Two recalls, an FBI raid, a Gavin Newsom intervention: What’s happening in Oakland?

OAKLAND, California — Politicians facing recall votes. A crime surge that’s drawn Fox News fixation. Financial woes prompting the sale of the city’s baseball stadium .

And that was before the FBI raided the mayor’s house.

Oakland, California, the birthplace of Vice President Kamala Harris, is navigating one of its most turbulent moments in decades. Its mayor and top prosecutor are fighting efforts to oust them from office in November, fueled by voter frustration over shootings, robberies and store closures. Mayor Sheng Thao is now also facing further pressure amid a federal investigation linked to an influential family that has donated to her and other elected officials.

“There’s a frustration post-Covid that things don’t feel safe, and folks feel very worried,” said Lateefah Simon, head of the BART transit system and the frontrunner to succeed Rep. Barbara Lee after November. “One of the things we cannot do and should not do, which I think we have been doing, is gaslighting people and saying things are just fine. No, things feel very difficult for folks — folks don’t feel safe, it takes two very good incomes to afford an apartment in the East Bay.”

Deep-pocketed real estate and tech interests have seized on the turmoil to fund the recall campaigns while looking to notch broader gains across the November ballot. The struggles of a resolutely liberal city where the Democratic presidential candidate was born make Oakland an easy target for Republicans ahead of the general election. Back in 2016, Donald Trump drew the mayor’s ire when he claimed without basis that Oakland was one of the world’s most dangerous places.

But the critiques aren’t just coming from the right. Oakland’s woes have bitterly fractured local liberals, spurring the involvement of two ascendant officials in Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta. If they can’t help fix Oakland, it could become a drag on their future ambitions.

“It’s a serious moment — a crisis for members of the community, people who have lived here for years and years have not seen it like this,” Newsom said at a recent press conference in Oakland. “People deserve better. They deserve more.”

It’s also an extraordinary reversal from two years ago, when voters elected a pair of progressives in Mayor Thao and District Attorney Pamela Price after a wave of protests denouncing police brutality. Now both will be back on the ballot and facing recall votes, speaking to a larger shift in voters attitudes toward crime and the increased prevalence of recalls in California.

Thao declined to comment. Price said the attempt to recall her reflected a national backlash against progressive prosecutors, with the 2022 recall of then-San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin having “emboldened folks on the right wing,” warning of a larger project to breach the “progressive stronghold” of Bay Area politics.

“This is really about changing the political discourse in our community, shifting to the right, and making it safe for MAGA,” Price said in an interview, “and that is something that is very dangerous.”

Beyond the recalls, races across the ballot could fundamentally reshape governance in a changing Oakland. It is a hinge moment for a city whose embrace of left-wing candidates and movements will be tested by a growing sense that it veered dangerously off track.

“We’re in a political crisis, but it’s a crisis we can extricate ourselves from, and it’s up to voters which way we want to go,” said Robert Harris, former general counsel to the Oakland NAACP, which has called for Thao’s resignation. “We want safe streets, we want businesses thriving in Oakland, we want all the things that other cities enjoy.”

How it started

Just a few years ago, Oakland was on the upswing. Businesses and people were moving in, often lured by cheaper rents than what they could find in wealthier and tech-transformed San Francisco. A newly optimistic narrative bloomed around a city whose past included both a proud history of activism — birthing the Black Panther party — and darker struggles with police brutality and crime.

“It was an amazing year,” City Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas said of 2019, when she took office. “Crime was down, the economy was up, there was a lot of possibility to make progress on critical issues like homelessness and housing affordability.”

Then the pandemic hit. Prolonged shutdowns eviscerated Oakland’s economy and undercut programs that sought to intervene in neighborhoods before crimes occurred. The racial justice movement that followed George Floyd’s murder further spurred calls to reduce police budgets and led Oakland to fund policing alternatives while upping spending .

A deeper gloom has taken hold as the city struggles to recover, punctuated by businesses shuttering — many of them citing frequent break-ins — and the Oakland Athletics announcing they would follow the Raiders by moving to Las Vegas. The city is selling its share of the A’s Coliseum stadium, featured in the movie “Moneyball” about the team, to plug a budget deficit.

New leaders stepped into that combustible climate last year. Thao narrowly won the mayor’s office, buoyed by substantial labor support and Bonta’s endorsement. Price prevailed in a stunning upset, beating an establishment-backed rival on a pledge to slash sentencing and prosecute more police officers.

The backlash ensued almost immediately. Crime soared in both Oakland and the greater Alameda County by double digits in 2023, galvanizing opponents of Price who faulted her for telegraphing a lack of consequences even as certain crime rates have now dipped this year. Thao infuriated many Black residents by firing the popular police chief, LeRonne Armstrong, a Black Oakland native.

Both women soon faced recall pushes funded by developers and by investment manager Philip Dreyfuss, who supplied much of the money by pouring more than $1 million into the two efforts. (Dreyfuss did not respond to a request for comment. Fellow developer and organizer Isaac Abid on a real estate podcast accused Price of “hollowing out” the prosecutor’s office, arguing public safety was “on the mind of a lot of Oakland investors” who had bet on the city.)

And then, days after the anti-Thao effort qualified for the November ballot and a mass shooting erupted at a popular lake, FBI agents searched Thao’s home as part of a probe that has also ensnared a politically connected family that runs a waste management company.

Thao has denied any wrongdoing and said she is not a target of the investigation. In a fiery speech after the raid, she lambasted the FBI action as unjustified and condemned the recall effort as a “waste of time and public resources” by “a handful of billionaires” who “are hellbent on running me out of office.”

