{"id":40672,"date":"2025-03-29T12:35:43","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T19:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=40672"},"modified":"2025-03-29T12:35:44","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T19:35:44","slug":"campaign-notebook-more-on-those-misleading-oakland-campaign-ads-plus-endorsements-and-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/03\/29\/campaign-notebook-more-on-those-misleading-oakland-campaign-ads-plus-endorsements-and-polls\/","title":{"rendered":"Campaign notebook: More on those misleading Oakland campaign ads, plus endorsements and polls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CITY HALL<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barbara Lee\u2019s supporters are now also using a controversial Google ad tactic, and Loren Taylor gets a boost from San Jose\u2019s mayor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by\u00a0Darwin BondGraham<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Eli Wolfe<\/a><\/strong> March 28, 2025 (Oaklandside.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, left, endorsed Loren Taylor for Oakland mayor this week. Credit: Screenshot via Instagram<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With less than three weeks until Oakland\u2019s special election, Barbara Lee and Loren Taylor appear to be in a tight race. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the negative ads are flying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some of this past week\u2019s developments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More about fake news stories and misleading campaign ads<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In an appearance on KQED\u2019s Forum Thursday, Taylor criticized an ad created by an independent group that included a fake Oaklandside news story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never miss a story.<\/strong> Sign up for The Oaklandside\u2019s free daily newsletter.<\/strong>Email<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we reported last week<\/a>, 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\u2019s website and a negative story about Lee. The story was totally fake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI do agree that it\u2019s misleading,\u201d Taylor said about the ad<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s race. One of these ads accused Lee of corruption while linking to a news story that didn\u2019t present any evidence Lee had done anything corrupt. According to a KQED story<\/a>, Taylor\u2019s campaign seems to have shifted tactics. As of today, the campaign\u2019s Google ads now use the original headlines of the news stories they link to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now some supporters of Lee have adopted the tactic. One of the independent pro-Lee committees has started buying Google ads<\/a> and rewriting headlines to urge voters to reject Loren Taylor. When readers click the ad links they go to an East Bay Times editorial<\/a> endorsing Lee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These ads are paid for by the independent committee \u201cSupporters of Barbara Lee for Oakland Mayor 2025,\u201d which is funded by major contributions from the California Nurses Association, IFPTE Local 21, and SEIU Local 1021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor wins big endorsement from San Jose\u2019s mayor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Taylor picked up a big endorsement this week: San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a news conference<\/a> on Thursday in Oakland\u2019s Laurel neighborhood, Mahan told reporters he wants an Oakland leader \u201cwho\u2019s going to be honest and direct with the community when he\u2019s campaigning.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019ve taken aggressive approaches<\/a> to handling homelessness. They also both come from business backgrounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their similarities don\u2019t stop at policy. In photos and videos<\/a> from Thursday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor\u2019s campaign points to polls that show him even with or beating Lee<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Taylor\u2019s camp was jubilant about a pair of polls that they say show Barbara Lee\u2019s lead has vanished with potential voters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent poll<\/a> commissioned by Taylor\u2019s campaign revealed that he\u2019s 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\u2019s campaign said this still represents a major gain compared to last month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday, a poll first reported on by East Bay Insiders<\/a> 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%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barbara Lee\u2019s supporters argue that their own internal surveys conducted by field teams have shown the former congresswoman consistently above<\/a> 56% of high-propensity voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor plans to do an AMA, Lee is having coffee<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of Oakland\u2019s Reddit pages (there are two, it\u2019s a long story<\/a>\u2026) is hosting an AMA next week<\/a> with Loren Taylor. AMAs \u2014 \u201cask me anything\u201d \u2014 are online chats in which anyone can toss out questions that the guest will answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Lee is touring around Oakland for \u201ccoffee and conversation<\/a>\u201d events at venues like Pomella.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley McBride contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DARWIN BONDGRAHAM<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

darwin@oaklandside.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ELI WOLFE<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

eli@oaklandside.org<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eli Wolfe reports on City Hall for The Oaklandside. He was previously a senior reporter for San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight, where he had a beat covering Santa Clara County\u2019s 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\u2019s 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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CITY HALL Barbara Lee\u2019s supporters are now also using a controversial Google ad tactic, and Loren Taylor gets a boost from San Jose\u2019s mayor. by\u00a0Darwin BondGraham\u00a0and\u00a0Eli 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… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40673,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40672\/revisions\/40673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}