Around 3,800 Waymos were recalled by the company after an empty vehicle drove onto a flooded roadway in San Antonio and got swept away, prompting a federal investigation.

As Bloomberg reports, Waymo is voluntarily recalling nearly 3,791 robotaxis after federal regulators opened an investigation into reports that the self-driving vehicles have sometimes entered flooded streets instead of stopping or taking a detour.

The probe follows an incident last month in San Antonio, Texas, in which an unoccupied Waymo vehicle drove into standing water and was swept into a creek, according to CNBC. Additionally, vehicles in Austin were caught on video stalling out after driving onto flooded streets, and similar incidents have been reported in other cities.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the recall affects vehicles using Waymo’s fifth- and sixth-generation automated driving systems, which are designed to slow down — but not necessarily stop — when encountering potentially flooded roadways, as the Chronicle reports. Regulators say this could leave vehicles stranded or cause them to lose control in dangerous conditions.

This is likely an over-compensation for previous generations, which caused some Waymo vehicles to come to complete stops in the middle of traffic over small puddles, as seen in this Reddit video.

The Alphabet-owned company said Tuesday that it has since added restrictions intended to keep vehicles off roads where flash flooding may occur.

Waymo told CNBC Tuesday that its service is temporarily suspended in San Antonio and that it’s “readying operations to resume public rides.” Per the Chronicle, the company said there would be no disruptions to service in the Bay Area, as engineers will run the repair on each vehicle when it returns to the depot.

Waymo now operates in 11 US regions, in addition to San Francisco, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Miami, as the company continues expanding amid growing competition in the commercial robotaxi service industry.

The flooding-related recall comes amid two other investigations into Waymo vehicles, as Bloomberg reports. One probe involves a January crash in Santa Monica in which a robotaxi struck a child near a school, while another focuses on reports that Waymo vehicles failed to properly slow or stop for school buses.

As SFist reported in December, the company faced scrutiny locally after widespread power outages in San Francisco left multiple robotaxis stalled in traffic, contributing to gridlock across parts of the city. The company blamed the incidents on an overwhelmed crew of human monitors, as the vehicles were simultaneously all seeking "confirmations" from the control center about how to proceed in intersections without working traffic signals.

In 2024, Waymo recalled its operating software after two self-driving robotaxis hit a truck being towed in Phoenix, Arizona.

Related: Waymos Were Looking for Human Remote 'Confirmations' at Intersections During Blackout, Company Says

Image: Windshield wipers clear rain from the front windshield of a Waymo self-driving car on a rainy day in San Francisco, California, February 19, 2026. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

• Bill Cosby was found liable by a jury in Santa Monica Monday for drugging and sexually assaulting Donna Motsinger in 1972, whom he met when she was working as a waitress at the Trident waterfront restaurant in Sausalito. She was awarded $59.25 million in damages, which includes punitive damages, as well as past and future damages tied to “mental suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, inconvenience, grief, anxiety, humiliation, and emotional distress.” [Chronicle]
• Shahin Gheblehshenas, 67, was convicted of felony child endangerment for criminal negligence Friday in the drowning of two toddlers at a San Jose daycare in 2023. Her daughter, Nina Fathizadeh, 43, who was the sole caregiver present at the time while her mother went to a different location, will stand trial in May. [KRON4]
• OpenAI has pledged $1 billion in grant funding utilizing AI to support life sciences and curing diseases, as well as jobs and economic impact, AI resilience, and community programs. [NBC Bay Area]

National:

• Delta is temporarily suspending specialty services for members of Congress, as staff are stretched thin during the government shutdown. These specialty services evidently include expedited screening, escorts to bypass security lines, and dedicated reservation desks allowing last-minute changes. [NBC News]
• More than 254,000 Ford Lincoln and Explorer vehicles were recalled due to a software issue involving the rearview camera image and advanced driver assistance features. [CBS News]
• The FCC is banning the US sale of new foreign-made routers, citing vulnerabilities in network hardware that allow cyberattacks to compromise American telecom networks. [Boing Boing]

Video of the Day:

Local drag queen Angel Food Cakes performed a stunning tribute to beloved figure skater Alysa Liu at the “Rollin With the Homos” drag event in Oakland.

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• Merih Fssha Solomon, 47, of Walnut Creek was arrested in connection with the crash that killed a two-year-old and injured her mother in SF’s Mission Bay earlier this month. Solomon was arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter, red light violation, and failure to yield to pedestrians. [NBC Bay Area]
• The family of Sean Monterrosa of San Francisco received a multi-million dollar settlement from the city of Vallejo over the killing of  Monterrosa by a police officer in 2020, who said he mistook the hammer in Monterrosa’s pocket for a gun. [KRON4]
• The San Francisco Zoo announced it’s eliminating a “small number of positions” amid financial challenges following a scandalous 2024 report that revealed leadership struggles and concerns surrounding animal welfare and employee safety. [Chronicle]

National:

• Thousands were told to evacuate immediately and hundreds were rescued amid severe flash-flooding on Hawaii’s Oahu Island, as a local dam is on the verge of collapsing. [CNN]
• The FDA announced the recall of almost 90,000 bottles of children's liquid ibuprofen made by Strides Pharma for Taro Pharmaceuticals, with the product number D-0390-2026, after the company received complaints they contained "a gel-like mass and black particles." [Associated Press]
• CBS News is shutting down its radio division in May after 100 years in business, and all jobs in the department will be eliminated. [CBS]

Video of the Day:

As thousands prepare to descend upon Union Square for Tulip Day Saturday — early, we suggest, check out this cool video of crews setting up the spectacular installation this week.

