Price recall campaign to submit 123,000 signatures
Price accused of anti-Asian comments, stifling of public records requests; Loren Taylor's slate hit with nasty messaging; Miley, Esteen make closing arguments; Lee still polling in single digits
ELECTION 2024
1 day to Primary Day
PRICE RECALL
—SUBMISSION DAY—This morning, Safe Alameda For Everyone (SAFE) will submit more than 123,000 signatures, a final step toward placing the recall of Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price on a special election ballot.
—The group will hold a press conference set for 10 a.m. on the steps of the Renee C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland.
—The deadline for SAFE’s recall petition is Tuesday.
—The sheer number of signatures is a show of force by SAFE that almost certainly ensures the recall will be approved by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters.
—At least, 73,195 valid signatures from registered voters in Alameda County is needed for the petition to qualify for a special election, possibly sometime this spring. Under the current county charter, the registrar’s office has 10 days to verify the signatures.
—The recall effort has spent nearly $2 million, primarily through the use of paid signature gatherers.
—TRANSPARENCY, PART I—The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Friday that Price’s office failed for over a year to provide their reporters with data on the number and types of violent crimes her office is prosecuting.
—Price said the delay is due to an overflow of Public Records Act request and an aging records system.
—TRANSPARENCY, PART II—Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price made anti-Asian comments and illegally withheld public records, according a compliant by a former spokesperson, the Berkeley Scanner reports.
—A letter from the attorney of Patti Lee, a spokesperson for the DA’s office who was later fired, said Price viewed the media and Asians as her enemies.
—Lee also alleged that Price withheld Public Records Act requests related to an incident that involved The Scanner’s founder Emilie Raguso. Raguso was barred by Price’s office from attending a press conference last November. Price later called the matter an oversight.
DEMOCRATIC CENTRAL COMMITTEE
—TOXIC TEXT—The East Bay’s bad boy has struck again.
—Voters in the 18th Assembly District received a text message on Saturday depicting the former Oakland councilmember Loren Taylor’s slate of candidates for the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee as a crime family.
—A website included in the text message labels the group of seven candidates for the central committee collectively known as Empower Oakland as the “Oakland Crime Cartel,” and issues old-timey gangster nicknames to each.
—The website falsely describes Taylor as overseeing the defunding of the Oakland Police Department.
—As a councilmember, Taylor opposed proposals to significantly cut the police department’s budget over a two-year period.
—The text message was paid for by California Forward Now, a committee backed by Oakland insider Mario Juarez.
—Juarez, who has twice run for the Oakland City Council, used the same committee to slash at opponents in the recent past.
—California Forward Now sent a similarly brutal mailer to attack Taylor and his campaign for Oakland mayor in 2022. Like last weekend’s missive, the mailer and website was released within days on Election Day, leaving little time for the campaign to issue a robust rebuttal.
—In an email to supporters, Taylor called Juarez, a “fraudulent businessman.”
—“Yesterday, a PAC launched a libelous attack ad on the entire Empower Oakland slate using misspelled lies and photoshopped images,” Taylor said. “It’s almost hilarious, if it wasn’t so insidious and racist.”
—In an interview on Sunday, Juarez denied the graphic accompanying the text message is racist. “The truth is I f—k with whoever f—ks with me,” Juarez said.
Juarez was behind a negative mailer sent in 2022 against Ignacio De La Fuente’s Oakland mayoral campaign, he said. Juarez and De La Fuente are famously bitter enemies.
—Juarez also led a recall effort against then-Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf late in her second term, he added.
—The 2022 mailers attacking Taylor and De La Fuente, however, put Juarez in legal jeopardy last January after the Alameda County District Attorney’s office charged him with a felony for allegedly passing $53,000 in bad checks to the direct marketing company that sent the negative mailers.
—In addition to settling a political score, Juarez has another reason for aiming to defeat Taylor’s bid for the central committee. Juarez is also a candidate for one of the 18th District’s 10 seats on the central committee. Juarezmis unaligned with a slate.
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