OAKLAND – The recent survey could have given Barbara Lee a close advantage in the race for the mayor of Oakland, but Loren Taylor holds a slight lead in the money match with less than a week before the election day.
Between his campaign and his independent committees supporting the support, the overall expenses for Taylor are $ 794,000 – which gives him the advantage of funding despite a wave expected to support work in Lee, whose own campaign of campaign and external expenses is just under $ 720,000.
He can take a lot of money from Oakland to compete with the political species of the unions, but Taylor has increased contributions from a wide range of city residents, while an independent political committee appointed head management for Oakland spent $ 280,000.
The largest individual donor on the committee is Max Hodak, a resident of San Francisco, who gave $ 70,000. Hodak, a biomedical engineer, helped launch several technological startups from the Bay region, including the company Brain-Science Neuralink, which he co-founded in 2016 with Elon Musk.
The group obtained an additional $ 142,000 from another committee, Revitalize East Bay, who financed the recall campaigns last year against the former mayor Sheng Thao and the District Prosecutor of Alameda, Pamela Price. A large part of its funding at the time came from Philip Dreyfuss, a manager of a large roofing fund residing in Piedmont.
Taylor, a former member of the Council, wanted to present himself as a sales consultant and biomedical engineer during his stay in politics, and without avoiding friendly relations with the interests of the private sector which often come up against the political trends of the work unions of public employees of Oakland.
His campaign refused to comment on the money paying the race or the Hodak ties with musk. Hodak did not respond to an interview request.
The financing advance could give Taylor a competitive advantage in the last days before the special elections of April 15, where voters will permanently replace Thao after his successful recall last November.
Thao corruption and conspiracy accusations, filed by federal prosecutors in January, strengthened the urgency of next week and sometimes overshadowed it.
Taylor has made efforts to warn voters that Lee would represent a continuation of the ex-mayor’s policy, with a new Mailer this week noting once again that the former deputy opposed Thao’s reminder.
“Now, the same special interests that have kept Thao in office spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect Lee,” said the Mailer, that Hodak and Revitalize East Bay have helped finance.
Labor interests spent hundreds of thousands of dollars so that Thao was elected in 2022 – when she beat Taylor – and spent tens of thousands of others to oppose her recall last year. Now they spend big to support Lee.
“The Lee Congress is proud to be supported by firefighters, nurses, teachers and other workers who are part of the city’s backbone,” the Lee campaign said in a statement, noting Lee’s additional support from the local affairs community.
“She is not afraid to make difficult decisions, and she is a tested and tested leader and negotiator,” added the campaign.
Third -party committees, which, unlike candidate campaigns, are not limited to contributions, have proven to be the crucial engine of finance of races for the main public offices and voting measures.
Species at the end of the game can help shape the results of the elections, face television advertisements and billboards, as well as campaign leaflets that fill the mailboxes of voters.
The supporters of Barbara Lee, an independent committee supporting the former deputy, spent $ 243,000 to oppose Taylor.
The Committee received $ 150,000 from the California Nurses Association, $ 25,000 from the Local 1021 section of the Seiu and $ 15,000 from the Oakland Firefighters’ Union. All the money does not come from work: the CEO of Kaiser Permanent, Gregory Adams, gave $ 20,000 and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. raised $ 10,000.
The envoy to the campaign funded by these contributions attacked Taylor with growing assault on the elections.
New advertisements sent last week have said that it was “funded by Big Tech, Crypto and business developers” and accused it of being botched with certain tax obligations, including on its commercial licenses and the properties it has.
Lee herself avoided criticizing Taylor directly in interviews or during candidates forums, although she has often found herself to plead for Oakland to go from the Thao era.
Her argument to the public, which she can uniquely unite commercial interests and work, has obtained the support of Thao’s criticisms, including the enemies of the former mayor of the Oakland municipal council.
Recent events make Oakland difficult to move on. Thousands of pages of documents from the City given to federal prosecutors last year were published publicly last week, which still sheds light on the federal criminal case involving Thao.
The former chief of staff of Thao was dismissed on Sunday after a note that she wrote last year referring to blacks as “tokens” become public – a dismissal followed by the rejection of almost all the latest members of the Thao administration.
Lee and Taylor’s campaigns condemned the note. And the debacle only suggested the public’s desire to change their change at the town hall of Oakland – a change that could start with the elections next week.
The writer Jakob Rodgers contributed to the reports.
Shomik Mukherjee is a journalist covering Oakland. Call him or send him an SMS at 510-905-5495 or send him an email to shomik@bayareenewsgroup.com.
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