OAKLAND — Efforts to remove Mayor Sheng Thao from office will likely head to the November election after city officials confirmed Tuesday that enough valid signatures have been collected for a recall campaign against the mayor.
Thao, a progressive mayor who took office as town was still struggling to get better from the pandemic, may now be forced to return to campaign mode. The City Council is anticipated to contemplate whether to place the recall on the November ballot during a July 2 meeting.
Earlier this month, recall organizers submitted around 40,000 petitions to town – excess of the 24,644 valid signatures needed to force recent elections.
After sampling a portion of the petitions, the Alameda County elections office estimated last week that the whole batch would exceed 110% of the required threshold, enough to trigger an election without the necessity for a full hand count of signatures.
Organizers of the recall campaign, led by retired District Judge Brenda Grisham and former mayoral candidate Seneca Scott, celebrated the news of the valid signatures on social media.
“Thao's actions have brought Oakland to the brink, but the community is saying, 'STOP IT. We want Thao gone,'” Grisham said in a written statement.
Thao's opponents have pilloried her and other local progressives because they consider she is just too soft on crime and mismanages public funds.
Oakland experienced a devastating increase in crime throughout the pandemic, which is now slowly subsiding: As of Sunday, total crime across town had fallen 33% in comparison with the 2023 annual statistics.
The city, mired in a devastating budget crisis, plans to make use of proceeds from a non-public sale of its share of the Oakland Coliseum property over the subsequent two years to cover its budget deficit – a move that financial experts have criticized as a short-sighted use of long-term funds.
Thao has cited her revival of the Ceasefire strategy, an anti-violence program in Oakland that stalled throughout the pandemic, as a reason behind the recent drop in crime.
She also cited her support of out of doors investment in Oakland as a hit, including by the Ballers, a minor league baseball team founded this yr before the A's left for Las Vegas via the Sacramento region.
Recalls, once a rare political maneuver, have gained traction in California. Voters in Alameda County are in search of to recall District Attorney Pamela Price in November.
Perhaps the largest criticism of Thao comes from supporters of town's former police chief, LeRonne Armstrong, who sued the mayor after she fired him in January of last yr over his response to an internal cover-up scandal involving a police officer's hit-and-run.
Armstrong, who’s currently running for City Council, will likely be one other candidate within the upcoming November election.
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