Money pours into Oakland City Council race overshadowed by mayoral election

OAKLAND — The special election Tuesday to find Oakland a new mayor will also fill a vacancy in one of the city’s most diverse council districts, a race that has flown relatively under the radar despite heavy spending to back its leading candidates.

Voter turnout in the April 15 election has so far been low in a city distracted by a Trump administration that is antagonistic toward Oakland’s politics, as well as by fallout from the felony corruption case involving ex-Mayor Sheng Thao.

But the top two candidates who may fill the District 2 Oakland City Council seat — which spans Chinatown, Jack London Square and areas near Lake Merritt, including the Eastlake and San Antonio neighborhoods — appear locked in a dead heat.

Kara Murray-Badal, a third-generation Oaklander and Harvard-educated housing policy analyst who pledges more affordable housing, has spent $64,000 raised from campaign donations.

Charlene Wang, a fellow policy analyst who mostly worked in Washington, D.C. over the past decade, has so far outspent Murray-Badal, with over $74,000 in campaign expenditures.

But it is Murray-Badal in control of the more meaningful battleground of Oakland elections — political committees independent of campaigns with no limits on how much they can spend.

Through such committees, labor unions supporting Murray-Badal, whose public-safety pitch hews noticeably to the left of her competitors, have disbursed over $302,000 on the race, not far off what they have spent to support mayoral candidate Barbara Lee.

Public-employee labor unions such as SEIU 1021 and IFPTE Local 21 often spend big on the city’s elections, but the money has gained particular attention this time around as Oakland’s leaders weigh the prospect of layoffs to address a perilous budget crisis.

Wang has $106,000 in independent support, the majority of it from Empower Oakland, a nonprofit co-founded by mayoral candidate Loren Taylor that has emerged as a formidable funding arm in the city’s politics.

One of its largest individual donors this election cycle is Chris Larsen, a wealthy tech investor who founded a large cryptocurrency company. He donated $100,000 to Empower.

Murray-Badal and Wang have somewhat similar backgrounds: both are in their mid-30s, well-educated, deeply curious about policy and prone to speaking diplomatically about Oakland’s problems.

Wang, though, has occupied a firmer stance on hiring as many police officers as possible, while Murray-Badal echoes a policy view more common among labor-backed candidates — that police funding must be accompanied by investments in Oakland’s MACRO program, a civilian force that responds to non-emergency and quality-of-life calls.

“I meet well-intentioned progressive folks,” Wang said in a recent interview, “but I just wish that people would get off their in-built belief systems. Every time I go into the most working-class neighborhoods, everyone talks about needing more police. I’m just like, ‘The folks here need a voice.'”

Murray-Badal, for her part, said she doesn’t disagree with prioritizing officer hires, even amid a $140 million budget deficit that the new councilmember would likely need to help solve.

“Nuance is not a good sound bite,” she said in an interview.

Whoever is elected would fill the council spot left behind by Nikki Fortunato Bas, a champion of labor politics who was elected as an Alameda County supervisor last November.

Areas of District 2 have struggled to recover from the pandemic, which dealt economic blows to Chinatown and Jack London Square while worsening crime and human-trafficking in the city’s San Antonio neighborhood.

In recent months, the eight-member council has appeared more cohesive in policy discussions — often reaching consensus in pushing back on the decisions of the city’s more fiscally conservative finance department.

Other candidates in the District 2 race could play a significant role in shaping its outcome through the city’s ranked-choice system, which allows voters to list their preferred candidates and distributes votes between the top vote-getters until someone wins a majority.

Harold Lowe, a financial planner who takes a hardline view on policing, seems to align more closely with Wang than with Murray-Badal. But Lowe has spoken dismissively in interviews about Wang’s understanding of the city, noting that she only began living here in 2023.

Kanitha Matoury lives in Chinatown and runs downtown’s Howden Market, which she said has encountered numerous break-ins.

The two candidates’ tough-on-crime approach has won them sympathy: Lowe has spent $20,000 and seen over $24,000 in independent spending, while Matoury has spending totals of $15,000 and $17,000 in those categories, respectively.

Wang, who graduated from high school in Moraga, has built a strong ground game in Oakland after running last year for the at-large council seat, which may give her a needed boost in a race that marks Murray-Badal’s entry to the city’s political scene.

Both she and Murray-Badal have stressed their affinity for collaboration. But in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election, their supporters have distributed materials that contain pointed references to the money pouring in to support each of their campaigns.

“Unions have a lot of money — I’m pragmatic about that,” Murray-Badal said. “But I don’t think what we want on the other end is billionaires, tech bros and crypto.”

Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at shomik@bayareanewsgroup.com.