A recall effort aimed at “progressive” Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao has gathered enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, organizers say — though they are still collecting signatures to ensure that they survive a challenge.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday:
The campaign, Oakland United to Recall Sheng Thao, known as OUST, has until July 22 to submit its signatures. Election officials then must make sure enough signatures are valid to trigger a recall, a process that could take up to two months.
OUST has obtained nearly 35,000 signatures since it began its effort in February, Brenda Harbin-Forte, a retired Alameda County Superior Court judge and recall leader, told the Chronicle. She said the group had independently verified more than 25,000 signatures, their threshold for putting the recall on the November ballot.
But Harbin-Forte said OUST plans to file only after it tops 40,000 signatures, more than the roughly 39,000 voters who listed Thao as their first choice for Oakland mayor in 2022. The group also plans to demand Thao resign when it files its signatures, she added.
As Breitbart News has noted, Mayor Thao has been the target of criticism since she fired Oakland Police Department Chief LeRonne Armstrong, who had criticized “defund the police” and who had taken a tough approach to crime.
Organizers know they have to be careful about signatures. A recall effort against George Soros-backed Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón was disqualified in 2022 by county workers who claimed there were too many invalid signatures.
Oakland voters have already gathered enough signatures to qualify a recall of Soros-backed Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price for the November ballot, according to the Chronicle.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.