Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price goes on offensive, vows to defeat recall effort

Striking a defiant tone, Pamela Price offered an emphatic defense of her first 16 months in office while pillorying "a handful of super-rich investigators and tech executives" bankrolling the recall effort.

OAKLAND — Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price went on the offensive Wednesday, vowing to prevail against a well-heeled recall attempt that will be decided on a packed November general election ballot.

Striking a defiant tone, Price offered an emphatic defense of her first 16 months in office while pillorying “a handful of super-rich investigators and tech executives” who have spent heavily to see her ousted barely a year into her first term.

Her remarks came a day after the county’s Board of Supervisors placed the recall question on the Nov. 5 ballot. The move sets off a six-month campaign to determine whether Price becomes the first known elected official in Alameda County’s history to be recalled from office.

Backed by more than a dozen supporters holding signs proclaiming “Protect the Win,” Price on Wednesday framed the recall campaign as a bid to “overturn” the results of the 2022 election, during which she became the first Black woman to serve as Alameda County’s top prosecutor.

“The people in this county have the right to elect a district attorney. They did that — we should not have to do it again,” said Price while speaking at Everett & Jones Barbeque in Jack London Square. “But we will — we will do it again.”

In doing so, she called out nearly a dozen people by name who funneled tens of thousands of dollars to the recall campaign — in one case, more than a half-million dollars — working to boot her from office. She suggested their money would be far better served going to a litany of other uses, including improving funding for Highland Hospital, housing for teachers, shelter for homeless people and anti-violence nonprofits.

“Invest your money in building up our community and not tearing down our democracy,” Price said.

Chris Moore, the campaign manager for the Save Alameda For Everyone recall campaign, dismissed Price’s comments as a common tactic, given how “everything she does is about intimidation and basically trying to say that there’s some type of ulterior motive against her.”

“The reason they’re supporting this recall campaign is because they can see the overall damage to the community that she’s doing, in terms of lost business, small businesses, lost lives,” Moore said.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted 3-0 — with supervisors David Haubert and Lena Tam absent — to place the recall question on the Nov. 5 ballot, alongside an expected rematch between the nation’s last two presidents as well as a wealth of state and local races. The timing of the recall election had been a point of contention in recent weeks as county leaders implemented a new set of recall laws passed by voters in March that lengthened the timeline for an election to be held.

The move fell in line with a recommendation by Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis, who raised concerns about the expected $15 million to $20 million price tag of holding a special election in August or September. He also raised concerns about his office not having its election equipment ready in time for the November election if the recall happened earlier.

“We don’t have enough equipment to hold two county-wide elections,” he said flatly.

It also set the stage for the second recall election targeting a progressively minded district attorney in the Bay Area in barely two years. In June 2022, San Francisco voters booted Chesa Boudin from office in a nationally watched election that many viewed as a referendum on left-leaning policies in the criminal justice system.

His dismissal came in sharp contrast to voters’ preferences in that very same election across the Bay Bridge, where Alameda County voters placed Price first among four candidates for the East Bay job. She won the job outright four months later, defeating a longtime prosecutor.

Lately, cracks have begun to emerge in the East Bay’s Democratic Party after U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, who represents the Tri-Valley area, took aim at Price on social media, telling her to “Tweet less. Prosecute more.”

The online tiff began when Swalwell posted to the social media site X about a postal worker being robbed in the East Bay. He decried how “soft on crime Alameda County prosecutors have given the bad guys a green light to hurt people,” adding that “people of the East Bay have never felt as unsafe as they do today and are leaving our community in droves.”

“We need a rule of law,” tweeted Swalwell, a former Dublin City Council member and Alameda County prosecutor.

Price’s campaign responded in their own tweets, questioning why Swalwell had started blaming Alameda County’s district attorney for postal carrier robberies “when Alameda County residents historically elected the first Black woman as District Attorney.” The campaign listed several previous instances of mail carriers being robbed before she took office, adding, “I guess that makes the previous DA ‘soft-on-crime,’ too, but for some reason, you never attacked her politically for it.”

At her press conference Wednesday, Price further questioned why Swalwell was “holding us to a different standard as my predecessor,” former District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, whom Swalwell himself once worked for as a prosecutor.

A spokesperson with Swalwell’s office declined to comment Wednesday.

The recall’s organizers appear to be heading into the six-month recall race with a significant fundraising edge. Donations to the two leading political organizations fueling the recall effort have dwarfed those going directly to Price’s “Protect the Win” campaign since last summer, campaign finance filings show.

The Save Alameda For Everyone recall campaign brought in nearly $569,000 in contributions during the first three months of 2024, according to campaign finance forms filed May 1. That’s in addition to the roughly $1.1 million that it raised in 2023.

Much of that money has come from a single political action committee, Supporters Of Recall Pamela Price, which contributed $545,330 from January through March, along with about $694,000 in 2023. The group has since come under investigation by the California Fair Political Practices Commission amid allegations by Price’s campaign that it failed to properly disclose its contributors.

Price’s Protect the Win campaign, meanwhile, brought in slightly more than $36,000 over the first three months of 2024. That’s in addition to the $82,000 in contributions it raised in 2023.