In the fall of 2022, I served as the elections engagement editor for KALW Public Media in San Francisco. The following piece is one of the post-elections interviews I conducted about how public safety influenced the elections.

With its ranked choice voting system, it’s taken Oakland several days after Election Day to determine the results of its hotly contested mayoral race — and at the end of last week, leading contestant Sheng Thao appeared to emerge as the winner by a narrow lead. However, the numbers are so close that no one has yet declared victory.

Back in late October, Darwin BondGraham, news editor at The Oaklandside, wrote an analysis about how the Oakland mayor’s race was all about public safety. KALW’s elections engagement editor Sonia Paul caught up with BondGraham to talk about how we got here, and how we’re seeing this play out as we come closer to knowing the outcome of the race.

This piece originally aired on KALW’s Crosscurrents and was published online at KALW on November 21, 2022.