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Image: Leanne Maxwell (2017)/SFist

An effort to recall the mayor of the small town of Fairfax, in Marin County, appears to have failed, at least based on early returns, with 54% of voters saying "No."

Embattled Fairfax Mayor Lisel Blash and Vice Mayor Stephanie Hellman both may get to keep their jobs following Tuesday's election — whether they still want them or not is another question. As the Marin Independent Journal reports, the recall campaign against both women was failing in early returns on Tuesday night, with 54.3% voting "No" on the question of recalling Blash, and 53.7% voting "No" on the question of recalling Hellman.

These results come after 2,804 ballots were counted, out of a possible 5,999 registered voters. The "Yes" side is about 240 votes behind as of the last count, per the Chronicle.

As noted last month, a furor erupted this year in the town of 7,500 people over a plan to build a 243-unit apartment complex, a plan the mayor does not like but says the city is powerless to oppose. Given the state's mandate for cities to meet their obligations to build new housing,

The project, proposed by a Florida developer, feels out of scale for many in the town, including Blash. But, she says, if the town tries to reject the project, it could result in the state declaring them out of compliance with their Housing Element goals, triggering a "builder's remedy" that would allow developers to run rampant with any properties they choose.

"I understand people are upset," Blash told the Chronicle last month. “We could all be upset about this and see what we can do — or keep tearing each other apart."

She added, "People say the building will ruin the small-town feeling. But, unfortunately, that’s already happening."

Meanwhile, Blash and Hellman, having faced months of nastiness in their tiny town, both say they do not plan to seek reelection when their terms are up in 2027.

The fight in Fairfax is being echoed elsewhere in the state, as local planning boards come against a state that is taking a hardnosed approach to getting new housing built at any cost. In San Francisco, where the suburban-density west side neighborhoods are afraid of being forced to accept seven- and nine-story buildings in their midst, this fight is likely to play out for years as the city also faces a probably unachievable goal of approving 82,000 new housing units in the next six years.

Proponents of the Fairfax recall effort say they are not done, and also this election isn't yet settled.

"There are still hundreds of votes left to count in Fairfax and we are committed to ensuring every last voice is heard before the outcome is determined," said recall campaign leader Sean Fitzgerald, speaking the Marin IJ."

Fitzgerald added, "Regardless of the final result, we are not going anywhere. Our movement will remain fully engaged in local government and ensure that the interests of our residents are represented by the Town Council. We can do better in Fairfax, and we are confident that, in time, we will see a return to common sense leadership in our community."

If you ask Fairfax Mayor Lisel Blash, she doesn't love the idea of a 243-unit apartment building coming to her small Marin County town either. But the state has made such developments inevitabilities after decades of NIMBYism in places like Fairfax.

The 7,600-person town of Fairfax is in the midst of a recall fight which could result in the removal next month of Mayor Lisel Blash and Deputy Mayor Stephanie Hellman. And much like the issue of the Great Highway closure coupled with upzoning proposals drove the effort to recall SF Supervisor Joel Engardio, Fairfax residents are steaming mad about an outsized apartment building that a Florida developer is forcing down their throats.

As the Chronicle reports, under the state's density-bonus rules, the proposed development on School Street grew to six stories and 243 units — and many agree that the building would be an eyesore and wildly out of scale with the small downtown.

Blash says her hands are tied, and if the city were to try to stop this housing from being built, it could — much as SF Mayor Daniel Lurie has recently warned here — trigger a "builder's remedy" situation where the state allows developers to run rampant and built even more unsightly things in Fairfax.

But that hasn't stopped recall proponents from putting the blame at her feet, and believing that by removing her from office, they can stop this development and fight the state's housing mandates in some way.

Ironically, as the Chronicle notes, the School Street site where this project is proposed — technically known as 95 Broadway — was originally going to be home to a 40-unit development, under an informal proposal a decade ago, but that proposal was killed by a local referendum that prevented the rezoning of multiple sites in town for housing.

Now that voters have approved a number of laws empowering the state to mandate more housing, Fairfax is one of dozens of bedroom communities around the Bay that have been faced with sometimes onerous requirements to approve new developments, regardless of size.

San Francisco's Housing Element has us on the hook to see 82,000 new housing units approved by 2031, a number that will be nigh impossible to reach unless a significant building boom takes off in the next few years. And the defining fight of Lurie's tenure as mayor may well end up being his "family zoning" upzoning plan, which would bring higher building heights and denser housing to the practically suburban west side of the city, which is dominated by single-family homes built 80 and 90 years ago.

And if the city fails to meet its housing goals, the "builder's remedy" threat still looms.

