OAKLAND – Pamela Price’s self-proclaimed “exclamation point in history” – that moment when she became the first Black woman to serve as Alameda County’s top prosecutor – is at risk of ending in a whimper barely a third of the way into her first term.
The former civil rights attorney is battling the latest multi-million dollar recall campaign in the Bay Area targeting a progressively-minded district attorney. Not only is Price’s own political future at stake on the Nov. 5 ballot, but so is the basic notion of whether a progressive approach to criminal justice is sustainable in Northern California.
Price’s opponents have framed the recall as a necessary step to protect the voice of crime victims who feel sidelined by the new administration. Yet her supporters deride the campaign — officially initiated a mere six months into her six-year tenure — as nothing more than a pet project of one well-heeled hedge fund manager, numerous real estate donors and aggrieved former county prosecutors.
“The last several years, the progressive movement has been on the defensive,” said Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. “The question is: Is that being caused by progressive overreach, or is it something else?”
The recall election comes after the successful June 2022 recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who voters booted from office during his first term.
That nationally-watched recall election had been viewed as a barometer of voters’ appetite for a progressive approach to criminal justice – one prioritizing shorter prison sentences, alternatives to prison and more lenient prosecutions of young defendants as a means to combat the nation’s legacy of mass incarceration.
Her message appeared to resonate deeply with voters across Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro, where she garnered deep support in November 2022 while knocking off longtime Alameda County prosecutor Terry Wiley. She ultimately won with 53% of the vote, dominating in Oakland and Berkeley and flipping precincts elsewhere that she lost during her unsuccessful run against District Attorney Nancy O’Malley in 2018.
Price’s decisive victory two years ago — particularly as reform-minded law enforcement candidates defeated longtime sheriffs in Alameda and San Mateo counties — appeared to suggest that voters in Alameda County were ready for a progressive candidate, even as San Franciscans booted Boudin from office.
Now that notion is up for debate, particularly if Price is removed from office.
“Any time you run on a progressive platform, people are going to start to get uncomfortable, because they correlate that with change,” said Lisa Hill, a criminal justice professor at California State University, East Bay. “And people are uncomfortable with change.”
For Boudin himself, the advent of yet another recall targeting a second district attorney is “frustrating.”
“There is a playbook that is being used – not just in the Bay Area, but across the country – to spread fear and undermine criminal justice reform,” said Boudin, one of Price’s confidants and a member of her transition team. He railed against the notion that a few well-heeled donors could spark a recall, calling it “tremendously destructive, both to public safety, to justice and to democracy.”
Throughout her tenure, Price appeared to pay little mind to the specter of another potential recall campaign on this side of the Bay Bridge.
Within weeks of taking office, Price’s office hired her longtime boyfriend to a six-figure job in its resentencing unit. At the same time, she fired multiple longtime veterans of the office and placed seven prosecutors on administrative leave – claiming they either committed malpractice or previously campaigned for her opponent on the job.
All the while, she appeared at public rallies and, while standing on a truck in downtown Oakland with a megaphone in hand, declared “a new day in Alameda County,” adding “them other folks is gone — most of them. I’m working on the rest.”
She personally intervened in high-profile murder cases, seeking significantly less prison time for defendants who — if convicted — had faced a lifetime behind bars under former DA Nancy O’Malley.
And a half-year onto the job, she charged her loudest political rival, Deputy District Attorney Amilcar “Butch” Ford, with an obscure misdemeanor, leading to claims she was abusing her power as the county’s top prosecutor.
Repeatedly, Price “just plowed ahead with her work as if she’s had the mandate from the voting public, without the need thereafter to justify and define what she’s doing,” said George Bisharat, a professor emeritus who spent decades teaching at UC Law San Francisco — formerly known as UC Hastings College of Law — and had previously worked as a public defender in San Francisco.
Her results have been mixed.
None of the prosecutors she placed on leave ever faced any official findings of misconduct or discipline. Four of them were allowed to come back to work after nine to 12 months on leave, while three others left for jobs elsewhere in the Bay Area before being given the chance.
Her high-profile bid to offer a 15-year plea deal to a man accused in three-separate killings as a teen left an Alameda County judge reeling when he declared that “I’ve never seen a case plead down like this before.” Price later tried unsuccessfully to have the judge removed from the case before dropping charges in two of those killings, citing a lack of evidence.
More recently, the criminal case against Ford ended in embarrassing fashion when one judge removed Price’s office from the case, while another tossed the charge at the request of the California Attorney General’s Office, which said it was acting “in the interest of justice.”
“With respect to her, I don’t think she’s been super politically astute,” Bisharat said. “It’s really a matter of public relations, and I think she seems to view public relations as a nuisance.”
The Bay Area News Group spent several weeks seeking a phone interview with Price. However, campaign spokeswoman Evelyn Torres ultimately said the district attorney would not be available to talk by this news organization’s deadline.
Still, Price’s defenders say she seldom gets credit for laying the groundwork for reform in Alameda County.
Her office filed lawsuits against car and home insurers for underpaying policyholders, as well as a Livermore-based company accused of illegally selling flavored tobacco products to children. In July, her office led the charge in indicting employees of Radius Recycling – formerly known as Schnitzer Steel – regarding a massive 2023 fire that spewed toxic smoke across the East Bay.
Her office said it expanded the number of victim advocates — DA employees responsible for keeping crime victims’ families up to date on proceedings and connecting them with resources — by roughly a third, to 33 as of Sept. 11. And her office claimed to widen the criteria for people to participate in its collaborative courts programs catering to military veterans, drug users and people with certain mental health and housing needs.
Perhaps most strikingly, she instituted a policy requiring supervisors’ approval for prosecutors to pursue sentencing enhancements, which add decades to defendants’ prison terms if they’re convicted. The sweeping change came amid prior recommendations by the state’s Committee on the Revision of the Penal Code, which urged prosecutors to curtail prison terms and their use of many such enhancements.
“She campaigned very clearly – both in 2018 and again in 2022 – as a change candidate,” Boudin said. “The norm is that people just keep business as usual, and that’s a very good way to avoid being recalled. But that’s not really a way to deal with the very deep problems that Alameda County is facing.”
“And she deserves a chance to try to implement her vision – the vision that voters chose for their county,” Boudin said.
Whether she gets that opportunity remains unclear. If Price is recalled by a majority of Alameda County voters, the county Board of Supervisors would then appoint someone to fill the position until the next general election in 2026.
“Everyone’s waiting to see what’s going to happen – is progressive prosecution going to take it on the chin again here in Alameda County?” Bisharat said.
“I don’t think it’ll spell the end of progressive prosecution” if she loses, Bisharat added. “But if it does happen in a liberal bastion like the East Bay, like Alameda County, it’ll represent another stage in the struggle for this.”