In the latest episode of her new podcast, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price sits down with her first-ever Communications Director, Hon. Ryan LaLonde, for a raw and revealing conversation about what really happened during her chaotic first 90 days in office.
LaLonde pulls back the curtain on a political and media firestorm that engulfed the DA’s office from day one—fueled not just by resistance from inside the office, but by a hostile press ecosystem and a vacuum of communications infrastructure.
“There was no roadmap,” LaLonde explains. “We inherited an office with no communications team, no media protocol, and no internal or external strategy for telling the public what this office stands for. That void got filled fast—and not by us.”
In this episode, LaLonde walks listeners through the early chaos: how a lack of digital tools like a functioning website made even basic transparency difficult, how a handful of rogue prosecutors began leaking internal matters to the press, and how some victims were manipulated by outside interests to undermine Price’s reform agenda.
He also details the intensity of the media frenzy—reporters circling for quotes, editors shaping a narrative of disarray, and a constant pressure campaign to define Price’s administration before it could define itself.
Through it all, LaLonde says, the Price administration remained focused on building the systems necessary to carry out its promises—even as the storm raged.
