Election Day in Oakland
Oakland voters to choose new school boardmember; Price Recall: SAFE receives another big contribution
ELECTION 2024 2023
OAKLAND USD SPECIAL ELECTION
—ALL THAT DESIRE TO VOTE…—Cast your mail-in ballot before 8 p.m. tonight. That is, if you live in the Oakland Unified School District 5 special election.
—If you don’t live in East Oakland, don’t freak out! You didn’t miss anything. Oakland USD is the only race on the Nov. 7 ballot in Alameda County.
—SOME BACKGROUND—The District 5 special election between former school principal Jorge Lerma and community organizer Sasha Ritzie-Hernandez is bathed in a pair of controversies that do not involve either candidate.
—Redistricting in 2021, placed the former District 5 school boardmember Mike Hutchinson into another district. He chose to run in District 4 last year instead.
—Recall that’s the race in which the Alameda County Registrar of Voters incorrectly certified the wrong winner.
—The ranked choice voting snafu ultimately gave the victory to Hutchinson, but after quite some time. The result left District 5 vacant and a special election for Nov. 7.
—But there was more. The city erroneously instructed the special election candidates to collect nomination signatures—the process prior to qualifying for the ballot—from the incorrect district boundaries.
—Since the pair of candidates are seeking to fill the remainder of Hutchinson’s District term, which ends in November 2024, they should have been told to collect signatures from the 2020 boundaries, not the new borders created in 2021.
—THE CANDIDATES—Ritzie-Hernandez is the labor-backed candidate and has received strong support from union Independent Expenditure Committees (IEs).
—The Oakland Education Association PAC has spent $43,000 in support of Ritzie Hernandez, in addition to $23,700 from an IE backed by SEIU Local 1021, along with a last-minute $5,000 digital ad buy by the California Working Families Party on Monday.
—That’s big money for a school board special election, especially when Lerma’s campaign has raised roughly a quarter of that amount and without support from IEs.
—Aside from nearly all the institutional and political support flowing Ritzie-Hernandez’s way, one of the big differences between the candidates is her opposition to closing underperforming Oakland schools. At a forum in September, Lerma said individual schools should be “self-sustaining.”
—This special election would seem to be a cake walk for Ritzie-Hernandez, but this vote-by-mail race is certain to have extremely low turnout.
—In a non-presidential general election, an Oakland school board contest might require, at most, around 8,000 votes for victory. Significantly less numbers are expected to cast a ballot in this odd-year special election and low-turnout often produces unexpected results.
MORE INSIDE:
ELECTION 2024: Another big deposit for the Price recall
CITY NEWS: Hayward elected officials eye big pay raise
Hayward warming center to get a second infusion of cash for the winter
Complaint: Alameda councilmembers are disrespecting CM Spencer
Early discussion for November ballot measures in Alameda
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