In Fairfax, the recall fight has turned bitter, and in some cases threatening, and Blash says it feels like a "mircocosm" of the political ugliness we're seeing on the national level, in what was once a quaint and pleasant liberal town.

"I understand people are upset," Blash tells the Chronicle. “We could all be upset about this and see what we can do — or keep tearing each other apart."

She adds, "People say the building will ruin the small-town feeling. But, unfortunately, that’s already happening."

Early voting has already begun in the Fairfax special election, which will happen on November 4. And Blash and her deputy, Hellman, both tell the Chronicle that even if they survive the recall, they do not plan to seek re-election to the city council.

Related: SF Elected Officials Get an Earful Over Lurie’s Rezoning Plans, Everyone Uses ‘Miami Beach’ as a Boogeyman

It probably wouldn't have mattered much at this point, with recall election ballots already sent out to District 4 voters — and with many voters already passionately set on one side or the other. But the SF Democratic County Central Committee is not endorsing for or against the recall of Supervisor Joel Engardio.

After being delayed a full month, the endorsement vote by the DCCC took place on Wednesday night. And as Mission Local reports, the vote was deadlocked, 11 for and 11 against endorsing the recall. Four committee members were absent and six abstained. The tie vote means that the committee takes no position whether to encourage voters in either direction, in case any of them who pay attention to DCCC endorsements were still on the fence. (As Mission Local notes, District 4 voters largely disagreed with the DCCC's endorsements in the last election anyway.)

A bloc of progressives on the committee, including former supervisors Jane Kim, John Avalos, and Gordon Mar, either abstained or were absent, and several moderates who might have cast votes in support of Engardio, including Supervisor Bilal Mahmood and Assemblymember Matt Haney, were absent.

According to Mission Local, when the "no position" result was called, the crowd attending the meeting, who were mostly recall supporters, cheered.

As we discussed earlier this week, the rhetoric from the pro-recall side has turned kind of ugly, nativist, and race-based. And regardless, local politicos have basically been saying for months that Engardio's chances of surviving this recall are slim to none, given how small the voter base is — just District 4 — and how motivated the pro-recall voters will likely be to cast ballots.

But the dustup over Engardio and his support for the closure of the Great Highway — which largely is the animating issue behind the recall campaign — has been a political problem for SF moderates who don't want to get on the wrong side of the Chinese American community in the Sunset.

Many pro-recall campaigners have cast this as a vote between supporting the voices of the Chinese American community and ignoring them, which they blame Engardio for doing.

"Time and again, candidates in the city have come to the Chinese community when they need votes. They come when they need campaign volunteers. They come when they want to win,” said Wilson Chu with the Chinese American Democratic Club, speaking during the public comment portion of Wednesday's meeting, per Mission Local. “But when it comes to policy, when it comes to listening to our concerns and our voices, too often we are ignored."

The special election to recall (or not to recall) Engardio is happening on September 16. Only residents of District 4 are eligible to vote, and mail-in ballots have already begun being cast.

Previously: Report: SF Democratic Party Delays Engardio Recall Endorsement Vote, In Another Setback for Engardio

The effort to recall District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio claims it’s hitting a major milestone today, as organizers say they have more than the 10,000 signatures needed to put the recall on the ballot, and they’re submitting them this afternoon.

Today, Thursday, May 22, is the deadline for the Recall Joel Engardio campaign to submit 10,000 valid District 4 petition signatures to the SF Department of Elections in order to trigger an actual recall election. And while the effort to recall Engardio seems entirely motivated by anger over his involvement in making the Great Highway car-free, there is certainly an irony in the fact that Engardio won his seat in large part by promoting his active support for the recalls of DA Chesa Boudin and SF school board.  

So will the scrappy, much-lower-funded recall campaign be able to pull together enough signatures by today’s deadline? They seem 100% convinced they already have, according to a 4:30 pm Weekday afternoon press release that was sent to SFist and probably every other media outlet across town.

“Hundreds of District 4 Residents and Volunteers Submit Recall Petitions Against Supervisor Joel Engardio in a Powerful Demand for Accountability and Local Representation,” the recall campaign declared, touting a 1 pm press event at which they will submit their signatures to the Department of Elections.

To point out the obvious, you do not call a press conference to announce you are submitting 10,000 petition signatures unless you actually have those 10,000 petition signatures.

And it seems they have many more. Recall organizers confirmed to the Chronicle that they definitely have more than enough signatures to qualify, with the Chronicle saying they’ve collected 14,000 signatures. These signatures would have to be validated by the Department of Elections as legitimate registered District 4 residents, but this is an impressive haul of signatures.

“This campaign has been the definition of grassroots and District 4 has really come together to make their voices heard,” recall campaign head Jamie Hughes told the Chronicle. Hughes also noted that 90% of the signatures were collected by volunteers, and only 10% from paid signature-gatherers.

So should the recall qualify — and that will be determined by the Department of Elections validation process — we are looking at an oddball, off-year recall election that will only be happening in District 4, probably sometime around this coming October.

“Yes, a recall election would happen in 2025, and only in District 4,” SF Department of Elections custodian of records Matthew Selby told SFist. “There have been [San Francisco] elections that have taken place in one Assembly or Congressional District, but not in one Supervisorial District.”

