Oakland Mayoral and District 2 Candidates Talk Housing and Transit
(David M. Barreda/KQED)
HAC was proud to cosponsor the Oakland 2025 Special Election Candidate Forum in Downtown Oakland last week. This event brought together six candidates vying for both the Mayor’s office and District 2 Council office ahead of the special election that will be held on April 15th.
Representative Barbara Lee and Loren Taylor, the two leading candidates for mayor, participated in the forum. Lee, a former East Bay Congresswoman, discussed urbanist issues like housing and transit with Taylor, who was a candidate for Mayor in 2022 and narrowly lost to Sheng Thao.
Unfortunately, neither candidate positioned themselves as a pro-housing champion for Oakland (or came close to living up to former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s pro-housing bonafides. Schaaf, a former Housing Hero, worked to help deliver 17,000 new homes during her time as Mayor and secured Oakland its official prohousing designation from the California Department of Housing and Community Development. While Taylor showed a commitment to supporting ministerial approvals for housing, neither candidate supported the missing-middle proposal to allow up to four units on every lot in Oakland.
For that reason, it’s unlikely that HAC will be endorsing in the mayor’s race. We do welcome the opportunity to provide feedback to either candidate on their housing platforms, and look forward to working with whomever is elected to ensure they prioritize building more housing of all types in Oakland.
The District 2 forum had decidedly more pro-housing candidates: Kara Murray-Badal, Kanitha Matoury-Nguyen, and Charlene Wang. Charlene Wang, a civil rights advisor with the federal Environmental Protection Agency, ran for the at-large council seat last year, finishing third among the 10 candidates. Her focus has been on fixing Oakland’s budget, boosting the local economy, and hiring more police. Kara Murray-Badal is director of the Terner Lab’s Housing Venture Lab, a nonprofit which addresses housing affordability, and she is highly focused on addressing the housing crisis. Kanitha Matoury-Nguyen is a local business owner and ran for the at-large council seat last year.
Overall, the forum was a valuable opportunity for Oakland residents to inform themselves ahead of the upcoming special election, ensuring they are well-prepared to make their voices heard at the polls.
The event was covered by KTVU, NBC, ABC, and KQED. You can watch the event here.
