OAKLAND — On a recent Saturday in March, several hundred people filled the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland for a quintessential party to honor longtime Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee.
Oakland’s Youth Poet Laureate Ella Gordon recited a powerful poem about the magic of living in the diverse East Bay city, while performances from Destiny Muhammad, a.k.a. the Harpist from the Hood, and young dancers in the African Queens Dance Company ignited the venue with the kind of soulful, grassroots energy for which this town is renowned.
Lee, 78, left Washington, D.C., in January after losing her bid for Senate in last year’s primary to fellow Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who went on to win the seat in November. The loss seemed a muffled conclusion to her nearly three decades in Congress, where her antiwar positions and support for civil rights made her a hometown hero back in Oakland.
The March 8 event was no retirement party, however, but a major fundraiser for Lee’s next venture: running for Oakland mayor.
In a twist of fate that could end up re-energizing Lee’s political career, Oakland found itself in need of a new chief executive after voters in November recalled Mayor Sheng Thao. The ouster underscored residents’ frustrations with brazen street crime, sprawling tent cities and a general sense that Thao, a progressive elected in 2022, didn’t have solutions.
Further clouding her exit: Federal officials in January announced that Thao had been indicted on bribery charges, along with her boyfriend and a father-son team who run the company that provides Oakland’s recycling services, alleging a corruption scheme involving cash payments and campaign support in exchange for city contracts. All four defendants have pleaded not guilty.
In the decade leading up to the pandemic, Oakland had emerged as a popular alternative to San Francisco, with a youthful downtown, more affordable housing and high-energy nightlife. But the city has struggled to recover from the COVID-era shutdowns. A surge in property crimes and “smash-and-grab” robberies drove some high-profile businesses to leave town. Between 2022 and 2024, the number of people living on the streets, in vehicles or abandoned buildings increased by 10%. In 2023, homicides topped 100 for the fourth consecutive year.
So, for her army of avid devotees, it was a profound relief when Lee announced in early January that she would run for mayor in the April 15 special election.
“I’m always ready to fight for Oakland,” Lee said in announcing her bid.
Her campaign has been endorsed by a broad coalition of elected officials, business groups, labor unions and faith leaders who maintain she is the right woman for the moment, with the conviction and experience needed to unify residents.
“We need her. She doesn’t need us,” Interim Mayor Kevin Jenkins told the crowd at the March event.
“I’m always ready to fight for Oakland,” former U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee said in announcing she was running for mayor.
(Loren Elliott / For The Times)
Lee’s entrance into the race helped thin what what had been a crowded field of candidates considering a run. Many expected Lee would have an easy path to victory. Why stand in her way?
But punching at that mindset is Loren Taylor, a moderate Democrat who represented portions of East Oakland for four years on the City Council before narrowly losing to Thao in the 2022 mayoral election. Though nine candidates in total remain in the race, only Taylor has emerged as a formidable challenger to Lee.
Taylor, a 47-year-old business management consultant with a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, has attracted widespread support, including from the business community and among tech entrepreneurs, for his focus on public safety and bringing good governance back to Oakland.
“We have a lot of things that need to be fixed, and need to be fixed immediately,” Taylor said at a recent debate.
Their candidacies present voters with a provocative choice: Should Oaklanders choose a seasoned public servant who delivered for the district during her decades in the nation’s capital? Or a scrappy politician 31 years her junior who is immersed in local issues and knows the inner workings of City Hall?
Underscoring their differences are the slogans each has chosen: Lee promotes herself as someone who can “unify” Oakland. Taylor says his aim is to “fix” what’s broken.
When Lee declared her candidacy, Taylor figured he had two options.
The first was to listen to the slew of people who tried to persuade him to stand down, Taylor said in a February interview: “Basically wait my turn and allow for her to slide into this seat.”
The second was to buck the naysayers and stay in the race. “All right, if she’s in, it’ll be tough,” he said of his thinking. “But also, if she’s in, is that really what’s best for Oakland?”
Both Taylor and Lee have vowed to make fighting crime a priority, as well as helping the estimated 5,400 homeless people in Oakland find shelter and housing. They’ve pledged to rein in government spending in the face of a budget deficit. And they’ve touted policies to increase transparency as a way to rebuild public trust.
But Taylor argues there are differences that separate the two. For one, they come from different generations. Though both are Democrats, Taylor describes himself as more moderate and doesn’t shy from a pro-law enforcement stance, saying the city needs to hire more than 100 more police officers.
He’ll often say Lee was a great member of Congress — but one of 435 members in the House. In contrast, he said, he knows the hustle and grind of being a local official in it for the long slog. He’s targeted Lee’s refusal to say publicly whether she plans to run for reelection in 2026.
“I think the question that needs to be asked is, all right, do we want a 78-year-old career politician who has not shown a history of making the hard, difficult decisions?” he said. “Or do we want a 47-year-old political outsider who has been on the ground, working within City Hall, across multiple stakeholder groups, demonstrating the ability to solve these difficult problems, and is committed to being here beyond just 20 months?”