Though the verification process will be a numbers game. While the Chronicle cites 14,000 signatures, Mission Local says the recall organizers will actually submit only 11,000 signatures for verification. In other words, they’ve already weeded out any signatures they think could be invalidated.

Mission Local points to the official recall election rules which say the the elections department will perform validation on a random sample of “at least 500 signatures, or 5 percent of the signatures, whichever is greater.”

If they’re submitting 11,000 signatures, that means the Department of Elections will be random-sample validating 550 signatures. If those check, the recall automatically qualifies, perhaps as soon as next week.

If only 90%-100% are validated, then the elections department would have to verify every single signature, which could take a full two months. This is exactly what happened with the signatures for the recall of Alameda County DA Pamela Price, and that recall still passed handily.

If the random-sample validation rate is less than 90%, the recall would not qualify at all.

When we last checked on recall fundraising last week, the recall effort had raised $100,000. Since then, they’ve submitted more fundraising totals showing they’ve now raised $140,000. This total is bolstered by a $7,000 contribution from the Chinese American Democratic Club, and a $10,000 donation from William O'Keefe, president of a Brisbane-based glass and framing manufacturer called SAFTI First.

But still the recall campaign is getting absolutely walloped in fundraising by the Stand With Joel campaign that’s fighting the recall. Engardio supporters have raised $407,237, for a nearly 4-1 money advantage. That money largely comes from tech founders and CEOs: $125,000 from Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, plus big-bucks contributions from Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen ($100,000), Twilio co-founder John Wolthius ($50,000), venture capital bigwig Ron Conway ($25,000) and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan ($10,000).

Of course, none of this matters if the Department of Elections determines that fewer than 90% of the signatures are valid. But if those signatures being submitted at 1 pm Thursday afternoon do pass the verification threshold, we are looking at the first-ever election to recall a sitting San Francisco supervisor. And politically, it’s going to be a pretty wild summer and autumn in the west side’s District 4.

Related: Scott Wiener Claims That Aaron Peskin Is Somehow Orchestrating the Recall Joel Engardio Campaign [SFist]

Image: Recall Engardio via Facebook

The same recall fever that Joel Engardio rode into office could still boot him out, as the recallers say they’re “on track” to make the ballot. But the recall’s main organizer just quit, and Engardio has big donations from local tech founders and CEOs.

We are now nine days away from the signature-gathering deadline for the Recall Supervisor Joel Engardio effort, a recall campaign motivated entirely by animus over Engardio’s efforts to make the Great Highway car-free. And we would not be the first to point out the irony that Engardio could be removed by a recall, after he won his seat by promoting his support of the recalls of DA Chesa Boudin and the three SF school board members.

Yet just nine days out from the deadline to gather 10,000 signatures, the Chronicle reports that the recall’s head organizer Vin Budhai has abruptly resigned from his position. The SF Standard has the scuttlebutt that Budhai stepped down because                                                                                                                                                                      “tensions arose recently over whether to ramp up spending in the final days of the signature-gathering campaign.” Indeed, the recall effort’s latest campaign filings with the SF Ethics Commission show that they’ve raised about $106,000, they’ve spent all of it, and still have tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills.

Engardio’s camp has made accusations of financial impropriety against the recall’s leadership, and it is true that the same leadership has been fined by the Ethics Commission for failing to report some of its fundraising in last November’s Prop K car-free Great Highway vote. But the recallers seem well within striking distance of getting those 10,000 signatures to qualify the recall for the ballot. And if they do, it would be the first time in San Francisco history that there was an off-year special election that was not citywide, but only in one supervisor's district.

Despite the fresh turmoil atop the recall campaign, they may have already quietly hit their signature goal. Main recall organizer Vin Budhai (who just resigned yesterday) said in a statement last month that the campaign was “on track and likely to exceed the required threshold” of 10,000 signatures. Wednesday’s SF Standard reports also noted that “organizers are expected to submit more than that to account for potentially invalid or duplicate signatures.”

And if they do, it would be an oddball off-year election, only in Engardio’s District 4, that would not even happen on a normal election day, but instead sometime around October 2025.

“Yes, a recall election would happen in 2025, and only in District 4,” SF Department of Elections custodian of records Matthew Selby told SFist. “There have been [San Francisco] elections that have taken place in one Assembly or Congressional District, but not in one Supervisorial District.”

The curious potential October election date comes up because the Department of Elections would have 30 days to validate the recall signatures. If 10,000 signatures are validated, the Department of Elections is then required to hold the recall election within 105 to 120 days. So no November election here.

But Engardio has quite the money machine going to fight the recall, already having raised about $400,000, for a 4-1 money advantage over his recall effort. But like the recall campaign, Engardio’s Stand With Joel, Fight the Recall campaign has spent mostly all that money according to their own campaign filings with the Ethics Department, with about $8,000 in still-unpaid bills.

Engardio’s largest anti-recall donation is a set of contributions totaling $125,000 from Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman. Stoppleman’s donations alone represent more than the entire recall effort has raised combined.

