OAKLAND — Recent polling might have given Barbara Lee a narrow edge in the Oakland mayoral race, but Loren Taylor holds a slight lead in the money game with less than a week to go before election day.
Between his campaign and independent committees supporting him, overall spending for Taylor is $794,000 — giving him the funding advantage despite an expected wave of labor support for Lee, whose own combination of campaign and outside spending is just under $720,000.
It can take a lot of money in Oakland to rival the political cash of labor unions, but Taylor has raised contributions from a wide array of city residents, while an independent political committee named Responsible Leadership for Oakland has spent $280,000 supporting him.
The committee’s largest individual donor is San Francisco resident Max Hodak, who gave $70,000. Hodak, a biomedical engineer, has helped launch several Bay Area tech startups, including the brain-science company Neuralink, which he co-founded in 2016 with Elon Musk.
The group got an additional $142,000 from another committee, Revitalize East Bay, which last year financed the recall campaigns against former Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price. Much of its funding at the time came from Philip Dreyfuss, a manager of a major hedge fund who resides in Piedmont.
Taylor, a former councilmember, has been keen to bill himself as a business consultant and biomedical engineer during his time in politics, not shying away from friendly relationships with private sector interests that often clash with the political leanings of Oakland’s public-employee labor unions.
His campaign declined to comment on the money pouring through the race or Hodak’s ties to Musk. Hodak did not respond to an interview request.
The funding lead may give Taylor a competitive edge in the final days before the April 15 special election, where voters will permanently replace Thao following her successful recall last November.
Thao’s subsequent felony charges of bribery and conspiracy, filed by federal prosecutors in January, have bolstered the urgency of next week’s election and at times overshadowed it.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, left, speaks about why Loren Taylor would be the best choice as Oakland’s next mayor at a news conference near the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and High Street in Oakland’s Laurel neighborhood on Thursday, March 27, 2025. (Shomik Mukherjee/Bay Area News Group)
Taylor has gone to lengths to warn voters that Lee would represent a continuation of the ex-mayor’s politics, with a new mailer this week noting once again that the former congresswoman opposed Thao’s recall.
“Now, the same special interests who kept Thao in office are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect Lee,” states the mailer, which Hodak and Revitalize East Bay helped to fund.
Labor interests did spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get Thao elected in 2022 — when she beat Taylor — and spent tens of thousands more to oppose her recall last year. Now they’re spending big to support Lee.
“Congresswoman Lee is proud to be supported by firefighters, nurses, teachers, and other working people who are part of the backbone of the city,” the Lee campaign said in a statement, noting Lee’s additional support from the local business community.
“She is not afraid to make tough decisions, and she is a tested and proven leader and negotiator,” the campaign added.
Third-party committees, which unlike candidate campaigns face no limits on contributions, have proven to be the crucial engine in financing races for major public offices and ballot measures.
Late-game cash can help shape election outcomes, flowing into TV ads and billboards, as well as campaign flyers that fill voters’ mailboxes.
Supporters of Barbara Lee, an independent committee backing the former congresswoman, has spent $243,000 to oppose Taylor.
The committee received $150,000 from the California Nurses Association, $25,000 from SEIU Local 1021 and $15,000 from the Oakland firefighters’ union. Not all the money is from labor: Kaiser Permanente CEO Gregory Adams gave $20,000 and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. chipped in $10,000.
Former Congresswoman Barbara Lee speaks before demonstrators during a Hands Off! Oakland Fights Back march and rally against President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, April 5, 2024. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Campaign mailers funded by these contributions have attacked Taylor with increasing aggression as the election nears.
New ads mailed last week declared that he is “bankrolled by Big Tech, crypto and corporate developers” and accused him of being sloppy with certain tax obligations, including on his business licenses and the properties he owns.
Lee herself has avoided criticizing Taylor directly in interviews or at candidate forums, though she has often found herself pleading for Oakland to move on from the Thao era.
Her pitch to the public, that she can uniquely unite business and labor interests, has won support from Thao’s critics, including the ex-mayor’s foes on the Oakland City Council.
Recent events are making it difficult for Oakland to move on. Thousands of pages of city documents turned over to federal prosecutors last year were publicly released last week, further illuminating context for the federal criminal case involving Thao.
Thao’s former chief of staff was fired on Sunday after a note she’d written last year referring to Black people as “tokens” became public — a termination followed by the dismissal of nearly every last staffer held over from the Thao administration.
Both Lee and Taylor’s campaigns condemned the note. And the debacle only further suggested the public’s desire for a shift in direction at Oakland City Hall — change that may begin with next week’s election.
Staff writer Jakob Rodgers contributed reporting.
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at [email protected].
