Recall election date targeting soft-on-crime Bay Area prosecutor to be set this month

Lawmakers in Alameda County, California, on Tuesday said they will decide this month when to hold the recall election against District Attorney Pamela Price.

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors said a special session will be held on May 14 to determine whether the special election will get its own date or if it will be folded into the general November elections.

Tim Dupuis, the county’s registrar of voters, said a special election could cost $15 million to $20 million. Adding the initiative to the November ballot would be in the neighborhood of $4 million.

Local legislators weighed their options as competing rallies raged outside the Alameda County Administration Building in Oakland.

Proponents chanted “Recall Price,” while defenders of Ms. Price replied with “Stop scapegoating Price.”

As the board met Tuesday, Ms. Price said during her rally that the California Fair Political Practices Commission was looking into the recall effort’s funding sources.

The district attorney’s defenders accused the recall campaign, Safe Alameda for Everyone, of not disclosing their funders in a September 2023 financial filing. The disclosure is required by law.

“Between September 2023 and November 2023 they donated approximately $578,000 to SAFE without complying with the laws that govern all political committees in California,” Ms. Price said. “We applaud the FPPC’s action to investigate this entity as well as the finances that have also come under question of the SAFE committee, where we’ve learned that they were paying some of the main spokespersons and funding an illegal force that they called a security force.”

The recall election will be Alameda County’s first.

Ms. Price, who has been in office for 16 months, quickly became the face of Oakland’s crime crisis last year because of her oft-criticized leniency toward criminal defendants.

The district attorney urged her staff to treat probation as the default punishment in most cases shortly after assuming her role, according to a memo leaked from her office.

The memo also revealed that she directed staff not to add sentencing enhancements to cases without her approval.

Last summer, Ms. Price removed enhancements for two suspects tied to the 2021 killing of toddler Jasper Wu.

The defendants are both parole-eligible without the enhancements, despite Ms. Price touting they could face well over 100 years behind bars if found guilty of their alleged crimes.