OAKLAND — Breaking away from other prominent East Bay Democrats, retired Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley became the second former leader this past week to call for their successor to be yanked from office during the Nov. 5 election.
O’Malley’s endorsement of the recall campaign targeting current District Attorney Pamela Price came just days after former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf threw her support behind the bid to remove first-term Mayor Sheng Thao from office.
Political observers on Wednesday said the two announcements by the moderate Democrats appeared to signal unusual rancor among the local party, as well as a potential failure by Price and Thao to consolidate power and support after taking office. Now, the contentious recall elections have transcended ordinary policy disagreements into a deeper, more personal fight, said Dan Schnur, a political analyst and a continuing lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.
“This is pretty rare,” said Schnur, of the statements by O’Malley and Schaaf. “Under more conventional circumstances, these types of differences would stay behind closed doors. But a recall has a habit of forcing them out into the public.”
On Wednesday, O’Malley called Price’s handling of the job “heartbreaking,” while accusing Price of intimidating political opponents and lying about O’Malley’s administration. It was a marked departure for the former district attorney of 12 years, who has largely avoided speaking publicly after endorsing Price’s opponent during the 2022 election.
“She is not qualified nor competent to hold that position,” said O’Malley, who was the county’s top prosecutor from 2010 to 2022. She added that Price “has taken this district attorney’s office to a place where it cannot function under her leadership.”
O’Malley’s sudden entry into the crosshairs of a messy election cycle came just days after former Schaaf similarly stepped into the recall battle facing her successor, Thao. In an interview with KQED, she said Thao is “not capable of growing into the job.”
“I am voting to recall Mayor Thao because Oakland can’t afford another two years of continued damage to our fiscal solvency and our public safety,” Schaaf told the news outlet.
Until last week, statements from other longtime local Democrats, including Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, have largely been more subdued, while taking aim at the recall process itself and calling such campaigns “undemocratic, costly, and chaotic.”
“Now is the time for us to come together and work to address the real and serious issues facing our communities,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, while adding that recalls “prevent our officials from governing and deplete badly needed resources from our communities.”
“I oppose them on principle,” added state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, in a post on X. “Except in rare circumstances of serious misconduct, recalls are undemocratic and a waste of public funds.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Castro Valley, proved a notable exception over the past several months, having endorsed the recall against Price while chiding her on X to “Tweet less. Prosecute more.”
Within hours of O’Malley’s statements, Price responded by chastising the former DA for the “harm” she caused the district attorney’s office while in power.
Price suggested that O’Malley timed her announcement to preempt Price’s own press conference Wednesday afternoon, during which Price claimed a former prosecutor who is now a judge appeared to cover up an alleged practice by Alameda County prosecutors of trying to keep Jewish and Black residents off juries in death penalty cases. The alleged cover-up happened in 2004, while O’Malley was a top prosecutor under former District Attorney Tom Orloff.
“Nancy O’Malley represents the last desperate attempt to go back to a time when police officers and police unions controlled this office,” Price said.
Price has routinely railed against O’Malley at press conferences and public meetings, claiming to have inherited a “hot mess” when she took office. Recently, she blamed O’Malley’s for an allegedly outdated data management system and a backlog of misdemeanor cases that has imperiled more than 1,000 prosecutions.
Thao’s campaign, meanwhile, criticized the wealthy financial backers of the recall effort targeting her. They also pointed to a $21,000 settlement this month between Schaaf and the city Public Ethics Commission over allegations she privately controlled a political committee that targeted her opponents.
“If she was willing to do that, it’s no surprise that she’s also involved in the toxic recall campaign,” Thao’s campaign said in a statement.
The Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday released portions of a poll conducted by the Oakland firm FM3 Research that indicated 64% of local voters lean toward removing Thao, while only 31% lean the other way.
The poll, which sampled 720 voters with a 3.7% margin of error, reflected slight improvement for the mayor from an August poll by David Binder Research that showed 69% of likely Oakland voters calling her unfavorable.
The two endorsements portend a difficult fight for Price and Thao to remain in office — particularly for Oakland’s mayor, who won office in 2022 during a ranked-choice election, said Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. In those contests, voters rank their preferred candidates, meaning that a candidate can win despite not having received a majority of votes during the first round of vote tabulation.
“It’s a sign that these politicians have not unified the city’s political leadership behind them,” McDaniel said.
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