The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will have a list of 15 applicants to choose from when they take up the task of picking who should run the District Attorney’s Office.
After the county’s last top prosecutor, Pamela Price, lost a Nov. 5 recall election, the office is being temporarily run by Chief Assistant District Attorney Royl Roberts, who did not apply to take the job permanently.
The deadline for submitting applications ended Monday evening and it now falls on supervisors to select Price’s replacement.
The next stage of the process starts Jan. 16 when the supervisors will pick finalists from the applicants.
After that, on Jan. 21, they will interview the finalists during a public meeting and then on Jan. 28 they will deliberate publicly and make their final selection with the intention of getting the new interim district attorney into the office by no later than Feb. 4.
Whoever the board selects will only serve until the next regularly scheduled election in 2026. The winner of that 2026 election will serve the rest of Price’s term, which was extended to 2028 by a recent change in state law.
Meet the candidates
The candidates, many of whom have extensive current or past experience with the Alameda County office, include:
• Kwixuan Maloof, Alameda County assistant district attorney, long-time San Francisco public defender.
• Scott Tsui, retired private attorney, former assistant district attorney in Santa Clara County.
• Alameda County Superior Court Judge Ursula Jones Dickson, formerly an Alameda County deputy district attorney.
• San Francisco prosecutor Amilcar “Butch” Ford, former Alameda County deputy district attorney and vocal critic of Price, who he said filed a misdemeanor charge against him as an act of retaliation. State prosecutors dropped the charge.
• Venus Johnson, chief deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice, former director of Oakland’s Department of Public Safety, former legal and policy advisor to Kamala Harris when she was state attorney general, former chief assistant district attorney in Contra Costa County.
• Annie Esposito, Contra Costa County assistant district attorney, former senior assistant district attorney in Alameda County.
• Latricia Louis, deputy county council in Alameda County, former Alameda County assistant district attorney.
• