11 questions for Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao

This Q&A is part of a series of interviews with California’s “other” big-city mayors — those who lead communities that are often overshadowed by the state’s power centers like San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Sheng Thao’s political life is on the Oakland ballot this November. She’s not going down without a fight.

Voters will decide next month whether to recall the embattled mayor, a push bankrolled by hundreds of thousands of dollars from investment manager Philip Dreyfuss and endorsed by Oakland’s police union, the local NAACP chapter and a local newspaper . Thao's detractors argue new leadership is needed to curb public safety issues, reverse a string of business closures and address the city’s financial woes.

Former NFL star Marshawn Lynch has already hinted he might run in a special election to replace her. But Thao is hoping to turn the tide with a last-minute pitch to voters, arguing that crime is down, foot traffic on city streets is up and Oakland is turning a corner in its fight to revive businesses kneecapped by the pandemic.

“ I welcome anyone who loves Oakland and who lives in Oakland to run against me in 2026, after I beat this recall,” she told Playbook. “But the truth is, I'm going beast mode for Oakland right now.”

Playbook sat down with Thao, who leads a city of approximately 430,000 people, to discuss her approach to its crime and financial problems — and the recall fight.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Do you think Oakland is facing a public safety crisis?

We were facing a public safety crisis. Coming into office, crime was on the rise. I know that a lot of the naysayers would say, “Oh, well, crime was only on the rise because you fired then-Chief LeRonne Armstrong.” That is not a fact at all. We inherited the crime rates.

Kaiser Permanente helped fund an audit that shows there is a direct correlation between [rising crime rates and] when the cease-fire strategy (a gun-violence prevention approach that targets gangs) was sunsetted by Armstrong back in 2019 and he implemented his Violent Crime Operations Center. Crime started to spike up because this was a reactionary approach. Our cease-fire strategy is a proactive approach.

We immediately implemented the cease-fire strategy … Now we're seeing that Oakland is on track to have less than 100 homicides this year. That hasn't happened since 2019. It's not good enough, and we're going to continue to move on this. But this is our first year of reimplementing the strategy to its full fidelity, and we're already seeing that it is working.

What do you make of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s moves this year to increase the deployment of CHP officers in Oakland?

I was actually the one who picked up the phone last year and called him. I said, “Hey, can you give us some CHP officers?” Because that's good governance, right? I know that in the city of Oakland, we do not have enough funding. We've never had enough funding to fund enough police officers.

That is a through-and-through partnership with myself and the governor. It's not him sending us CHP, but it's me asking for it.

At what point do you think the city will be able to manage issues like crime without the state intervening?

We're already seeing that progress. Crime is down overall, 30 percent . I can't stress that enough, it's a huge win, right? And when you say without the state intervening, let's be very clear that in order for the city to have enough police officers, we have to have economic development.

A recent San Francisco Chronicle report found that Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price’s office missed filing deadlines for about 1,000 misdemeanor cases. Can your crime-reduction policies succeed if she continues as district attorney?

I haven't read that article. What I can tell you is every single government entity and arm needs to be in play in order for this all to work.

If one arm isn't working, then the whole system is not going to work. In Oakland, officers and myself, we are frustrated. A lot of the people we apprehend who are very dangerous — and we have evidence to show they're dangerous — come right out of Santa Rita jail within three days, within two days.

Do you think the DA’s office could be doing more to collaborate with Oakland and get on the same page when it comes to crime reduction?

The city of Oakland is collaborating with the district attorney's office around our cease-fire strategy. The cease-fire strategy demands that there be a district attorney at the decision table.

Her office is working with the police department to ensure that we have good, ample evidence. So we're in partnership to do that work.

Do you support the effort to recall Price?

I think recalls are a waste of money. A lot of people ask, “What is undemocratic about it?” The undemocratic part about it is that democratically, they were elected at large, and they were voted in. It's unfair for someone with more money than others to come in and say, “You know what? I want to change the trajectory.”

People who are elected should be given time and opportunity to serve their full term … to show their due diligence and do their work.

Is that a yes or a no?

No. No on recalls, in general.

Do you think that California should make any reforms to its recall process for local officials?

There's so much reform that should happen. … Referencing the recall that I'm going through right now: You have a person who doesn't even live in the city who spent over $600,000 to gather 25,000 signatures. The people who are gathering signatures live outside of the city, live outside of the state.

I believe that those who are gathering signatures should be the ones that are living in that city. They shouldn't be able to recruit people from Florida, a more red state, to come out here and express their opinions around what we in Oakland are doing or not doing.

(Editor’s note: Thao's campaign was unable to provide direct evidence that Florida residents collected recall signatures in Oakland.)

You've touted the latest city budget for closing a deficit while avoiding layoffs, but that budget depended on a one-time windfall of cash from the sale of the Coliseum. Do you think that budget plan was a sustainable decision for Oakland's financial future?

That's actually not what the purpose of the one-time funds was. Coming into office, we inherited a $360 million structural deficit because of the pandemic.

This is when the Coliseum sale came into play. It was never a silver bullet, but it was so we can soften our landing, allow for fire stations to still be open during the summer, allow for police officers to still be on the street during the summer.

What are you doing to regain trust among businesses that left Oakland?

After the pandemic, a lot of our businesses were in financial distress for multiple reasons. Some businesses couldn't stay afloat, and they had to close. But what I can tell you is that hundreds and hundreds of new bars, new restaurants, new hotels are popping up.

To attract more businesses so that we can create new revenue streams, it's going to be a lot of work, and that work means for me to go out and meet with different anchor corporations to get them to come to Oakland.

My administration is the first administration to work with film people like Boots Riley, W. Kamau Bell and others to ensure movies made about Oakland can take place here in Oakland. That's going to be a huge driving force.

We also revamped and renovated Raimondi Park, an area [that] was full of thousands of homeless people. We were able to house them, take down the homeless encampments under my administration and renovate it for the Oakland Ballers, which is a Pioneer League team.

How will you regain trust with the community groups that have supported your recall, should you remain in office?

I am the mayor for everyone. I've always asked them to come to the table. I've reached out to the folks that are running the recall, but they refused to meet with me.

I stand by all the decisions that I've made. I'm not here to just represent one group of people or one person, nor myself. I'm here to make sure that the city is working for the majority of the people in Oakland.