Early results show voters widely supporting recall of Alameda Co. DA Pamela Price
Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price was behind in the early vote tally for the election to recall her from office, based on returns Tuesday from the county Registrar of Voters' Office.
Price was behind with about 35% of votes counted so far against the recall, compared to 64.68% for it at about 8:20 p.m. Tuesday, with just under 150,000 votes counted out of the county's total of 960,307 registered voters.
Price won the 2022 election with roughly 53 percent of the vote and became the first African American woman to hold the county's top prosecutor job.
At the time, she was clear about her reform-minded policies, including not tacking on enhancements to charges in order to win longer prison terms in criminal cases, not charging juveniles as adults and finding alternatives to prison or jail for certain defendants, among other things.
Soon after she took office opponents launched a petition drive and ultimately gathered enough signatures to place her name on a recall ballot, alleging that her progressive reform platform was too soft on criminals and led to increasing crime -- making her the first district attorney in the county's history to face a recall.
If the results hold, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors will appoint someone to replace Price until the end of her term in two years. A permanent replacement would be selected by voters in the next regularly scheduled election.
Recall supporters have collectively spent roughly $2.6 million to remove her from office via two primary campaign finance committees -- Save Alameda For Everyone and Supporters of Recall Pamela Price, which has significant financial support from several East Bay police officers' unions, including Oakland's and the Deputy Sheriffs Association of Alameda County, along with PG&E and Philip Dreyfuss, a wealthy hedge fund executive and Piedmont resident.
Price and her supporters launched the campaign committees Protect the Win for Public Safety, Oppose the Recall of DA Price, which raised more than $166,000, Protect the Protect the Win for Public Safety, Oppose the Recall of DA Price, which raised more than $272,000.
Almost all the money raised by Re-invest in Fair Elections came from the Heising-Simons Foundation, a Los Altos-based philanthropical organization that supports environmental and human rights causes, among other things.
Spokespeople for the pro-recall and Price campaigns didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.