Critics of the recall efforts, meanwhile, have argued that the current issues precede both Thao and Price, and different groups are seeking to exploit them now for personal gains.

“The money isn’t from Oaklanders who have been impacted by crime, it’s from real estate developers, landlords, and special interest groups who have no stake in the community of Oakland,” said Chaney Turner, a delegate to the county Democratic Party who chairs Oakland’s cannabis commission. “It’s about power, and it’s about further gentrifying Oakland and pushing Black people out.”

The pressure on Thao has steadily mounted, with the chorus of calls for her to resign expanding last week: Former Los Angeles baseball star Steve Garvey, Rep. Adam Schiff’s longshot GOP opponent for California’s Senate seat, on Wednesday called for her to step down. Oakland’s main police union had already called for her exit, as did Loren Taylor, Thao’s 2022 mayoral opponent who has vowed to run to replace her if she is recalled.

All eyes on November — and beyond

Oakland’s conditions have also prompted interventions from two of the state’s top Democrats, both of whom have their own bigger ambitions.

Newsom, who has built a national profile ahead of a possible future presidential run, convened a meeting of business and community leaders earlier this year at which he repeatedly lamented Thao missing a deadline to apply for state aid for fighting crime. He has also assailed Price for not accepting state assistance and pushed Thao to amend Oakland’s police chase policy, increasing the political pressure on two embattled officials.

Oakland also has more direct implications for Bonta, a potential gubernatorial candidate who represented the city for years in the state Assembly, lives in neighboring Alameda and had endorsed Thao early. Since then, he’s joined Newsom in dispatching more state law enforcement help to Oakland while seeking to distance himself from the family at the center of the FBI investigation.

Newsom has insisted his tough talk on Oakland is “not about politics, it’s about partnership.” But critics argue his decision to call out Thao and Price will nonetheless carry weight in the recall campaigns by reinforcing the notion that they’ve lost control.

“I understand the need the governor has to ensure every place is safe, because the doom narrative of Oakland is now a national one. Fox News is talking about Oakland, and that hurts the governor and the things he wants to do,” said Sean Dugar, an Oakland-based Democratic political consultant who is not involved in the recalls. “It makes sense for him to have a desire to make California safer, but at what cost?”

Recall backers and their political allies, meanwhile, believe they have a shot to wrest control from the left. Seneca Scott, a former mayoral candidate and online provocateur who has highlighted Oakland’s woes on Fox News, said fed-up citizens had channeled pervasive discontent and “built a movement” that evolved from fighting a Covid-era eviction ban to pursuing recalls.

“Oakland’s not going to switch parties, because there’s no Republicans here,” Scott said. “What you do have is a lot of people who are finally just waking up to the failures of this progressive experiment.”

Business interests in play

Oakland isn’t the only city where progressives are under scrutiny . Its trajectory has parallels to San Francisco, where the 2022 recalls of progressive District Attorney Boudin and school board members sparked a broader movement to push the city’s politics toward the center.

As in San Francisco, business-backed groups have sprung up with a plan to spend money on elections that could change Oakland’s center of gravity, with several city council seats on the ballot along with the two recalls.

Dreyfuss helped fund the Boudin recall before spearheading the Oakland efforts. Influential venture capitalist Ron Conway and his sons have contributed to the Thao recall. A realtor with whom Dreyfuss co-founded a key anti-Price committee has launched a new organization, Revitalizing East Bay, that is expected to be a hub for business groups. A tech executive has launched an Oakland chapter of a larger California network with plans to spend at least $1 million this cycle.

Organizers are looking across the bay for inspiration — in some cases explicitly. Calling Oakland a “national laughingstock,” tech entrepreneur Gagan Biyani last month announced on X the relaunch of a group called Empower Oakland that would emulate a tech-backed San Francisco organization that pushes out voter guides. Biyani said in an interview that he spoke to Oaklanders who believe “it’s never been this bad” and are seeking a political outlet.

“Homeowners, business owners, including small business owners — you’d be shocked by how much they’re feeling like they need to mobilize,” Biyani said. “It is a boiling point for this city. Oaklanders are pissed off — but they’re also excited.”

The situation is creating new political openings. Taylor founded Empower after he narrowly lost to Thao in 2022. Armstrong, the police chief Thao fired, is running for city council. A retired judge who launched the Thao recall effort is a candidate to be city attorney.

All of them could benefit from anti-incumbent sentiment, which Oakland-based Democratic political consultant Jim Ross linked to the city’s shifting demographics. The city’s historically large Black population has steadily plummeted in recent years, and newer residents seeking a cheaper place to live have helped push up the cost of living.

“There’s a new group of folks that have differing expectations moving into Oakland and you’re really seeing that drive a lot of politics in town,” said Ross, who is not involved in any of the elections on the ballot. “There’s a whole group of folks who have been on the outside of decision making and political power who see an opportunity to tap into the growing and real concerns about public safety.”

Those ingredients have yielded a bitter stew. Simon, the congressional candidate, lamented “seeing so much darkness, especially, on Twitter about Oakland.” But amid disagreement about the best way forward, there is broad consensus on one point: This election is a vital one.

“Oakland is home to lots of activism and lots of advocacy around how to create social justice and economic justice and racial justice, and yet it’s very difficult to make concrete wins,” said Pecolia Manigo, political director of Oakland Rising, which opposes the recalls. “I think this is one of Oakland’s biggest elections ever.”