Oakland’s First Black DA Pamela Price Faces A Recall, Says It’s Politically Motivated

The recall campaign has been ongoing since Price ran for and won the district attorney election in 2022.

The recall campaign against Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price has been ongoing since she ran for and won the district attorney election in 2022. Upon winning the election, Price became Oakland’s first Black district attorney. Price ran an openly reformist campaign, which has become increasingly unpopular with right-wing and Republican political figures.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, Price plans to fight back against the campaign, which recently submitted 123,000 signatures to election officials in hopes of forcing another recall vote in California. One development that should be watched closely by Oakland voters is Measure B, a ballot question asking voters if Alameda County, within which Oakland resides, should adopt the State of California’s recall system.

According to Oaklandside, the measure has the potential to make it easier to start the recall process. Still, others, such as Marcus Crawley, president of the Alameda County Taxpayers Association, Jacqueline Carron-Cota, chair of the Election Integrity Team of Alameda County, and Edward Escobar, founder of Citizens United and one of the leaders in the effort to recall Price, say that wholesale changes that could curtail voters rights are not necessary.

“If Supervisors are so concerned about flaws in existing Alameda County recall law, they should instead put forward ‘surgical amendments’ targeted to fix the small parts that need modification.”

As Oaklandside reports, the money behind the effort to oust Price is largely sourced from financiers and real estate property owners in Oakland. As of Feb. 2, they had spent $2.2 million on their efforts. Price, as she did with her campaign to win the seat initially, has raised approximately $85,000, mostly through small donors.

As CBS News reports, some of the criticism comes from the families of victims of gun violence and Oakland residents who say that Price has not done enough to make the city safe to live and work in.

At a town hall meeting in December, Florence McCrary, the mother of Terrance McCrary, a 22-year-old man who was killed by a stray bullet while inside an Oakland art gallery, was critical of Price.

“We would expect more empathy and concern for mothers who have had to put their children in the ground at 22 years of age, an innocent victim,” McCrary told the crowd at the town hall. “I’m a tax-paying citizen who works hard and why should I have to live with the fact that this person won’t be held accountable for his choices.”

Price, at the same town hall meeting, characterized the recall effort against her as an attempt to protect the value of real estate portfolios.

“We know that this recall is not about public safety, we have their campaign plan, this campaign plan says that they are concerned with the value of their portfolios, real estate developers, there is nobody in here, there is nobody that comes through our office that is a real estate portfolio.”

As The Intercept reported in 2023, this kind of pattern, that of character assassination, right-wing attacks, and then a recall, is familiar. Cat Brooks, a co-founder and executive director of the Anti-Police-Terror Project, endorsed Price during her run and told the outlet, “They were threatening to recall her when she was running for the seat,” said Brooks. “Unfortunately, in the Bay Area and in other places in the country, this is the new political tactic.”

Anne Irwin, the founder and director of Smart Justice, a pro-reform group, said that this laser focus on how an elected prosecutor runs their office doesn’t usually come up unless, like Price, the DA is an open reformist.

“The nascent recall effort in Alameda County is absolutely reflective of a national Republican playbook,” Irwin continued, “What’s remarkable is that there has been almost no coverage of how an elected prosecutor runs their office until progressive prosecutors were elected,” Irwin explained. “Then all of a sudden, there is intense scrutiny, much of it drummed up by the folks who are backing a recall, to make a case that the progressive prosecutor is a bad manager. But can any of us look back in history and point out whether or not any other tough-on-crime prosecutors in the ’80s or ’90s were good managers?”