Councilman Loren Taylor extends lead in Oakland mayoral race
OAKLAND -- The mayor's race in Oakland remained without a decision Wednesday evening, though the current frontrunner continued to widen his narrow lead.
The latest numbers from the Alameda County Registrar of Voters show District 6 Councilmember Loren Taylor with a 6.5% lead over District 4 Councilmember Sheng Thao. The next round of ballot processing will be announced on Thursday, but Taylor's lead grew with the last batch of numbers released early Wednesday morning.
"It looks like we're going to be in for a long night," Taylor told the crowd gathered at his campaign event Tuesday evening. "Maybe even a long few days until we get the final results of the ballots of the votes that are being counted. But right now, we are ahead."
Speaking very much like a candidate confident in the numbers, Taylor acknowledged that it might take days to resolve Oakland's race for mayor.
That would be something the town has seen before. The first mayoral race to use ranked choice voting was 2010. That year, Don Perata held a 10 point lead on election night. It took a week to count all the votes and, in the end, Jean Quan was toasting a victory.
2014 would be a different story. By comparison, Libby Schaaf won in a landslide, declaring victory around 2 a.m. the day after the election. The vote tally for the 2022 election is going to take at least a couple of days.
"I'm going to be up with butterflies in my stomach, just to see the results come in," Thao said Tuesday night, "Again, we ran a great campaign, and I am very optimistic about the results."
So with tens of thousands of votes still to be counted, everyone must wait for more numbers. But the early results did have Loren Taylor talking about the next four years.
"We are on the verge of something great," Taylor said Tuesday night "And I am ready to roll up my sleeves and work with everyone to make that happen."