Engardio has also pulled a $100,000 contribution from Ripple Labs co-founder and centrist mega-donor Chris Larsen, perhaps best known for putting those surveillance cameras all over town. The Stand With Joel campaign has pulled an additional $50,000 contribution from Twilio co-founder John Wolthius, another $10,000 from Garry Tan, and interestingly, $25,000 from the SF Police Officers Association.

And here’s a blast from the past: Engardio has also received a $25,000 contribution from our old friend Ron Conway. What does Ron Conway care about this? He lives in Marin County now!

The recall campaign does not boast any such big names or big donations. Well, unless you count their $2,500 contribution from Donald Trump donor Dede Wilsey. (But if we’re calling out Trump donors in this mix, we should note that Chris Larsen’s Ripple Labs gave a $5 million contribution to the Trump inauguration, though it’s unclear whether Larsen had any say in that.)  

So how has the Stand With Joel campaign spent all this money? They’ve paid Sam Singer’s Singer Associates, Inc. about $27,300, which is frankly just a very normal thing for a San Francisco political campaign. And that’s not even much compared to the $78,974 Stand With Joel has paid a Seattle-based consulting firm called KMM Strategies.

But what jumps out here is that Stand With Joel has also paid $39,272 to the tech political group GrowSF. (The above graphic represents only a couple of these payments.) GrowSF is generally known for giving money to their preferred candidates, not taking money from them. These payments are generally described as being for “video ad production” and “digital advertisements.”

Here’s a still image from one of these video ads. Youtube has probably not served you these ads unless you live in District 4, and unfortunately, we cannot embed them. But you can see the whole library of these ads here. And is that GrowSF director Steven Buss Bacio standing right next to Engardio in the ad? It sure looks like him!

Some of these even display as “Sponsored by GrowSF.” Now in fairness, campaign filings show that GrowSF did not pocket all of this money, about $13,000 of the sum appears to have been paid out by GrowSF to an ad platform called Swayable, and to Google. Buss Bacio’s GrowSF bio says he once worked for Google.

But is there a conflict of interest in GrowSF putting out voter guides, and endorsing candidates that paid them nearly $40,000? Just something to take into account with the GrowSF voter guide.

As for the recallers, they’re still out gathering signatures for nine more days. But Stand With Joel allies have filed an Ethics Commission complaint against them for failing to report some $19,159 in expenses, or rather, only reporting these expenses in after-the-fact amendments filed several weeks after their originally legally required filings. These not-originally reported expenses included paid political consulting fees, venue rentals, and controversial signs and t-shirts that may have been homemade, or may have been produced by the recall campaign whose logo and colors they bear.

We should add that the just-resigned recall campaign organizer Vin Budhai was already fined $2,400 by the Ethics Commission for a similar charge in early April, for failing to register and report as a political action committee in the November election’s anti-Prop K campaign. The Ethics Commission ruled last month that “the public was deprived of transparency into when and how money was raised and spent by [Open the Great Highway] to influence the outcome of political contests in the City.”

Engardio campaign spokesperson Jason Galisatus said at the time, “The flagrancy with which the recallers seem to violate the law over and over is a slap in the face to the public and an affront to transparent and fair elections. Enough is enough.”

None of this may matter, as campaign violations are generally not litigated until well after the election is over. Engardio’s bigger problem may be the electoral math here. Consider a scenario where the recallers do get their 10,000 signatures by May 22.

The above map is not a perfect representation of Engardio’s District 4, but this screenshot from Chris Arvin’s Election Map SF is pretty geographically close to that. The green areas of District 4 voted for the car-free Great Highway, the purple areas voted against it. There is not a lot of green on that map! So the district certainly opposed Prop K overwhelmingly.

There are also some sideshow issues with the Great Highway debate, like a lawsuit to bring cars back to the highway, and District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan’s strange claim that she would bring the exact same ballot measure back to the voters if the Engardio recall qualifies for the ballot. It’s unclear if anything will ever come of these two alleged pursuits.

But it is clear that if the recallers do manage to get their 10,000 signatures in by next Thursday, Joel Engardio would be in serious danger of being recalled in an unprecedented, bizarro, off-year October election that would only be happening in one San Francisco district.

Related: Supervisor Joel Engardio Now Facing Recall Effort as Constituents Fume Over Great Highway Vote [SFist]

Image: Joel Engardio via Facebook

There may not have been many people attending a Recall Sheng Thao rally on Tuesday in Oakland, but it’s making headlines anyway, as a businessman walking past was yelled at from onstage, confronted the speaker, and mayhem ensued.

With one week to go before the November 5 vote whether to recall Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County DA Pamela Price, a group of activists behind the recall effort held a Tuesday rally outside Oakland City Hall to draw attention to the cause. While the rally had about 20 people onstage, the video below from independent journalist Michelle Dione shows that there were only about four audience members in attendance, one of whom was seemingly there just to heckle.

But as Oaklandside reports, the rally quickly devolved into a shouting match when a passerby was called out by name by rally organizer Seneca Scott. That passerby was Ray Bobbitt, co-founder of the African American Sports and Entertainment Group which is buying the Oakland Coliseum. Seneca Scott, meanwhile, ran against Thao for mayor in 2022 and finished in seventh place, and has had a couple misdemeanor gun charges against him.

