Nine people are running to lead Oakland at a time of disillusionment with local government. We spoke to them about their plans to win back trust.
by Eli Wolfe March 7, 2025 (Oaklandside.com)
Nine people are competing to fill the vacancy created by Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who voters overwhelmingly recalled in November.
Oakland mayor is not an easy job, but this year will be especially difficult. Whoever wins will face a catastrophic budget shortfall that has already triggered painful cuts to critical services. More cuts are expected in the next two-year cycle, which starts in July, to resolve a $265 million deficit.
The next mayor is also stepping into a position tarnished by the recent indictment of Thao, her boyfriend Andre Jones, and David and Andy Duong, executives with California Waste Solutions, for alleged bribery. A recent survey of Oakland residents found 72% somewhat or strongly disapprove of the overall job being done by the city’s government. Many are looking to the mayor to put the city on a better path.
We interviewed the candidates about their plans for Oakland. We found some widely shared beliefs, like the idea that Oakland should hire an independent auditor to evaluate its finances and that OPD needs more officers. But we also identified a bunch of areas where they differ, especially once they started talking about the nitty-gritty of how to fix stuff.
Table of Contents
This article does not include Tyron Jordan, who dropped out of the race on Feb. 25 to help Barbara Lee’s campaign. President Cristina Grappo did not respond to an interview request. We also did not interview Peter Liu due to antisemitic comments he has made.
The Oaklandside recently held a forum for the candidates. You can watch the livestream recording. We are also publishing a questionnaire each candidate filled out.
The candidates are presented here in alphabetical order.
Barbara Lee
Lee was a congresswoman from 1998 until January 2025 representing California’s 12th Congressional District, which covers Oakland and part of Alameda County. Speculation about Lee jumping into the mayor’s race surfaced shortly after Thao was recalled and a group of local business leaders and politicians wrote an open letter urging her to run.
Asked about her fiscal priorities, Lee said Oakland needs to identify new revenue streams and balance the budget “with a combination of strategies.”
Lee has received endorsements from most of the major unions that represent city workers. Labor is also spending heavily on an independent expenditure committee to support her campaign.
Asked about her relationship to the city unions —some of which saw dozens of their members laid off recently due to the budget crisis — Lee said she fights for working men and women every day, but that nothing is off limits in the budget discussions.
“I believe cutting jobs should be the last resort, but everything is on the table,” Lee said.
Her public safety strategy would include implementing Measure NN, a parcel tax voters approved in November that will raise $47 million each year to fund police, fire, and violence prevention services.
“Having a plan that’s public that tracks Measure NN is important to do,” Lee said.
On her website, Lee says she would maintain police patrols and the city’s popular Ceasefire program, which focuses on reducing gun violence. She would also expand MACRO, a service that sends unarmed civilians to respond to mental health crises and other situations where armed officers aren’t needed. Lee also plans to use community-based policing to address human trafficking in the city, especially along International Boulevard.
Lee believes Oakland should eventually hire at least 850 officers but said the city can’t get there in the short term because it doesn’t have enough academy classes to raise new recruits. She also noted that roughly 10% of OPD’s sworn force is on some kind of administrative or sick leave.
Funding is also a roadblock. Adding 100 officers would cost $25 million per year minimum, money the city simply doesn’t have right now.
“We need to look at existing resources,” Lee said, adding that it’s important for Oakland to have a public safety strategy that incorporates police, community policing, programs like Ceasefire, and violence prevention work.
City officials recently found money to temporarily avoid shutting four more fire stations, and the council approved a resolution that will reopen the three already closed. But it’s unclear if fire stations will be on the chopping block again in the next budget cycle.
Lee promised to reopen the three fire stations that were shuttered for cost savings.
Like virtually every other candidate, Lee supports creating more transitional and permanent housing for unhoused residents, along with supportive services focused on mental health and drug rehabilitation. She is interested in looking into whether universal basic income could work in Oakland and said the city should look at programs in Portland, Oregon and Houston, Texas that employ homeless residents cleaning up blight to see if they would be appropriate here.
She stressed that African-Americans make up a disproportionate number of the homeless people living in Oakland and said she’s alarmed by the number of military veterans without a home.
