Recall of Alameda County DA Pamela Price Looks Increasingly Imminent

Updated 5 p.m. Wednesday

The recall of Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price looked increasingly imminent a day after the election, marking a dramatic backlash against progressive criminal justice policies.

With about a third of total votes counted as of Wednesday afternoon, roughly 65% were in favor of the recall – although the Associated Press still hadn’t called the race.

If the recall is ultimately successful, Price will leave her post immediately after the vote is certified, and the county Board of Supervisors will appoint an interim DA to oversee the sprawling office, which includes some 150 attorneys. Voters will then select a new DA in 2026 to finish out the remainder of Price’s term, which ends in 2028.

Alameda County voters “understood what we were talking about, understood that people were being hurt. And they went and they voted,” Brenda Grisham, who helped lead the recall effort, told supporters on Tuesday night. “We see victory. And we are so glad that we have made the step to make Alameda County a safer place for everybody.”

On Wednesday, however, Price remained defiant, saying county elections officials still had hundreds of thousands more ballots to tally.

“There are still so many more ballots to be counted, and in areas that I know we did well in getting our message out,” Price said in a statement. “I am optimistic that when all the votes are counted, we will be able to continue the hard work of transforming our criminal justice system.”

The effort to recall Price is the latest salvo in a wave of pushback against reform-focused prosecutors in California. It follows the successful recall of progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022, and comes as Los Angeles voters on Tuesday rejected progressive DA George Gascón’s bid for reelection.

California voters on Tuesday also overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime measure enhancing penalties for repeat offenders who have been convicted of low-level thefts and drug possession – a move that rolls back key parts of a decade-old criminal justice reform.

A civil rights attorney with no previous experience in the district attorney’s office, Price was elected in 2022 with 53% of the vote, beating out assistant DA Terry Wiley, a 30-year veteran of the office.

On the campaign trail, Price promised to reduce racial disparities in the criminal justice system by focusing on restorative justice and alternatives to incarceration.

The effort to recall Price formally kicked off six months after she took office and was primarily funded by donors with connections to the real estate and the tech industries. The recall was endorsed by all 13 of the county’s law enforcement unions and the union representing Alameda County prosecutors, East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell and Nancy O’Malley, Price’s predecessor, also supported the effort, as did the editorial boards of the East Bay Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Recall supporters blamed Price for a rise in crime in the county in 2023 and disputed Oakland Police Department data showing crime dropping in 2024. They accused her of incompetence and corruption, pointing to hundreds of misdemeanor cases her deputies failed to prosecute and allegations of anti-Asian discrimination and extortion.

The effort also garnered support from family members of some crime victims who expressed frustration with what they saw as overly lenient sentences and a lack of support from the office’s victim-witness advocates.

On Tuesday night, some of those families packed into a recall campaign party in San Leandro hosted by Save Alameda For Everyone, the group behind the effort.

“I want her to leave the office so we can get a little bit more justice for the victims,” said Erika Galavis, the aunt of two Berkeley teenage brothers killed at a house party in North Oakland in 2022.

Galavis said she got involved in the recall campaign after Price neglected to press charges against two of the suspects in the case.

“Right now she’s not doing her job as a DA. Right now she’s letting a lot of criminals go,” Galavis said. “You can sense that there is a chaos within the DA’s office internally.”

In response, Price said recall supporters were upset that she won the 2022 election, accusing them of trying to overturn the will of voters. That argument was bolstered by longtime East Bay Rep. Barbara Lee and state Sen. Nancy Skinner, who, on social media in the weeks leading up to the election, called all recalls “undemocratic, costly and chaotic.” She pointed out that crime is caused by a complicated web of factors, including the economy, public health and state and national policy — not one elected official.

Price, whose supporters included the ACLU of Northern California and a host of other local progressive groups, insisted that law enforcement groups and the former DA have been threatened by her willingness to bring misconduct charges against police officers and by her ongoing investigation into misconduct by former county prosecutors.

“I’m not surprised by this outcome. I am disappointed, but I’m not surprised,” said Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods.

Many of the same issues Price has been blamed for also happened under the leadership of former DA Nancy O’Malley, who is white, he said. “And she wasn’t blamed for it. She wasn’t persecuted for it in the press.”

“I think that’s because Pamela Price is Black,” Woods said of the recall effort against her. “I think that’s because she ran on a progressive platform. I think that’s because she tried to approach something differently. And because with that difference came a reaction and blame.”

Price’s likely ouster comes as the effort to recall Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao was also ahead, with more than 65% of voters supporting the measure, based on early returns late Tuesday night.

Oakland resident Tarita Thomas said that while she has misgivings about Price’s performance in office, she still voted against the recall, calling the effort “an unnecessary expense.”

“I think that when we vote someone in, we vote that person in,” she said, noting she also voted against Thao’s recall. “Whoever gets in there fairly should have an opportunity to do their job.”

Thomas said she voted for Price in 2022, but in hindsight would probably have voted for someone else.

“And yet I feel like I don’t have a right to say recall her,” she said.