Oakland leaders may soon settle a lawsuit claiming ex-Mayor Sheng Thao — who was recalled in November and now faces federal bribery charges — was ineligible for the 2022 mayoral election that elevated her to power.
Oakland’s City Council could agree to pay nearly $208,000 and institute a broad range of reforms amid allegations that the City Clerk’s office flubbed a key deadline for candidates to enter the 2022 mayoral election, then wrongfully allowed Thao and other candidates to submit their applications late. The lawsuit — brought by the Alameda County Taxpayers’ Association — also accused the city of being late in responding to records requests about those issues.
The tax association also claimed voters were shortchanged in the number of candidates they could rank during that election, potentially skewing the results of the 2022 mayoral race.
The City Council authorized the settlement during a closed-door meeting on April 17, city documents show. It’s expected to vote on whether to approve the deal during its May 6 meeting.
A spokesperson for the city attorney’s office declined to comment. The city does not intend to admit any liability in the settlement, according to a report to the City Council.
The lawsuit, led by attorney Marleen Sacks, took aim at the chaotic application process that preceded the 2022 mayoral election.
Staff at the City Clerk’s office mistakenly broadcast the wrong deadline for candidates to turn in their paperwork to appear on the ballot — wrongly suggesting the candidates had until August 17, 2022, when the deadline was actually five days earlier, according to the lawsuit.
On that August 12 deadline day, the City Clerk’s office contacted multiple mayoral candidates about the misstep and urged them to immediately get to their office before the fast-approaching 5 p.m. deadline. Candidates “were left scrambling to gather signatures and organize their paperwork at the last minute,” according to the lawsuit.
Four candidates — Thao, Monesha Carter, Seneca Scott and Alyssa Victory — showed up to the clerk’s office that day. Yet only Scott turned in his paperwork by the statutorily-required 5 p.m. deadline, the lawsuit claimed.
The lawsuit claimed the clerk’s office illegally opted to nevertheless accept Thao’s application late that day. In addition, Sacks claimed that timestamps on multiple applications that day were incorrect — suggesting at least some of the candidates submitted their paperwork before they had even arrived at City Hall, the lawsuit said.
Sacks claimed that a city staffer later told her that “we have to stamp before 5 p.m.,” and that staffers were manually adjusting the time stamping machine — which appeared to be malfunctioning — amid the “chaos” of that day.
“An overall lack of election integrity, lack of public accountability, and staggering government dysfunction are at the heart of this lawsuit,” one of the association’s court filings said.
Thao went on to win the election by a mere 677 votes. She later became the subject of an unprecedented recall effort that culminated with voters booting her from office during the November 2024 election. Two months later, a federal grand jury indicted her — along with her romantic partner and the father-and-son executive team overseeing the city’s recycling contractor — on several charges in an alleged pay-to-play bribery scheme.
Sacks’ lawsuit, which was filed in February 2023, originally asked the city to re-do the mayoral election. In doing so, she suggested voters were given the chance to rank only half as many options for ranking candidates as required under city and county law, given that voters could only rank candidates on a scale of one to five, despite the fact there were 10 candidates in the race.
She also claimed city officials were late in replying to her California Public Record Act requests, and that at least some surveillance footage of candidates entering and leaving City Hall had been deleted in the months afterward — despite the fact that state law requires that footage to be kept on file for at least a year.
In the settlement, city leaders agreed to not accept late paperwork from candidates seeking office, while also “making best efforts” to ensure time stamp machines are working at the clerk’s office, and that candidates get accurate information about deadlines, according to a City Council report on the settlement.
The city must also retain camera footage at Frank Ogawa Plaza for a year, and forward election integrity complaints to the city administration and city attorney, the report said. In addition, the city must ask the Alameda County Registrar of Voters to offer more than five ranked-choice options for city elections under certain circumstances.
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