Bobbitt told Oaklandside that the ralliers started “taunting” him, and so in his words “I walked over and I was gonna take the mic and have a dialogue.”

Dialogue, indeed. KTVU has video of the fracas, and Scott can be heard yelling, “Get away from me! Get away from me!”, and “You’re a loser!”, and “Security! Security!”

Several other ralliers get in Bobbitt’s face, and after a few minutes of back-and-forth, Bobbitt is escorted away.

“I came here for business and was walking by, and they see me walking by, and started yelling my name,” Bobbitt told reporters afterward. “So I just went up and see if maybe they wanted to have a dialogue. I’m not here for any other reason than just to finish my transaction. I’m not over here to have a confrontation.”

A spokesperson for the campaign opposing the recall told Oaklandside that “This is an example of the sort of chaos the recall campaign seeks to create in Oakland,” adding, “The mayor is working on the most significant investment and opportunity for East Oakland in our lifetime. Foot traffic is up in downtown Oakland.”

Bobbitt’s AASEG has revised their Coliseum purchase deal to pay more money but spread payments over a longer timeline, which has raised the ire of recall advocates.

Related: Sheng Thao Insists She Was Not a Target of FBI Raid in Fiery Chronicle Interview [SFist]

Image: @RecallShengThao via Twitter

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao is trumpeting a 33% drop in crime and a new $2 million federal grant to the city's crime-fighting ceasefire strategy, but a couple major Bay Area newspapers just endorsed recalling her.  

It is now officially one week until Election Day 2024. Yikes! Are you feeling nervous? You are probably not as nervous as Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who is facing a recall election on Tuesday, November 5.  

Thao has still not been cleared (nor implicated) in the FBI raid on her home a full four months ago. But there have been additional embarrassing developments for Thao since that raid, like the news that her boyfriend has some suspicious, undefined role at Oakland City Hall, and that she was driving a luxury SUV that the city hadn’t paid for. (That may be cleared up now.)

So Thao has gone on offense, or tried to, by touting her aggressive new encampment-clearing efforts, going on an interview blitz, and ramping up her anti-recall campaigning with the Asian American and Black communities. Now, as KRON4 reports, Thao is also hyping up a $2 million federal grant to fight crime that will go to Oakland's now-revived Operation Ceasefire violence prevention program.

“Crime is down. Crime is down, and you cannot hide bodies, so we know those numbers are accurate,” Thao said in a Monday press conference, per KRON4. “Due to the re-implementation of our ceasefire strategy, we are seeing a 33% reduction in homicides year-to-date. So far this year, 34 less people have been killed.”

KRON4 notes that in addition to the decrease in homicide, Thao is also promoting how violent crime is down 19% compared to this time last year.

The $2 million grant will be used to hire “life coaches” for 75 people who are deemed to be members of Oakland’s most vulnerable communities. Though as KRON4 also points out, “While the mayor is announcing the grant now, one week before Election Day, the city was actually notified they received the money one month ago.”  

Yet Thao’s campaign to fight back the recall did not get welcome news when the Bay Area News Group’s East Bay Times endorsed the recall in early October, saying, “On crime and the city budget, it’s hard to ignore how inept she has been in her nearly two years in office.” And then just this morning, the Chronicle endorsed recalling Sheng Thao as well.

“There’s no question that Thao has displayed a disturbing lack of basic management and organizational skills,” the Chron’s editorial board wrote. “At such a pivotal moment for Oakland, the city needs a leader who inspires confidence and has the competence to turn big problems around. Thao’s record shows that she is not that mayor. Voters should recall her.”

It would appear that Thao is polling poorly in the face of the recall effort. A recent poll from the Oakland Chamber of Commerce (an organization which tends to skew moderate and against progressives) claims that “a majority favors the Mayoral recall,” though it does not give specific polling numbers.  

Though as Oaklandside recently noted, about 80% of all recall donations come from one hedge fund executive living in Piedmont, which is technically not a part of Oakland. So does the recall really have true grassroots support across Oakland? Well, we’ll find out the answer to that a week from today.  

Related: Sheng Thao Insists She Was Not a Target of FBI Raid in Fiery Chronicle Interview [SFist]

Image: @Oak4Democracy via Twitter

Previous Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf came out swinging in favor of recalling current mayor Sheng Thao on Friday, which may not be surprising, as Schaaf had always endorsed Thao’s rival Loren Taylor.

In her exclusive interview with the Chronicle this week, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao tried to fend off her November 5 recall election in part by blaming previous mayoral administrations for Oakland’s current problems. Thao said that when she took office in early 2023, Oakland was “the dirtiest that we’ve ever seen it before … with all the illegal dumping.”

And now, one day after that interview, Oakland’s previous mayor is returning the shade, but in more direct terms. In a KQED interview Friday, Libby Schaaf endorsed the recall of Mayor Sheng Thao. Schaaf was appearing on KQED’s Political Breakdown, presumably to promote her run for state Treasurer, though the interview has not yet aired.