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“Why don’t we coordinate with the Veterans’ Administration, because the VA is required to pay for housing for veterans,” Lee said, adding that she knows how the VA works works. “I would add that to a strategy, immediately.”
Lee did not have any specific ideas for making the mayor’s office more transparent and accountable to the public, but she emphasized that she would strengthen Oakland’s ethics requirements. Her campaign website credits her with being a leader in ethics reforms in Congress that banned gifts from lobbyists and prohibited lawmakers from traveling on private planes.
“We cannot tolerate any pay-to-play,” Lee said. “Transparency, accountability, and ethical governance will be a priority of mine.”
Barbara Lee’s campaign website.
Mindy Pechenuk
Pechenuk is an educator and political activist who is an adherent of Lyndon LaRouche, who has been described by many historians and journalists as a conspiracy theorist and cult leader. Pechenuk, who views LaRouche differently, ran for the at-large City Council seat last year.
Something that distinguishes Pechenuk is that she is a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump. Asked if she supports his recent executive orders, including directives that will harm undocumented immigrants and trans people, Pechenuk said yes.
“I think his executive orders are very good,” Pechenuk said.
Pechenuk believes Oakland’s economic problems must be solved by transforming the city into an industrial manufacturing hub.
“We need to immediately redirect our funding into bringing tax incentives in for industry and businesses that want to come here,” Pechenuk said.
Pechenuk also wants Oakland to get a visit from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE,” a team established by Elon Musk that is supposedly sifting through federal programs to eliminate waste. DOGE currently has very little to show for its efforts and Musk and Trump have repeatedly shared false information about its supposed achievements, but Pechenuk believes DOGE could help identify and cut city funding that is going to nonprofits.
Like some other candidates, Pechenuk wants OPD to loosen its restrictions on vehicle pursuits. But she wants to go a step further and remove all “ordinances” that restrict policing. Pechenuk also wants to crack down on illegal drugs, particularly fentanyl.
“We need to shut down the offshore markets, where the drug cartels and banking class and politicians are working with the drug cartels and human trafficking,” Pechenuk said.
The mayor of Oakland does not have the ability to do these things, which are the responsibilities of federal law enforcement and regulators.
To hire more police, Pechenuk said the city should stop funding “woke programs.” Asked for an example of an organization that shouldn’t be receiving city funding, Pechenuk cited a group that helps protect coral reef ecosystems around the world. This nonprofit group is based in Oakland, but it does not appear to receive funding from the city, according to its financial records.
Pechenuk touted her economic plan as part of the solution to homelessness and unaffordable housing, but acknowledged there needs to be more support for people living on the streets who are suffering from addiction and mental illness. She also said the cost of living is too high in Oakland.
“I believe we got to have a fight with the developers and real estate markets because there’s no reason for it to be out of the price range of an average person to have a decent place to live,” Pechenuk said.
To ensure an honest government, Pechenuk would have an open-door policy as mayor and put out a statement three or four times a week about the work her office was doing.
“I don’t believe in pay-to-play, I don’t believe in taking money to get ahead,” Pechenuk said. “I think that business and racket, which goes on among most political leaders, has to stop.”
Mindy Pechenuk’s campaign website.
Suz Robinson
Robinson is the vice president of governance for the Bay Area Council, a regional business association and public policy group. She has served as the chair of the board for a nonprofit organization that supports LGBTQAI addiction recovery and HIV programs. Robinson also volunteered with SF Pride’s Community Partner Program.
As mayor, Robinson said she would launch a business competitiveness plan and hire a chief of economic development and housing so Oakland is on even footing with surrounding cities trying to lure companies. She also wants to waive taxes for employers who bring employees back to offices and emulate other cities by offering incentives to developers to build homes. She hopes to transform the city into a “green, clean, new economy” by bringing in companies that specialize in renewable energy, research and development, energy storage, and manufacturing.
“Oakland has a pattern of being San Francisco’s ugly stepsister and waiting around for SF to get up and running,” Robinson said. “We can’t be doing that anymore.”
By increasing revenue, Robinson hopes to be able to hire more police officers.
Like several other candidates, Robinson believes OPD needs to have a less restrictive policy when it comes to vehicle pursuits. She wants the city to let officers pursue people suspected of committing all kinds of felonies and wants to get rid of a rule requiring officers to obtain approval from a supervisor before initiating a chase. Robinson said Chief Floyd Mitchell could make this change but seems to be “operating out of fear” in choosing not to.
