3 Oakland Mayoral Candidates Form Alliance To Use Ranked-Choice Voting To Their Advantage
OAKLAND (KCBS)— Three of Oakland's mayoral candidates are forming an alliance to try to take advantage of the city's ranked-choice voting system. They're characterizing the election as "outsiders" vs. "insiders".
City Auditor Courtney Ruby, former KCBS and KPIX political analyst Joe Tuman, and Port Commissioner Bryan Parker held a joint news conference asking voters to list them as choices one, two and three (in no particular order) on their ballots.
They're calling themselves outsiders as opposed to the mayor and two city councilmembers who are running and have been leading in the polls.
"Oakland deserves the leadership that is outside City Hall to create the change we need," said Ruby. Tuman said you'd never see the "substantive change" needed in the city if the same group of people continues to be sent into office.
"The insiders have had long enough," said Parker.
Ruby's office is actually inside City Hall where she's been the auditor for the past eight years.
A spokesman for Mayor Jean Quan's office called the coalition an act of desperation. Front-runner Rebecca Kaplan, who sits on the city council, said she's been fighting against insiders ever since she took her seat in office.
Some have said, the trio's strategy is to try to take away some second-place votes from Councilwoman Libby Schaaf, in hopes the instant runoff vaults one of them into the Mayor's office.