“I have come to believe, just based on this last year, that she is not capable of growing into the job,” Schaaf told KQED. “I am voting to recall Mayor Thao because Oakland can’t afford another two years of continued damage to our fiscal solvency and our public safety.”

When co-host Scott Shafer pressed Schaaf on what brought her to this decision, she said, “It was death by a thousand cuts.”

But was it? Schaaf has never been a Sheng Thao supporter, and endorsed Schaaf’s rival Loren Taylor in the 2022 election that Thao won by a whisker. And Loren Taylor has been absolutely chasing the mayor’s office again, and advocating for the recall in no uncertain terms.

Thao supporters were quick to respond to Schaaf going pro-recall. “Since taking office, Mayor Sheng Thao has been cleaning up the mess Schaaf left behind,” Oaklanders Defending Democracy spokesperson William Fitzgerald said in a statement. “For the first time since 2019, Oakland is on track to have fewer than 100 homicides this year. Yet, by endorsing a Yes vote on the upcoming measure, Schaaf is asking Oakland voters to embrace chaos: five mayors in three years. Oakland cannot afford such instability."

And we should note Libby Schaaf was just in the headlines last week for $21,000 ethics fine for campaign violations in the 2018 and 2020 elections. We'll wait to see if that is addressed when the KQED interview airs.

Related: Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao Is Reportedly Using an SUV the City Hasn't Paid For [SFist]

Images: (Left) LibbySchaaf.com, (Right) Office of Mayor Sheng Thao

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao gave an interview to the Chronicle, claiming the FBI has informed her she was not a target in the raid on her home, and insisting that the recall effort against her is 80% funded by one donor who does not even live in Oakland.

Much like Kamala Harris with her recent interviews on Fox News and an array of popular podcasts, embattled Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao is on her own interview-chasing media blitz. As her recall election looms on November 5, Thao just did an interview with the national publication Politico, with KQED, and also with the Chronicle, all of them published within the last 24 hours.  

And while Politico strangely did not even ask about the June 20 FBI raid on her home, the Chronicle did. And Thao made the (yet unverified) claim that the FBI has told her she is not a target of that suspected corruption investigation, as seen in the Chronicle supercut of the interview below.

“The FBI agents, they’ve actually, you know, told my attorney that I am not the target of the investigation,” Thao told the Chronicle. “My attorney has sent them a letter in an email, stating just that. It’s like, it’s been months, and we need you to come out and actually tell the public yourself that I am not the target of this investigation.”

Yes, it is entirely possible that Thao is not suspected of any wrongdoing, and the FBI could have raided her home looking for evidence in a case that does not directly involve her. But it is not confirmed directly by the FBI that Thao is considered innocent.

“It is not appropriate to hear nothing from them,” she said. “We know that this is going to weigh a lot on our voters’ minds when they go to that poll booth.”

And Thao also took aim at what she feels were heavy-handed FBI tactics.

"I haven’t opened up about what took place, but I think now is the time to really open up about what took place that day,” she continued. “When they came into my house at about 6 am that morning, they came with long guns, they came with Glocks, they came with the battering ram, ready to break down the doors, into a sitting mayor’s house."

"For me to ask them to allow me to get dressed so I can get to work, and then having to be forced to get dressed in front of an agent, and not only to get dressed in front of the agent, but I was not allowed to put on my underwear and my bra until they ran their fingers through my underwear and my bra. It was just a complete overreach," Thao said.  

The Chronicle adds that “Thao criticized the recall effort in general, saying that it’s mostly funded by an out-of-town billionaire.” That may be a valid complaint. Oakalandside reported in August that about 80% of the recall funding came from one Piedmont hedge fund executive Philip Dreyfuss. Piedmont is technically not a part of Oakland and has its own police department and school district, though it is surrounded on all sides by Oakland.

And on the topic of Oakland’s ongoing crime woes, she took a shot at the police chief she fired, LeRonne Armstrong. "It was under his leadership where crime spiked out of the roof," Thao told the Chronicle.

"When I came into office, crime was on the rise, it had been on the rise since 2019," she added. "We are on track right now, the first time since 2019, to have less than 100 bodies, less than 100 homicides."

So what happens if Thao is recalled? A mess. Oaklandside broke down the line of succession in case of a recall, and notes that the job would be filled by the Oakland City Council president, who is Nikki Fortunato Bas. But Bas is also running for Alameda County Board of Supervisors, and if she wins, that would prevent her from serving as Oakland mayor. Next up would be councilmember Dan Kalb, but he’s running for state Senate instead.

So the Oakland City Council would decide among themselves who would be the new council president, automatically elevating that person to mayor. That would obviously set off weeks of politicking, backstabbing, and secret alliances, and bring yet more chaos into Oakland politics.

Related: We’re Getting Clues On Why the FBI Raided Sheng Thao’s Home, and Other Oakland Politicians Might Be Worried Too [SFist]

Image: @MayorShengThao via Twitter

A possible October Surprise in next month’s recall election of Alameda County DA Pamela Price comes in a new report that claims that more than 1,000 misdemeanor offenders walked free because Price’s office missed deadlines to file charges.

