Oakland mayoral recall campaign is looming

San Leandro landlords are angry about eviction moratorium extension; Hayward looks to loosen downtown alcohol sales; Another appointment follows Supervisor Valle's death

San Leandro landlords packed the city council chambers on Monday night in opposition to a recently approved one-year extension of its citywide eviction moratorium.

CITY NEWS

OAKLAND

—RECALL ALERT—As I’ve mentioned here several times, recall campaigns, especially very early in new administrations, is foolhardy. You need an explosive narrative and loads of money to pull off a recall campaign that actually make it to a ballot. Nevermind, successfully recalling the elected official.

—But proponents of a recall against Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, including the Oakland NAACP, are biding their time until the 90-day period after Thao’s swearing-in passes to begin their campaign, according to Oakland insiders.

—It’s not anywhere near clear how a recall will be financed. Gathering a large number of valid signatures for a mayoral recall is costly and will likely require paid outside help.

—With sensitive internal city data floating around after the ransomware attack, it’s possible the contents of some of those files may bolster Thao’s decision to fire Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong or, at minimum, further tarnish OPD.

—DATA DUMP—The stakes in Oakland’s debilitating ransomware attack last Feb. 8 were kicked up several notches over the weekend. A hacker group named Play, which launched a high-profile attack on Antwerp, Belgium last year, took credit for the breach, and began releasing sensitive data on the dark web.

—The trove of a reported nine-gigabytes of compressed data files includes private city employee information and police misconduct records.

—The San Francisco Chronicle reports some of the personal information posted to the dark web belongs to Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and former Mayor Libby Schaaf.

—What might come next? There’s a nagging sense the ransomware story may quickly become something entirely different.

—When you match a police department that chronically lacks transparency and a data dump that includes potentially sensitive police misconduct records, there’s a very high probability we’re going to learn damaging information about the Oakland Police Department.

—In fact, the information could be game-changing for Oaklanders who advocate for wholesale change at OPD. But, we’ll see.

MORE INSIDE:

• Libby Schaaf to speak at local Democratic Club

• Abandoned boats in Oakland Estuary get a plan

• Landlords voice more disproval of San Leandro’s moratorium extension

• ‘Dro library naming pulled from consideration

• Hayward want to boost downtown with new alcohol sales regs

• Another Valle appointment process