The upcoming November election already held high stakes for the future of Oakland’s leadership, with more than half of the City Council seats, the city attorney’s office and a recall of Mayor Sheng Thao all hanging in the balance.
But the decision by three incumbent council members — progressives Rebecca Kaplan and Dan Kalb, plus the more moderate Treva Reid — not to seek re-election has elevated the potential consequences to a level rarely seen on a single city election ballot.
Reid’s surprise withdrawal from the race for East Oakland’s District 7 led to a last-minute scramble by new candidates to enter the race.
When the dust had settled, four names were left: Merika Goolsby, an outspoken progressive who works as a pet-sitter; Marcie Hodge, a moderate who previously served on the Peralta colleges board; Ken Houston, a nonprofit leader who works on city beautification projects; and Iris Merriouns, the chief of staff to Councilmember Janani Ramachandran.
The race for Kalb’s seat in District 1, on the north side of the city, will pit the head of the local firefighters union, Zac Unger, against a local accountant with moderate politics, Len Raphael, and a local baker and parent-teacher group leader, Edward Frank.
The election of the citywide council office being vacated by Kaplan is its own beast, with former Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong heading a crowded 10-candidate race.
Here’s how the races to succeed Kalb and Reid are shaping up:
District 1
Many political observers agree Unger is the likely favorite to win in District 1, which spans areas of North Oakland, including near the Emeryville border and the Rockridge, Piedmont and Grand Lake neighborhoods, plus part of Adams Point above Lake Merritt.
As he tells it, Unger was pursuing a graduate degree in environmental science at UC Berkeley, following a bachelor’s at Brown University, when he saw a bench advertisement for firefighters and “had this desire to be concretely of service — and for adventure.”
Years later, he is now an influential union leader who campaigned strenuously for Mayor Thao’s 2022 election bid, sparking rumors that he would soon afterward be the progressives’ pick for District 1 as Kalb eyed an East Bay state Senate seat.
Unger wants to help the city’s historic budget woes by asking Alameda County to pick up the bill on “a lot of homelessness services and mental-health programs” that Oakland currently funds. The money saved could help the city add 100 police officer positions, he suggested.
He noted that unions in the past have made concessions in labor talks amid financial crises, and suggested this could happen again. And he wants to aggressively pursue the development of thousands of new homes in Rockridge, including in the neighborhood’s BART station parking lot.
Unger’s main ideological opponent, Raphael, said he’s running to put up some fight against Oakland’s progressive succession plan.
The political moderate, a longtime presence on local social-media sites, including Nextdoor, wants 500 new cops and to pay for it by threatening the unions with declaring Chapter 9 bankruptcy if they don’t accept massive labor concessions.
He also wants to pursue pro-police crime legislation that’s similar to San Francisco’s Measure E, which loosened requirements for cops to write up reports on use-of-force incidents and expanded the city’s drone surveillance.
Raphael previously ran for the City Auditor’s office and in 2012 for the District 1 council seat — a race where he garnered just 6% of the vote.
Frank, who runs a small baking business, Ed’s Breads, and participates in a parent-teacher group at Emerson Elementary School, is uninvolved politically and isn’t likely to campaign very hard.
District 7
Treva Reid’s sudden withdrawal from the District 7 race invited a flurry of last-minute entries — including by Merriouns, who worked for 20 years as chief of staff to Treva’s father, Larry Reid, the retired former council member.
The experience could place Merriouns, who now leads Councilmember Ramachandran’s office, in a well-connected position to challenge for District 7, which covers areas of East Oakland near the San Leandro and Alameda borders, including part of the crime-heavy Hegenberger corridor.
Merriouns wants to invest heavily in Oakland’s 911 system, but how that funding could be achieved amid the budget crisis is for an independent auditor of the city’s finances to figure out, she said.
She believes bringing business back to East Oakland — where high-profile closures have gone back at least a decade — will require steady work going to trade conferences.
Her competition could be led by Hodge, a former Peralta Community College District board member whose 2010 mayoral campaign received just 3% voter support, despite heavy financial support from moderate political backers.
Hodge’s mayoral campaign was later dinged for being insufficiently transparent about contributions. Her new council bid is light on policy positions beyond requesting the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office to send extra help to the city’s police.
Ken Houston has been a fixture of Oakland’s politics; in recent years, he made headlines when a chicken he owned made a viral crossing of the Bay Bridge and, later, a pair of goats he put to work for the city’s grazing efforts were mysteriously kidnapped.
The leader of the nonprofit Beautification Council that uses city grants for local graffiti abatement projects, Houston wants the Oakland Police Department to end its no-chase policy in an all-out effort to crack down on crime. His booming charisma and quick-talking manner may lead him to stand out from the pack in more ways than one.
Merika Goolsby, a progressive candidate, mainly works in pet-care and believes the number of police officer positions in Oakland doesn’t need to be increased. Her campaign is just getting off the ground in earnest — much like the rest of her District 7 peers.