OAKLAND – The Alameda County Board of Supervisors on Thursday are expected to begin the consequential task of selecting a permanent replacement for recalled District Attorney Pamela Price.
The supervisors plan to winnow down a list of 15 candidates to no more than five during a special public meeting, before residents get a chance to hear from the finalists on Jan. 21.
The board’s three-against-two vote to approve a candidate follows a 2-to-1 margin in the Nov. 5 election, when more than 375,000 voters elected to recall Price.
A majority-board vote would appoint someone until 2026, at which point she or he can run as an incumbent in a primary election — and then run again in 2028, at what would have been the end of Price’s first term.
Despite the packed file of applicants, two potential big names aren’t vying for the job. Price’s immediate successor after leaving office in December, Chief Assistant District Attorney Royl L. Roberts, did not apply despite pulling application papers for the position on Christmas Eve.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Castro Valley, who feuded with Price over crime rates in 2024, went so far as to take interviews with Supervisor Lena Tam and Price recall leaders, but the former Alameda County prosecutor went no further.
Already, several other candidates have garnered notable endorsements ahead of Thursday’s meeting.
Venus D. Johnson, the second-in-command to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, recently received her boss’s backing in an effusive letter penned by the former East Bay state lawmaker and Alameda councilman. A prosecutor in Alameda County from 2006 through early 2014, Johnson held a vast array of jobs over the last decade, including as Oakland’s director of public safety under former Mayor Libby Schaaf and as Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton’s top lieutenant. Her other endorsements include former Oakland Police Commission Chair Regina Jackson and Anne Irwin, founder of Smart Justice California.
Johnson’s name did not appear on recommendations issued late last week by the group that organized Price’s recall, Save Alameda for Everyone. The group instead backed Alameda County Superior Court Judge Ursula Jones-Dickson, Contra Costa County Assistant District Attorney Annie Esposito and San Francisco County Assistant District Attorney Amilcar “Butch” Ford. The SAFE endorsement was backed by every police union in Alameda County.
Ford also got the endorsement of his boss, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.
Several current and former Alameda County prosecutors and a cadre of outsiders working across Northern California round out the list of candidates.
They include Elgin Lowe, an assistant district attorney prosecuting the three alleged burglars charged in the 2023 shooting death of Oakland police officer Tuan Le, as well as Jimmie Wilson, another assistant DA who lost to Price during the 2022 election before joining her office and spending the two years overseeing charging decisions at Oakland’s courthouses. Another former prosecutor applying is Deputy County Counsel L.D. Louis, who left the Alameda County DA’s office in early 2023 after more than two decades as a county prosecutor. Her final five years in that job were spent serving on the county’s Mental Health Advisory Board, as an appointee by Supervisor Nate Miley.
Two candidates – Simona Farrise and Kwixuan Maloof – were hired by Price in 2023, representing an option for supervisors seeking a measure of continuity from the previous administration. Farrise was named to Price’s executive team and served time as head of the office’s Consumer Justice Bureau.
Maloof – a public defender of two decades in San Francisco – first oversaw Price’s Civil Rights Bureau, including its high-profile Public Accountability Unit. Yet he was abruptly transferred after less than eight months to the office’s Consumer Justice Bureau, and later spent time working as an ombudsman, as an advisor to the civil grand jury and in the office’s resentencing unit. Most recently, he authored a bombshell motion that steadfastly defended Price against allegations that she tried to shake down a political operative in early 2023 for $25,000.
Elsewhere, a half-dozen outsiders could inject a new perspective into the district attorney’s office.
Four candidates — Arvon Perteet, Scott Tsui, Seth Steward and Miiko Anderson — spent time working as county prosecutors elsewhere in the state. Perteet now works under Bonta as a deputy attorney general, while Tsui is retired and Stewart — who ran and lost in the 2022 Alameda DA primary race — heads The Crucible, an industrial arts school. Anderson, an attorney with the nonprofit AEquitas, currently lives in the Central Valley city of Clovis, but vowed to move back to Alameda County “immediately” if appointed.
Alameda City Attorney Yibin Shen implemented a rare arrangement allowing city attorneys to criminally prosecute many cases originating in the city; only a dozen other cities in the state operate under such arrangements.
Meanwhile, Ocean Mottley, a Northern California labor attorney, touted a need to “support victims and find ways to heal our communities that do not rely solely on punitive measures.” He pointed to the killing of his partner, Jen Angel, a beloved Oakland baker who was dragged to death during a 2023 purse snatching.
Angel’s death sparked a conversation about the criminal justice system after Angel’s family and friends called for her alleged killer to receive “all available alternatives to traditional prosecution, such as restorative justice.” That suspect, Ishmael Burch, ultimately received a seven-year prison sentence for voluntary manslaughter and second-degree robbery under a plea deal that saw prosecutors dismiss a murder and robbery charge against him.
Whoever gets the nod from county supervisors must grapple with “a pretty significant reflex back to a more tough-on-crime model of what voters think they want,” said Jon Simon, a professor of criminal justice law at UC Berkeley.
Those back-to-back elections also could pose their own set of challenges, said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University.
“Voters are clearly surly,” McCuan said. “Voters are clearly upset. So you get a window of positive press, positive exposure. You get a window to make change and be visible. But you don’t get a lot of running room to be successful.”
But — for now — the decision of who becomes the next DA rests with the five-member Board of Supervisors.