Lee told The Times this month that her decision to run for reelection would be up to the voters, and whether they think she has done a good enough job. Taylor’s criticism has incensed her supporters, who say he is disrespecting one of Oakland’s heroes.
“For no real reason, our congresswoman is under attack when she is doing a sacrificial thing,” City Councilmember Carroll Fife said at the March event. “This is Barbara Lee. Put some respect on her name.”
“I’ve watched her do things that very few politicians can do,” U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon, a Democrat who was elected to Lee’s former seat in November, added in a recent phone interview from Washington. “Barbara can pick up the phone and call to get through to everyone.”
Simon noted the hundreds of millions of dollars in funding Lee brought to the district from Washington, and how she was willing to work across the aisle with Republicans and bring together labor and business for negotiations. She’s championed policies that targeted racism, sexism, poverty and labor exploitation, values that stemmed from her experience as a Black Panther activist and her educational training at Mills College and UC Berkeley.
“Oakland is in a crisis,” Simon said. “This is not a job-training opportunity. You need someone with local, state, regional, national and international relationships with other lawmakers, the public and private sectors, to get things in shape.”
Does enraging Lee’s backers — who span influential interest groups — worry Taylor?
“I did not get into this public service role to play it safe and to make half commitments to my city,” he said. “I think that’s one of the problems that we have, is that too many people are factoring their own political career instead of what’s best for the constituents that they are serving.”
Taylor’s boldness has earned him respect among Oaklanders who want to see a more aggressive approach to the city’s problems.
“He’s pragmatic about delivering results, not just the ‘blah blah blah,’” said former City Councilmember Patricia Kernighan. “He already is steeped in these issues, he knows what the facts are. He knows all the players. It’s crunch time.”
“It’s a very liberal city, which is good, but sometimes it causes folks to lose sight of common sense,” said Bob Cross, one of about two dozen people who spent a recent Sunday door-knocking for Taylor. “Barbara Lee has done a good job in Washington. But she has never been part of city government.”
Taylor has surprised his skeptics after gaining momentum in recent weeks. In early March, he reported a slight fundraising lead compared to Lee. Mid-month, his campaign released a poll showing he’s on track to garner 41% of first-place votes compared to Lee’s 45%. (Oakland utilizes a ranked-choice voting system that allows voters to select multiple candidates by order of preference.)
Still, it’s no easy feat to run against a woman who has won more than a dozen races, most of them by wide margins. During her last congressional campaign in 2022, Lee won with more than 90% of the vote.
During a Sunday in mid-March, Taylor worked his way down a row of cozy homes in east Oakland on a door-knocking mission to whip up votes. He paused to introduce himself to an older man out walking his dogs.
The man listened before politely telling Taylor he was going to vote for Lee.
“I’ve been voting for her for years,” he said. Taylor nodded, smiling patiently. “I’ve voted for Barbara Lee as well,” he responded. But what Oakland needs right now, he explained, is someone with a track record on local issues.
“You’re high up on my list. You’re in the top two, let’s say,” the man responded. “Obviously you won’t be a bad choice.”
“I did not get into this public service role to play it safe and to make half commitments to my city,” Loren Taylor said of his decision to run for Oakland mayor.
(Yalonda M. James / San Francisco Chronicle)
It was the same at a house down the street with a “Barbara Lee” sign in the yard. Taylor thought it could still be worth a visit.
The woman who opened the door seemed genuinely excited to see Taylor: “Loren, oh my goodness!” she said. She, too, listened as Taylor launched into his pitch, before issuing her verdict: “Barbara is my girl … I treasure her.”
“You know, I admire you, too, Loren,” she added. He thanked her and turned back down the driveway.
“That is the natural default. Those are the headwinds we are facing,” Taylor said.
But it wasn’t all rejections. One woman hollered at Taylor from across the street and came running down her driveway to talk with him, sharing that she and her husband, a firefighter, planned to vote for him. At another house, a man said Taylor could count on his vote.
In many ways, the March 8 campaign event for Lee was a nod to Taylor’s unexpected strength. Tucked into the speeches lauding Lee’s accomplishments, more than one supporter called out Taylor for having the gall to go after her.
“We need to fight back against attacks on her,” Jenkins, the interim mayor, said to applause.
Lee, capping off the ceremony, stuck to her unity message: “I want us to move forward. And I want us to move forward with a lot of love and a lot of commitment to this city,” she said. “We have our differences of opinion. We come together for one reason, and that’s to make life better for everybody, and I mean everybody.”
For those who criticize her background, her time in Washington, even her age, she isn’t bothered.
“Criticism is fine in a campaign,” she told The Times. “But believe me, I know this city very well. I’ve been a resident here. I live here, and I’ve delivered for this city.”
