OAKLAND — An Oakland City Council candidate's last-minute try to switch party leadership before the deadline to file her campaign has backfired, leaving her off the ballot in any respect in November.
Tonya Love, Councilmember Carroll Fife's chief of staff, had qualified for the overall election to succeed Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan. Her campaign got off to a powerful start after she was certainly one of two candidates within the tightly contested race to receive an endorsement from Kaplan.
But Love withdrew from that contest, aiming to run for town's seventh District seat as a substitute after Councilwoman Treva Reid abruptly announced that she wouldn’t run for re-election.
Because Reid didn’t run, the deadline for candidates to submit and qualify was pushed back to last week, resulting in quite a few last-minute maneuvers by Love and others.
On Friday, town clerk's office said Love didn’t have enough signatures to qualify. Now she is certainly one of a dozen candidates who’ve submitted paperwork but is not going to appear. the vote of 5 November when Oakland voters elect five council members and a brand new city attorney and choose whether or to not recall Mayor Sheng Thao.
Local real estate agent David Newton, the nephew of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton, also did not submit enough signatures for the seventh District seat.
Currently competing within the race for the D7 position are Merida Goolsby, a member of town's rent board and worker of the Oakland Community Land Trust, Marcie Hodge, a former board member of the Peralta Community College District, Ken Houston, who has long led a nonprofit organization dedicated to beautifying and cleansing East Oakland, and Iris Merriouns, chief of staff to Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, who previously worked for Treva Reid and before that for Treva's father, former Councilman D7 Larry Reid.
Fife is running for re-election within the Third District race against Baba Afolabi, who operated a recently closed downtown sports lounge, landlord Michelle Hailey, Shan Hirsch, a homeless and public safety activist, Warren Logan, a transportation policy expert who worked for Mayor Libby Schaaf, and Meron Semedar, a refugee activist and educator.
The boundaries of District 3 include West Oakland, Adams Point and parts of downtown.
The race for District 5, a component of East Oakland that features Fruitvale, Jingletown and Allendale, is between incumbent Noel Gallo, Erin Armstrong, a political adviser to Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley, and restaurant owner Dominic Prado.
County Councilman Dan Kalb will not be in search of re-election. His successors are Edward C. Frank, Len Raphael, an authorized public accountant, and Zac Unger, a firefighter and president of the firefighters' union.
Ten candidates are running to interchange Kaplan: former Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong; Rowena Brown, who works for Assemblywoman Mia Bonta; urban planner and housing activist Shawn Danino; Kanitha Matoury, owner of downtown's Howden Market; Mindy Pechenuk, a Donald Trump supporter and political activist; the Rev. Fabian Robinson; tax consultant and perennial candidate Nancy Sidebotham; victim advocate and hairdresser Selika Thomas; library commissioner Cristina Tostado; and Charlene Wang, an environmental and civil rights activist on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
For the primary time in over a decade, Oakland will elect a brand new city attorney following the retirement of Barbara Parker. Parker has endorsed Assistant City Attorney Ryan Richardson, who’s running against retiring Alameda County Judge Brenda Harbin-Forte.
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