Las Vegas, and even witnessed the FBI raid her home. Helping bring forth a city debt of well over $100 million also didn’t help matters.

Last year it became so much that she was put on recall notice and, in November, more than 60% of the city voted to recall her. Currently she is in legal troubles up to her neck – turns out that FBI was tied in with federal bribery charges, and she was indicted in January. Since then, Oakland has brought on a clown car of interim mayors, with one, Nikki Fortunato Bas, only lasting a few weeks as she was elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. Currently the interim Mayor is City Council President Kevin Jenkins, who recently made news for firing all staffers hired under Thao.

And, during this time, candidates have been shoring up, hoping to be Oakland’s fourth mayor in five months. Besides Taylor and Lee, other prominent candidates have included  community activist and educator Mindy Pechenuk and former Thao Chief of Staff Renia Webb. However, for all intents and purposes, it has been the Taylor and Lee show. While Taylor was the early favorite, being seen as the guy who wanted to take back the office he narrowly won 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%.

And it’s only dropping from there. The current strategy of every candidate but Lee right now is to vote for them first, Taylor second. Particularly appealing is his commitment to increasing the police force in Oakland, taking a hard line stance against homelessness, and cutting out waste to solving the budget crisis. Lee’s team has scrambled to counter these positions and are virtually neck to neck with Taylor as a result.

Taylor V. Lee

“I believe that Barbara Lee will be defeated,” said Pechenuk to the Globe on Tuesday. “As I have been at almost a dozen events with Barbara Lee and the other candidates I find that she is living in the past and is practically a carpetbagger in Oakland, having been “inside the beltway” for 26 years. At these events there is very little enthusiasm for Barbara. Since this is a rank choice election I have urged my supporters to vote for me number one, and to rank Loren Taylor, number two, and not vote at all for Barbara Lee.