Barbara Lee’s supporters are now also using a controversial Google ad tactic, and Loren Taylor gets a boost from San Jose’s mayor.
by Darwin BondGraham and Eli Wolfe March 28, 2025 (Oaklandside.com)
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, left, endorsed Loren Taylor for Oakland mayor this week. Credit: Screenshot via Instagram
With less than three weeks until Oakland’s special election, Barbara Lee and Loren Taylor appear to be in a tight race.
Both candidates are campaigning hard. Several polls and their latest campaign finance disclosures appear to show a competitive race between the two. The other seven candidates are garnering much less media, funding, and attention from likely voters.
And the negative ads are flying.
Here are some of this past week’s developments.
More about fake news stories and misleading campaign ads
In an appearance on KQED’s Forum Thursday, Taylor criticized an ad created by an independent group that included a fake Oaklandside news story.
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As we reported last week, an independent expenditure committee run by Brenda Grisham, who led the campaign last year to recall DA Pamela Price, published a video ad on social media attacking Barbara Lee. The ad briefly flashed an image of what appears to be The Oaklandside’s website and a negative story about Lee. The story was totally fake.
“I do agree that it’s misleading,” Taylor said about the ad.
Taylor also weighed in on the Google ads his campaign has bought that rewrote the headlines of news stories and placed them high up in search results about Lee and the mayor’s race. One of these ads accused Lee of corruption while linking to a news story that didn’t present any evidence Lee had done anything corrupt. According to a KQED story, Taylor’s campaign seems to have shifted tactics. As of today, the campaign’s Google ads now use the original headlines of the news stories they link to.
But now some supporters of Lee have adopted the tactic. One of the independent pro-Lee committees has started buying Google ads and rewriting headlines to urge voters to reject Loren Taylor. When readers click the ad links they go to an East Bay Times editorial endorsing Lee.
These ads are paid for by the independent committee “Supporters of Barbara Lee for Oakland Mayor 2025,” which is funded by major contributions from the California Nurses Association, IFPTE Local 21, and SEIU Local 1021.
Taylor wins big endorsement from San Jose’s mayor
Taylor picked up a big endorsement this week: San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.
At a news conference on Thursday in Oakland’s Laurel neighborhood, Mahan told reporters he wants an Oakland leader “who’s going to be honest and direct with the community when he’s campaigning.”
Mahan and Taylor are, in some ways, natural allies. Both politicians have cast themselves as pragmatists who favor using performance metrics to track whether government departments are serving residents, and they’ve taken aggressive approaches to handling homelessness. They also both come from business backgrounds.
Their similarities don’t stop at policy. In photos and videos from Thursday’s event, Taylor and Mahan appear to be wearing the exact same outfit: blue suits, white button-down shirts without ties, brown shoes, and brown belts.
Taylor’s campaign points to polls that show him even with or beating Lee
Taylor’s camp was jubilant about a pair of polls that they say show Barbara Lee’s lead has vanished with potential voters.
A recent poll commissioned by Taylor’s campaign revealed that he’s trailing Lee 41% to 45%. The poll, conducted by Blueprint polling, surveyed 854 voters and has a margin of error of 3.35%. But Taylor’s campaign said this still represents a major gain compared to last month.
On Thursday, a poll first reported on by East Bay Insiders found Taylor leading Lee, 45% to 40%. This survey, which was run by EMC Research, was commissioned by an independent expenditure committee supporting Taylor and included phone interviews with 400 likely voters. This poll also found that public safety is the top issue among the respondents, with 42%. Housing and homelessness were a distant second with 19%.
Barbara Lee’s supporters argue that their own internal surveys conducted by field teams have shown the former congresswoman consistently above 56% of high-propensity voters.
Taylor plans to do an AMA, Lee is having coffee
One of Oakland’s Reddit pages (there are two, it’s a long story…) is hosting an AMA next week with Loren Taylor. AMAs — “ask me anything” — are online chats in which anyone can toss out questions that the guest will answer.
Meanwhile, Lee is touring around Oakland for “coffee and conversation” events at venues like Pomella.
Ashley McBride contributed to this report.
DARWIN BONDGRAHAM
Before joining The Oaklandside as News Editor, Darwin BondGraham was a freelance investigative reporter covering police and prosecutorial misconduct. He has reported on gun violence for The Guardian and was a staff writer for the East Bay Express. He holds a doctorate in sociology from UC Santa Barbara and was the co-recipient of the George Polk Award for local reporting in 2017. He is also the co-author of The Riders Come Out at Night, a book examining the Oakland Police Department’s history of corruption and reform.More by Darwin BondGraham
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