In the attempt to recall Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, it was considered a win for Price that the recall election was delayed until November 5, likely giving Price some Kamala Harris coattails to keep her afloat. But a story that the Chronicle just dropped on October 10 might make Price’s campaign wish the recall election had come sooner.

That Chronicle report today says that Price's office has allowed more than 1,000 misdemeanor cases to expire without consequence, simply because Price’s office missed the one-year statute of limitations deadline to bring charges. Among these cases, per the Chronicle, is “A driver who slammed into three parked vehicles [who] tested at a 0.22% blood-alcohol level, nearly three times the legal limit.”

Perhaps more troubling for Price, the information comes from apparent whistleblowers currently working on her own staff. The Chron says they got this information from “documents prepared by current office staffers that were shared with the Chronicle.” Price’s office acknowledged a backlog to the Chronicle, but did not provide their own numbers on how large a backlog. And the Chronicle admits it “could not independently confirm the numbers provided by current prosecutors.”

So it is not a slam-dunk truth that Price’s office has whiffed on 1,000 cases in her 20 months in office. But there is clearly some “there” there. According to the so-called whistleblowers, 360 misdemeanor cases are already dismissed over missed statute of limitations deadlines, and another 646 cases appear almost certain to be dismissed for the same reason.

So if true, that’s 1,006 dismissed misdemeanor cases, though some of these may be the same suspects with multiple cases.

But these missed deadlines also cut into some of Price's signature cases. Price missed procedural deadlines on three Alameda PD officers facing involuntary manslaughter charges in the 2021 death of Mario Gonzalez. Two of those officers had their charges dismissed, one still faces charges.

Price's office blames prior DA Nancy O’Malley’s office for the backlog. Interim chief of prosecutors Evanthia Pappas told the Chronicle that Price was “was not provided any sort of roadmap or transition when she came in,” and that “As soon as she found out [about the backlog] she has been addressing it, branch by branch, and is currently working on the backlog at Wiley Manuel [Courthouse]."

O’Malley insists this is baloney.

“I committed a lot of staff whose only job was to look at those [cases], and they were assigned to [work with] different police departments,” she told the Chron. “We got reports every two weeks from the branch heads. And not one person ever said, ‘By the way, we need more help because we can’t get through the cases.’”

You would expect finger-pointing, and different versions of events from Price and O’Malley. They ran against each other in the past, and campaigned quite negatively against one another. It is fair to assume that Nancy O’Malley and Pamela Price don’t like each other one bit.

So the Chronicle spoke to an independent source in San Mateo County DA Steve Wagstaffe. He said it was “highly unusual” to allow statutes of limitations to expire before charging a suspect. “You have a deadline, you make your deadline,” Wagstaffe told the Chronicle.

So this is a bad story dropping at a bad time for Pamela Price. But potentially worse, Price has whistleblowers in her own office talking to the press. And they may have more whistles to blow before the November 5 recall election.

Related: Pamela Price Recall Election Date Set, and It Won’t Be Until November 5 [SFist]

Image: Alameda County District Attorney's Office via Facebook

Recall-mania is back in 2024, as a group hoping to recall Mayor Sheng Thao has enough verified signatures to make the November 2024 ballot and possibly remove the embattled mayor.

The height of the recall craze seems to have passed in San Francisco, after 2021’s unsuccessful attempt to recall Governor Gavin Newsom, and the twin successful SF school board and district attorney recall elections. But the recall movement is all over the 2024 political landscape in the East Bay this year, as the effort to recall Alameda County DA Pamela Price has made the November 5 ballot. And so it is with the Oakland mayor’s office too, as Oaklandside reports that the Recall Sheng Thao movement has gathered enough verified signatures to qualify for the November 5 ballot as well.

Recall supporters needed 25,000 signatures to qualify, they got more than 40,000 which were verified. The November 5 date for the recall election is not a certainty, but according to Oaklandside, “Under state law, the recall will most likely be folded into the November general election.”

So will the recall effort succeed? The recall campaign’s press conference announcement seen above did not have a particularly impressive turnout. But Thao is certainly hobbled by an increase in crime in Oakland (which has recently reversed), the year-long lack of a police chief (though Thao recently hired a new chief), and whether it's fair or not, the loss of the Oakland A’s.  

And the recall campaign has tech mogul Ron Conway (as well as Conway’s brother) among its top funders, so the effort is likely to benefit from significant amounts of out-of-town money.

Thao was barely elected in 2022 via ranked-choice voting, and a recall election brings challenges that ranked-choice winners do not enjoy. Ranked-choice winners get by on second- and third-place votes, recall elections are merely a 50% up-or-down vote.

Thao will be less than halfway through her duly elected term when the recall vote happens. And the recall-mania crowd seems to be figuring out, to paraphrase an old saying, “If you can’t beat ‘em in a normal election, recall ‘em.”

Related: Very Predictably, Effort to Recall Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao Now Afoot [SFist]

Image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 02: Sheng Thao speaks onstage at the TAAF Heritage Month Summit at The Glasshouse on May 02, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by JP Yim/Getty Images for The Asian American Foundation)