Lateefah Simon, a BART director who relies on buses and trains to get around and promises to help expand public transportation throughout the country, led early returns in the primary election to replace Rep. Barbara Lee in the state’s 12th Congressional District.
In early Tuesday night election results, Simon held a wide lead in the East Bay race she has largely dominated in both name recognition and fundraising.
Trailing far behind her were a pair of fellow Democrats: Cal State East Bay Professor Jennifer Tran and Alameda Councilmember Tony Daysog. Whichever two candidates — regardless of party — emerge at the front of Tuesday’s open primary will face off in the November general election.
The historically progressive district, which until this year had long been represented by Lee before she vacated it to run for the U.S. Senate, spans Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Emeryville, San Leandro, Albany and Piedmont.
All the votes cast in the race were from voters in Alameda County, where the first round of tabulated results included solely mail-in ballots, though votes cast in person at polling places were expected to be counted by the end of the night.
Simon, who has served on the Bay Area transit agency’s board since 2016, won every major endorsement — including one from Gov. Gavin Newsom — against a field candidates that she also far outraised, with $1 million in donations and $800,000 in campaign spending.
In an interview late last week, she bristled at the notion that her commitment to progressive transit policy might waver under Congress’ bright lights — after all, Simon, who is legally blind, relies on the Bay Area’s bus and train systems to get around.
“Should I become a member of Congress, I am going to be on public transit getting to Congress or picking up my kid from school,” she said. “When you have a disability and rely on transit, it shows up in all the advocacy I do — from criminal justice reform to health care justice.”
A native of San Francisco, she has previously sat on California State University’s board of trustees, worked in District Attorney Kamala Harris’ office and was the youngest woman ever to receive the MacArthur genius grant for her nonprofit work to help children facing poverty.
She has built strong alliances among other Democrats, positioning her as the favorite in a district that has traditionally been a party stronghold. Prior to Lee taking office in 1998, the seat was held for many years by Oakland civil-rights icon Ron Dellums.
Experts speculated in the run-up to the election that other, more established East Bay politicians may have sat out of the open race to avoid having to run against Simon.
Daysog, a longtime council member in Alameda, had previously run for Rep. Mark DeSaulnier’s seat but lost badly with just 3.4% of the vote. He currently serves as the city’s vice mayor.
Tran, who teaches ethnic studies at Cal State East Bay, had won some fans among Oakland’s business community, where she has taken a moderate stance on combating crime with more police.
The other Democratic candidates in the race — Eric Wilson, a nonprofit worker; Abdur Sikder, a software engineer; Andre Todd, a businessman; and Glenn Kaplan, former owner of the recently-closed Oakland bar Make Westing — were relative political unknowns.
The Republican candidates hoping to make a dent in a district that voted 86% for Biden in 2020 were driving instructor Ned Nuerge and engineer Stephen Slauson, whose past electoral campaigns include single-digit-percentage voter support in challenges of Rep. Lee.
This story will be updated.