A recent investigation by The Oaklandside discovered that Oakland police already engage in a lot of car chases compared to other jurisdictions, but less frequently compared to departments that patrol cities of similar size where crime is high. OPD is also one of the safer police departments regarding pursuits.
Robinson said a lot of people are frustrated with ongoing federal oversight of OPD, but she’s reserving judgment until she has a chance to meet the federal monitor and see how the oversight is working. However, Robinson is concerned about the Police Commission, where she’s witnessed high turnover and in-fighting. She said the city may need to rethink its approach to police discipline.
“I think that with the hyper-focus on discipline, we’re crossing wires with that, because there’s mentoring and coaching, and then there’s discipline,” Robinson said. “When you lump everything into discipline, it can create an environment where everything you do is wrong.”
Last year, a federal judge ordered OPD to restructure itself so internal affairs repairs directly to the police chief. The judge gave this directive because the department failed to adequately discipline officers for breaking rules and allegedly committing crimes, including an officer who allegedly bribed a witness in a murder trial that led to two convictions.
The housing-first approach to homelessness is “not really the best policy” when it comes to getting people off the street, Robinson said. She wants Oakland and Alameda County to adopt a model used in Nevada and Texas where cities have created campuses to house and serve homeless residents in one location.
“I think it’s a tremendous opportunity,” Robinson said. “Because we can’t keep standing around leaving people like this — I just won’t allow this.”
Robinson wants to release quarterly reports to residents about the city’s progress in meeting project goals.
“One thing I believe in passionately is systems management,” Robinson said. “When you build a system where a person’s ability to win depends on other agencies and entities’ ability to win, you suddenly have people working together.”
Suz Robinson’s campaign website.
Eric Simpson
Simpson is a machine operator at a chocolate factory and a member of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union. He is also part of the Socialist Workers Party, which describes itself as a party of working people “in opposition to the parties of the bosses — the Democrats and Republicans.” He recently helped support a strike by union members against Milk-Bone in Buffalo, New York, and Unite Here hotel workers who organized a strike in San Francisco.
Simpson said his group doesn’t normally run candidates in local campaigns, but recent strikes across the Bay Area have encouraged them to take a stab at it.
“A lot of people are getting fed up, and there’s a big openness to socialist ideas and working-class ideas,” Simpson said.
Simpson said he doesn’t have a specific answer for how to fix Oakland’s budget. Generally, he would like to see working people mobilize for a massive federal jobs program and for wages to be protected against inflation. He also believes the city’s financial situation has made more difficult because of its obligations to bondholders and big businesses.
“If we really want to get somewhere, we have to be on a different course,” Simpson said. “Because the course of accommodation doesn’t work.”
He said he doesn’t have a “utopian” view of public safety. He disagrees with the concept of defunding the police, but he also expressed concern with the bulk of Oakland’s general purpose fund going to police and fire.
Asked about homelessness, Simpson said people are struggling to survive because of broader economic crises and wage stagnation. He said Cuba is an example of a country that, even with limited resources, was able to dramatically reduce homelessness during the early years of its revolution.
Simpson sees revolution as the answer to Oakland — and America’s — most pressing problems.
“You might say, well, why is he talking about a revolution, because you can’t have a revolution in Oakland,” Simpson said. “But we think a socialist revolution is possible in the U.S.”
He doesn’t think anybody really trusts politicians or the current capitalist-based political system. If elected as mayor, Simpson said he would try to launch a new social movement.
“We want to use any elected post we have as an organizing center for the working class,” Simpson said. “(We’d) invite the working class in, invite immigrant workers in, to take over and use city resources to create a social movement that unites the working class.”
Elizabeth Swaney
Swaney is a former Olympic skier who currently works as a standup comedian and producer, barista, and as a SAG-AFTRA stuntwoman. She touts her colorful resume as a strength because it’s taught her how to connect with people and create strong teams. On her campaign website, her platform is boiled down to an acrostic spelling “OAKLAND.”
In a recent interview, Swaney stressed the need for an audit of Oakland’s finances and said she wants to prioritize essential services.
To increase revenue, she wants to let private companies buy the naming rights to city properties, including City Hall. Swaney also suggested the city could partner with a company like Open AI to develop the former Oakland Army Base.
