Mayor-elect Thao: Progressive will be first Hmong in post
Sheng Thao’s path to Oakland’s seat of power was anything but traditional, and she says her unique background will guide her as the city’s next mayor.
Thao, a progressive who won after nearly two weeks of ballot-counting in which she came from behind to beat fellow Oakland City Council Member Loren Taylor, becomes the city’s first Hmong mayor.
The daughter of refugees who fled Laos during a genocide, Thao is the seventh of 10 children. She was born and raised in Stockton, where her family lived in public housing. She left home at 17, found herself in an abusive relationship in her early 20s and lived
in a car with her son for a period.
She first got a job at Merritt College, where she began taking classes and eventually transferred to UC Berkeley, graduating with a degree in legal studies. She started working for Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan in 2014 as an intern and eventually rose to be chief of staff before running for a council seat herself, representing part of the Oakland hills, in 2018.
Thao has said her experience with poverty and homelessness will inform how she leads the city as she vows to tackle Oakland’s urgent issues, including homelessness, violent crime, dirty streets and the housing crisis.
“I represent those families who are on the margins,” Thao said at a mayoral forum earlier this year.
“For me, I will continue to do me, which is helping others, helping families and assisting and supporting families that are like mine, like how I grew up, those who are on the margins,” she added.
At UC Berkeley, Thao launched a food access program for low-income students. As a staff worker, Kaplan said, she created programs for healthy food deliveries for seniors, people with disabilities and low-income families.
“She is an incredibly empathetic person,” said Zac Unger, the president of Oakland Firefighters Local 55, which endorsed Thao. “She understands the struggles that we are facing with staffing in particular and she has been incredibly supportive of us trying to get staffed up, not just in the Fire Department, but all departments within the city.”
Council Member Dan Kalb, who supported Thao’s mayoral bid, said he worked with Thao on the city’s vegetation management plan since their districts include neighborhoods in wildfire zones. Kalb said she has the “political savvy” to “move things forward” in Oakland.
Thao’s supporters described her as a consensus builder. Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas said Thao was instrumental in bringing together labor unions, business leaders and other stakeholders to work on a progressive business tax for the ballot measure rather than competing measures — a “very hard” but “fruitful” task, Bas said.
Unger, who was part of the discussions, said Thao showed herself to be a “hands-on politician,” a dealmaker who was willing to have honest and uncomfortable conversations and showed “a real ability to bring people from disparate groups together.”
Thao steps into the role at a time when most Oaklanders are dissatisfied with the city’s direction under current Mayor Libby Schaaf, who’s termed out after two four-year terms.
Thao, 37, who had strong labor backing, overcame a moderate opponent who had Schaaf’s backing as well as that of other Bay Area mayors.
The Oakland Chamber of Commerce recently released a poll showing 64% of respondents felt the city was headed in the wrong direction — though 52% said Schaaf herself was doing at least a fair job. The poll found that homelessness and gun violence were the two biggest issues on voters’ minds.
Public safety was a big issue in the mayoral campaign, as Oakland experiences a spike in violent crime. The city has recorded 111 homicides this year, compared with 124 this time last year.
Thao and Taylor each touted their commitment to making Oakland safer. But there were differences in approach.
Thao said public safety is her No. 1 priority, and she vowed to hire more homicide investigators and put more officers into commercial corridors.
But she has said she is focused on hiring enough police staff to get to its current budgeted level of about 750 officers. Taylor agreed a to a Chamber of Commerce pledge to grow the Police Department from its current staff to 900.
Thao introduced legislation last year to add more police academies amid rising violence, after she initially opposed them, and the measure passed.
Last month, Thao worked with the Police Department and the privacy commission to reach a compromise to allow the department to continue using license plate readers in crime investigations.
She said her commitment to public safety is personal. In 2019, her son was home alone in the middle of the day when three men broke in and began burglarizing the home. Thao was in the middle of a council committee meeting when she found about the burglary.
“Public safety begins with making sure we have access to good schools, programs and pathways that ensure economic mobility and jobs that ensure a living wage,” Thao previously told The Chronicle.
In addition to creating educational and job opportunities, Thao said she wants to invest more in the city’s Department of Violence Prevention and a civilian unit that responds to some nonviolent 911 calls when a person is in a mental health crisis. She previously told The Chronicle that money from the business tax ballot measure she pushed forward could go toward funding those programs.
Thao will also likely have to lead the department out of its nearly 20 years of federal oversight, which could come as soon as next year. She must ensure that constitutional policing is cemented within the department, said Dan Lindheim, a former city administrator and current professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.
Throughout the campaign, Thao promised to bring people together to address Oakland’s most critical needs including building affordable housing and staffing up the city, which has seen high vacancies.
Now, as Thao steps into the role of mayor, she will have to contend with the harsh realities of transitioning from an ambitious candidate to an effective mayor. She will lead a city that faces financial uncertainty and has heavily relied on federal COVID funds for assistance.
Thao is the subject of an ongoing ethics probe triggered by a former staffer who complained that she required her council staff to work on her mayoral campaign while receiving a salary from the city.
Lindheim said the mayoral candidates in general did not explain how they planned to pay for their ideas — a key omission.
“The biggest issue that (Thao) is going to face is you can say something, but just saying it isn’t going to make it happen,” Lindheim said.
“Whatever they promised, whatever they want to achieve, they are going to first have to address budget issues,” Lindheim said.
As a progressive mayor with a progressive-majority council, Thao’s biggest challenge will be setting boundaries with the council to accomplish her own priorities, said Jim Ross, a political consultant who supported Thao but didn’t work on her campaign.
“Everybody expects her to do what they want her to do, not necessarily what she needs to do,” Ross said.
As one of three renters on the City Council, Thao promised to build at least 30,000 housing units by the end of her second term, provide more mental health and drug treatment services, increase the number of safe RV parking sites, clean encampments, and staff up sanitation teams. But how Thao plans to pay for these programs is unclear.
Oakland is behind on its affordable housing goals — the city reached 43% of its very-lowincome housing goals and 26% of its low-income housing most recently.
Homelessness jumped 24% in Oakland over the past three years — from 4,071 people in 2019 to 5,055 in 2022. The city represents more than half of Alameda County’s homeless population.
Oakland must plan for 26,000 new homes by 2031 in its housing element, a development road map mandated by the state. The city is in the process of revising its housing element after the state sent a letter saying it must plan for more homes in the pricey Rockridge neighborhood.
One of Thao’s key proposals is to create an enhanced infrastructure financing district over parts of East and West Oakland. The City Council took the first step to study it earlier this month. The tax district would siphon some property tax revenue from the city’s general fund and set it aside for affordable housing and infrastructure projects.
Ross said the mayor needs to create momentum for the administration. He’d love to see a mayor that gets their hands dirty immediately.
“Let’s just go pick up all the trash,” Ross said. “That would be my dream. Let’s address illegal dumping, let’s do all those things that are kind of basic and are really important.”