Who’s Funding Alameda County DA Pamela Price Recall Attempt?

OAKLAND, CA — The top 10 funders of the effort to recall Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price “work in real estate investment, finance, and technology, raising more than $2.6 million from more than 875 individuals, companies and fundraising committees as of Oct. 15,” according to KQED’s Annelise Finney and Matthew Green from KQED.

This money—based on campaign finance reports filed with the Alameda County Registrar of Voters, said KQED, “paid political consultants and signature gatherers” to kickstart another recall attempt on Price.

Price’s supporters have claimed those who funded Price’s recall are not even from Alameda County at all.

The main questions Finney and Green wanted to explore were who was funding the opposition versus support and from where, because money “impacts how and what people hear about the recall,” they wrote, highlighting that it can “shape the decisions voters make as they fill out their ballots.”

“If successful,” according to KQED, “the current recall push would be another blow to criminal justice reform, a platform embraced by both Price and (Chesa) Boudin.” Pamela Price became Alameda County’s first Black district attorney when she won the 2022 election for a six-year term.

This challenge to Price’s term in the form of a recall would mark the “second effort in just two years to recall a progressive district attorney in the Bay Area following the 2022 ouster of San Francisco DA Boudin.”

On the other hand, KQED said, “a rejection of the effort” of the recall “would be a powerful signal that voters are doubling down on Price’s vision for progressive reform,” which KQED noted that voters had already “embraced” since 2022.

Those opposed to DA Price and want the recall to succeed are rallying behind the campaign called Save Alameda for Everyone, or SAFE, in which it “filed its official paperwork with the county in July 2023,” according to KQED.

There is another “network of campaign consultants and deep-pocketed donors” who run a “coordinated secondary fundraising committee” called Supporters of Recall Pamela Price.

“SAFE works in close collaboration with the Supporters of Recall Pamela Price,” stated SAFE campaign manager Chris Moore, a realtor and former county supervisor candidate. He said at a press conference in Oct. 2024 that the “larger check donations” go to Supporters of Recall and the “larger expenditures of the campaign.”

However, in August of the year, the California Fair Political Practices Commission fined Supporters of Recall Pamela Price $3,700 for “failing to meet campaign finance filing deadlines, among other violations of state campaign finance rules,” Finney and Green reported.

In the same summer of 2024, a third fundraising group rose to oppose Price’s term.

The Revitalize East Bay Committee was started and led by Oakland resident Isaac Abid, who also owns Lakeside Group, works “closely with Oakland’s Uptown Downtown Community Benefits Districts,” and “is on the board of the Oakland School for the Arts,” KQED reported.

Abid’s Lakeside Group is a “real estate investment and management firm with more than a dozen properties in Alameda County,” according to KQED, noting Abid’s committee also donated to Oakland City Council candidates such as Leronne Armstrong, the city’s former police chief.

“While the county registrar’s website has fillings showing where a portion of Revitalize East Bay’s funding is coming from, some records are missing and a significant portion of its funding remains unaccounted for,” Finney and Green wrote, noting the “committee did not respond to requests for comment.”

One campaign in support of Price has cropped up since the recall effort: “Protect the Win for Public Safety, Oppose the Recall of DA Price.”

Formed in Sept. 2023, KQED reported it spent its money “mostly on rallies, lawyers and advertising,” receiving nearly $340,000 from more than “440 individuals, fundraising committees and businesses” as of Oct. 15.

“The top 10 donors in support of Price “include personal injury lawyers and police reform advocates,” journalists reported.

According to Finney and Green, four additional groups have pitched in to support Pamela Price, albeit not for campaign fundraising, “according to their filings with the county.”

The ACLU of Northern California Committee to Oppose the Recall of District Attorney Pamela Price has “paid for email outreach supporting Price’s anti-recall efforts, while Center for Empowered Politics has “paid for polling” in helping “develop grassroots organizations,” KQED said.

Respect Our Vote, No Recalls is a coalition of organizations formed Aug. 2024 that includes the “Oakland-based Latino Task Force, the Wellstone Democratic Club, Asian Americans for a Progressive Alameda (AAPA), and Bay Area Christian Connection,” among other groups.

Coalition organizer Walter Riley, a civil rights attorney, told KQED the group “isn’t accepting donations,” and that the “Oakland Rising and AAPA cover its printing costs” whenever they hand out posters and yard signs during rallies.

The last group, “Fxk Yo Recalls, Oppose the Recalls of Thao and Price,” was formed earlier this month with Oakland addresses in filings, according to KQED, and reported zero fundraising so far.

These supporters of Price/opponents of the recall, have claimed recall supporters are largely “outsiders trying to overrule the will of local voters.” Finney and Green investigated the validity of this claim by charting contributions by region. They concluded that “indeed, the recall effort has generated significant amounts of money from outside the country.”

“Nearly 40 percent of its funding, or about $963,000, has come from outside of Alameda County” of the total $2,638,202, they reported.

On the other hand, of the total $339,621 raised to combat Price’s recall, $207,605 are funded from outside Alameda County.

It’s not “uncommon for political candidates and ballot measure committees” to “receive funding from outside the jurisdiction the election takes place in,” KQED clarified, citing Ann Ravel, a UC Berkeley Law professor and former chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission and the Federal Election Commission.

For a point of comparison, noted KQED, Price’s opposition received $209,010 from outside of California, and despite it only being either percent of the total campaign funding, it is greater than the combined fundraising of Pamela’s supporters in the Bay Area outside of Alameda, inside CA outside of the Bay Area, and outside of CA.

“A candidate may have personal and professional connections out of state,” Ravel said. “Supporters may have businesses locally or family members, even though they live somewhere else.”

“When there’s localities or cities, or in this case counties, that are particularly influential nationwide, it’s not uncommon for outside money to be flowing into those,” concurred David Shor, money in politics program manager for Common Cause California, an advocacy group pushing for more transparent democracy in the state.

However, Shor warned, “when money is flooding in from outside the district or outside of localities, oftentimes that ends up leading to those candidates not being accountable to the people who they should be.”

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