Much of the former Army Base has already been developed or is in contract to be built on by private companies like Prologis, California Waste Solutions, and the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal.
Swaney, who said she has never registered to vote with a political party preference, said with enough communication, “we can work toward a place where there’s understanding and respect, even more so, between Oakland and the federal government.”
She said she would try to ensure adequate funding for law enforcement and violence prevention programs, plus mental health crisis teams. Swaney said she knows firsthand the city has barriers to hiring police because she’s applied to be on the force — twice. Swaney said her application didn’t move forward for “administrative” reasons.
Swaney believes Oakland should build its supply of affordable housing through public-private partnerships and by investing more in mixed-used development. She acknowledged that Oakland needs to improve its existing roads. But she wants to see the city expand transit services in unusual ways.
“One creative idea I have is to have some aerial gondolas in the city, maybe even going to San Francisco,” said Swaney.
It’s unclear how much gondolas like this would cost, but the eastern span of the Bay Bridge, which was completed in 2013, cost $6.4 billion.
She also suggested the city could partner with a company — she again used the example of Open AI — to map potholes in Oakland and figure out how to fill them.
Swaney also wants to implement tax incentives to boost the film industry in Oakland — an idea floated by the previous mayor that crashed last year due to the budget crunch.
Swaney said she would make city data “more transparent and accessible” and encourage feedback from residents.
“There are some great leaders in Oakland, but Oakland needs fresh leadership,” Swaney said. “So I think it’s just, why not (run) now?”
Elizabeth Swaney’s campaign website.
Loren Taylor
Taylor is a former Oakland City Councilmember who represented District 6. He also ran for mayor in 2022 narrowly losing to Thao.
Taylor has worked as a business management consultant. He is currently a board member of 100 Black Men of the Bay Area. In 2023 he founded an organization called Empower Oakland, which endorses candidates for city office and produces voter guides.
Taylor said there isn’t a silver bullet to fix Oakland’s budget crisis and that the city must make “tough, hard, necessary choices” to balance revenue with expenses. He believes the city needs to refinance its debt and reevaluate its pension liabilities. Oakland’s current total pension liabilities were around $2 billion in 2024. In the budget adopted by the council last July, Oakland’s debt payments totaled $190 million.
As mayor, he would propose a system where every office, including the mayor, has stated annual goals. Regular updates would be published so residents can track their progress.
Taylor also wants to change the City Charter to create a city controller with some power over the budget and Oakland’s financial policies. Oakland’s current budget-setting system has “left us in a place where we allow for not only unsound financial decisions, but we also allow for corruption to take place,” Taylor said.
Like other candidates, Taylor would continue supporting the Ceasefire program. He also wants to increase the number of police officers to 800 and speed up 911 response times.
Adding 100 officers to OPD’s ranks would be expensive. At an estimated cost of $250,000 per officer per year, it would take at least $25 million to add 100 officers, not counting the cost of police academies to train them and other expenses.
And helping OPD fulfill the negotiated settlement agreement — its federal court-ordered reforms — is a priority.
“It’s a small number of items on the overall NSA checklist that we need to come into compliance on, and we have got to be laser-focused on that,” Tylor said. “We can’t simply allow the finish line to keep getting removed further and further away.”
Taylor said he supports civilianizing OPD’s Internal Affairs Division — a move promoted several years ago during Oakland’s broader police reform discussions, and one that former Mayor Sheng Thao intended to implement in her first budget but which was scrapped as the budget situation got worse and police department backslid on some reforms.
“This is the exact moment where we should look at how we consolidate to have one agency as opposed to redundant efforts that cost twice as much in order to get things done,” Taylor said.
Taylor said he believes solving homelessness means getting people housed. That means building more housing of all types in all Oakland neighborhoods. One of his proposals to expedite development is a “shot clock” for the city when it comes to the planning and permitting for projects. This would require city staff to hand out permits much faster.
Taylor also said he will prioritize fully implementing Oakland’s encampment management policy.
“I definitely intend to make sure we clear unsafe encampments, those that are in the designated no-encampment zones, while also supporting those that remain in areas that are permitted and allowed to make sure they are safe,” he said.
