OAKLAND — After a hotly contested race marked by a flurry of last-minute nasty campaign hit pieces, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley appears headed for another term without having to fight it out into the November election.
O’Malley collected 59 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s primary election with all precincts reporting by the next morning. She needed a majority of the votes to avoid a runoff against her opponent, civil rights attorney Pamela Price.
Price has not yet conceded and says she hopes the results will change. Final results have not yet been officially announced.
“Although the current results are not what we had hoped for, there are votes still to be counted and voices to be heard,” Price said in an email to supporters Wednesday afternoon. “We always knew this would be a tough fight.”
It was the first time O’Malley, who has been a prosecutor for more than 30 years, but appointed to the position in 2009 after her predecessor Tom Orloff resigned, was challenged for her seat. In fact, the last time any elected district attorney was challenged dates back to 1974, according to the Bay Area News Group’s archives.
But the race was littered with controversial and negative campaigns from both sides.
One flier supporting O’Malley that was paid for by the Californians United for Safe Neighborhoods and Schools opposing Pamela Price for District Attorney 2018, depicted a man presumably a child molester sitting in front of a computer screen with a bottle of wine and an ashtray full of cigarette butts nearby and a bowl of Cheetos chips beside him. “Thanks Pamela Price” reads the words with the image.
“…That’s right, Pamela. Thanks to your pledge to ‘stop prosecuting misdemeanors’ I can seduce children on the Internet without worrying about going to jail.”
Price stirred controversy when she announced that if she won, she would not prosecute any misdemeanor cases, calling them a “waste of resources.” She later backtracked and said she would prosecute misdemeanor domestic violence cases.
Behind the political action committee that funded the child molester ad against Price was a coalition of mostly police unions throughout the state. According to campaign finance forms filed within the last week, law enforcement unions that gave money to that committee included Los Angeles Police ($25,000), Oakland Police ($20,000), Livermore ($500), Long Beach ($5,000), San Diego ($5,000) and the Peninsula Law Enforcement Association, based in Redwood City ($5,000).
Price also received support from the California Justice & Public Safety PAC, funded largely by billionaire George Soros. According to campaign finance forms filed May 30, Soros gave $1.1 million toward Price.
One recent police mailer paid for by the Soros-backed political action committee attacked O’Malley for not investigating Oakland police in the Hernan Jaramillo case. In 2013, the sister of 51-year-old Jaramillo called police to say she believed an intruder was in their home. When officers arrived they found Jaramillo and cuffed him after he allegedly resisted. He died during a struggle.
“An innocent man was killed by police. And Nancy O’Malley never investigated,” the flier reads.
Another flier, also funded by the same PAC, depicted tombstones with the names of those killed in fatal police shootings.
“Six dead at the hands of police. Zero independent investigations by DA Nancy O’Malley,” the flier reads.
San Francisco State University political science professor Joe Tuman said the negative campaigning was not good for O’Malley’s campaign and if anything, hurt her. As an incumbent, she had an advantage of winning anyway, he said.
“It’s unnecessary. All it it did was create a sympathy for the challenger, which doesn’t help Nancy,” Tuman said.
Because the ads came from a third party, they were able to “hit below the belt,” allowing the candidate herself to not get flacked for it, he said.
But the negative campaigning turns the focus from the candidates’ qualifications, to a sporting event.
“The sad thing is, this kind of negative messaging is normalized now. It rarely raises eyebrows. … It’s part of the reason why we don’t get larger voter turnout. It’s not hopeful, it’s just a blood sport; it’s mean. But the fact is, it works,” Tuman said.
Alameda County had a voter turnout of about 20 percent.
Besides Alameda County, Soros has spent about $400,000 on deputy prosecutor Noah Phillips, who was challenging Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert. The wave of reform candidates has also hit San Diego, where public defender Genevieve Jones-Wright was running against Interim District Attorney Summer Stephan.
But all the candidates are trailing in their races, with the exception of Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton, whose race is still up in the air as to whether she will face a run-off.
David DeBolt contributed to this story.