Oakland – Loren Taylor, the former councilor whose promise of a more pragmatic leadership helped him measure against the political power of the city’s unions, took Congresswoman withdrawal Barbara Lee in a race to become the next Mayland of Oakland.
Charlene Wang maintained the early advantage to fill a vacancy at the Oakland City Council, while the first yields of the elections showed voters favoring a sales tax measure that could relieve the city’s financial crisis.
The initial results represented just under 45,000 ballots by voter mail throughout the city, or 18% or registered voters. Thousands of more votes, including those found in the voting places, should still be counted on the night of the elections and in the coming days.
The special election marked the culmination of a five -month transition period for Oakland, where 60% of voters eliminated the former Sheng Thao scope of the position last November. Two council members have filled subcontrol from the office interim.
Whoever wins the Tuesday will complete the Thao mandate until November 2026.
Taylor, who lost little before Thao in the 2022 elections, would complete his mandate until November 2026 if he is chosen on Lee, a progressive and veteran icon of Congress whose political severity had a very strong leg for any challenger.
The two were widely seen as a favorite in the race of 10 candidates, where no other candidate had obtained 2% of the votes in the first returns.
Wang, a policy analyst, directed a package of six candidates in the City Council race, who saw his partner policy analyst and opponent of the workers Kara Murray-Badal in second place and the financial analyst Harold Lowe in third place.
The winner would occupy the council seat in District 2, covered by Chinatown, Jack London Square and areas near Lake Merritt, including the Eastlake and San Antonio neighborhood.
The office was at stake after Nikki Fortunato Bas left the Council to become a Alameda County Supervisor after last November elections.
The mayor’s career carried high bets, with hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by unions that backed Lee and for rich technology and finance that support Taylor.
However, the electoral participation had a low leg before Tuesday: a signal, perhaps, or fatigue of voters from a rapid change between the elections and the spectrum of the case of corruption serious crime of Tao that is coming over the City Council.
Taylor made clear his intention to run again for the mayor long before Thao’s retirement election, while the rumors that Lee’s candidacy turned even before the elimination of the former scope became official.
The exaggeration of the former congressman was so strong that several possible candidates left the consultation as soon as he entered the race. Taylor, he thought, the continued campaign: an impulse reflected in the surveys that indicated that the race was tight.
Lee promised to unify work and businesses in a city that deeply grew the tenure of Thao, while Taylor promised to carry a demolition ball to a government that described as fundamentally broken.
Each tried to represent the other as the choice of the establishment, with Lee collecting generalized political backups when he was again a full -time Oakland resident after 26 years legislating in Washington, DC
Lee’s supporters, in turn, painted Taylor as a “partial town hall source” to the blame of the dangerous budget deficit of the city.
Taylor, who fulfilled a four -year council mandate until 2022, was more interested in mentioning his background as a business consultant and biomedical engineer. He did not avoid his alliances in the technological world, which recently began to spend large in the elections of the Bay area.
Lee and Taylor did not disagree with many specific policies in the city, in addition to whether layoffs would be an option to resolve the city’s budget deficit.
Taylor promised that “difficult decisions” could make, including workers’ cuts. Lee called Slashing Jobs a “last resort.”
Due to time, who wins at best a support role in proposing the next two -year budget process of the city, a process mainly led by Councilor Kevin Jenkins, who has completed himself as an interim mayor of Oakland.
The city leaders urged voters to approve in the elections on Tuesday a new tax, measure A, which would add 0.5% to the cost of each good sold locally, place Oakland along with the highest sales tax rate of any city in California.
The tax was expected to generate $ 20 million annually, helping the city to recover a deficit of $ 140 million that the voice of public expenses exceed local income.
The council race in District 2 saw large amounts of expenses for Murray-Badal and Wang, who splashed on the police personnel for areas of the city that fight to completely recover from a wave duration of the crime, the coronavirus pandemic.
Oakland Employys classified the election vote, allowing voters to order their favorite candidates and transfers votes between candidates until some wines are the majority.
The results of the classification option were expected to be available for the end of Tuesday night, although they only provide a sample of the electoral results with many more ballots to be counted.
County electoral officials said that the next set of results, after the night of the elections, would probably be released on Friday.
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter that covers Oakland. Call it or send a text message to 510-905-5495 or send an email to shomik@bayareenewsgroup.com.
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