Taylor, who has frequently referred to Sheng Thao’s indictment during this campaign, said that “backroom deals have to end.” As mayor, Taylor said he will be much more transparent than his predecessor about who he is meeting and what is being discussed in his office. He also plans to crack down on unregistered lobbying and ensure that Oakland is funding the Public Ethics Commission “more effectively.”
In addition to all that, Taylor said he plans on “just being much more available to residents and other stakeholders.”
“It takes being hands-on, being in the community, just like I was for the four years I was on the council.”
Loren Taylor’s campaign website.
Renia Webb
Webb is an educator at Crocker Highlands Elementary School and a member of the school’s PTA board. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Dorothy Lee Guillory Hall Foundation, a small charitable fund. Previously, Webb served as chief of staff to Sheng Thao when she was a member of the Oakland City Council.
Webb obtained notoriety last year when she spoke to the media, saying she had blown the whistle on corruption by her former boss. She claimed Thao and others around her were taking bribes and promising appointments to city boards and commissions. Webb said she’d spoken with the FBI about Thao.
Thao, her partner Andre Jones, and David and Andy Duong of California Waste Solutions were indicted by a federal grand jury in January, accused of a bribery scheme to help secure lucrative contracts for the Duongs and others.
Webb told The Oaklandside in an interview that she’s done her part to make the city more transparent and accountable by “having the courage to speak up against the corruption that has plagued Oakland” in recent years.
However, the East Bay Times raised questions about the credibility of some of Webb’s claims in a story last month. Webb, according to the newspaper, has said that Thao’s boyfriend Jones had tried poisoning her and her child and that someone had broken into her home and peed on her from the ceiling, among other strange claims. The article reported that an FBI agent who Webb said had warned her about the investigation was not actually with the FBI, and said he had never met with Webb.
Webb continues to stand behind her claims and criticized The Oaklandside at our recent mayoral campaign forum for asking her to respond to the East Bay Times story.
In our most recent interview with her, Webb said that if she were mayor, her first order of business would be “hiring an independent auditor to take a deep dive in Oakland’s budget — an idea shared by several other candidates. Webb also said she’s heard a lot of concern from community members about some city workers receiving high salaries.
“We need to deal with these things, perhaps negotiate salaries, and negotiate operations of departments, and see where we can cut money, not to services,” Webb said.
Webb would like the city to hire 900 police officers by 2028, which she believes is “very doable” with three academies per year for the next three years. However, Oakland cut two academies this year to help balance the budget and it’s unclear how many academies the city will be able to afford in the next budget. Two hundred additional police could cost Oakland upwards of $50 million per year to employ.
Asked how she would finance her public safety goals, Webb said she “is going to go find the money.” As an example, she cited a proposal floated by a retired police officer working for Northeastern University to set up a campus police department. There are a lot of questions about this plan, and it’s unclear if it’s moving forward.
Webb added that she wants to change the culture around policing in Oakland because, “Who wants to patrol the community where they’re not wanted?”
To address housing and homelessness, Webb wants to continue investments in affordable housing and wraparound services. She said Alameda County is doing “a fantastic job” purchasing old hotels and transforming them into housing.
She wants to use existing money from ballot measures and bonds to pay for road paving and other infrastructure projects. She believes it’s important to fix problems like potholes before they cost the city more money in the form of lawsuits.
“If we fix it right on the front end, we stop Band-Aiding holes, and we don’t have a problem in the long run,” Webb said
As mayor, Webb said she would have community meetings on a quarterly basis as well as office hours, which she will also encourage councilmembers to do.
“None of the candidates deserves to be mayor as I do,” Webb said. “And when I say deserve, I say that because I’ve literally dedicated my life and professional career and volunteer career to Oakland.”
Renia Webb’s campaign website.
ELI WOLFE
Eli Wolfe reports on City Hall for The Oaklandside. He was previously a senior reporter for San José Spotlight, where he had a beat covering Santa Clara County’s government and transportation. He also worked as an investigative reporter for the Pasadena-based newsroom FairWarning, where he covered labor, consumer protection and transportation issues. He started his journalism career as a freelancer based out of Berkeley. Eli’s stories have appeared in The Atlantic, NBCNews.com, Salon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. Eli graduated from UC Santa Cruz and grew up in San Francisco.More by Eli Wolfe
