Just two years after successfully electing a 37-year-old with no experience outside city government as mayor of Oakland, government unions secured another victory for their preferred candidate this month, ensuring 79-year-old Barbara Lee won’t touch their pensions or force them to show up to work.
That 37-year-old, Sheng Thao, has since been recalled after the FBI indicted her on corruption charges related to the city’s waste management contract. However, that didn’t stop her financial overlords from recruiting Lee to run to replace her this spring.
Lee, who retired from Congress after representing Oakland for over 25 years, never showed any interest in running for mayor before this year. However, after her failed Senate campaign in 2024, she was just the machine politician government unions knew they could depend on after Thao was recalled.
Thao’s 2022 opponent, Loren Taylor, who received a thousand more votes than Thao in the first round before the city’s ranked choice voting scheme threw the election to Thao in the final round, has always been viewed as a threat by government unions.
In this year’s election, Taylor not only said the city’s pension system, which currently requires $130 million on interest alone each year, would have to be “restructured,” but he also said city employees would have to come back to work five days a week.
“One of my Day One rules is to ensure City Hall is open,” Taylor said, noting that city offices were often closed when constituents needed them.
Taylor was one of only two Oakland City Council members who voted against defunding Oakland’s Police Department after the George Floyd riots. He made hiring more officers a key promise of his campaign and even called for less overtime for Oakland’s existing officers so that new officers could be hired with those resources. Thao voted for defunding the police.
“Oaklanders have been an afterthought in a lot of decisions affecting our city,” Taylor said repeatedly during his campaign. “Oakland cannot afford to continue down this path. We are in a crisis, and it’s time for leadership that delivers results, not excuses.”
For the many Oaklanders who are fed up with violent sideshows, ram raids, and homeless encampments, a vote for Taylor was a vote for placing the needs of Oakland residents over the wants of Oakland’s government unions.
OAKLAND’S RANKED CHOICE VOTING DISASTER
But Oakland’s government unions know how to get their voters to the polls, and those voters chose Lee, the status quo, and continued decline.
Things are only going to get worse in Oakland until the power of government unions is broken.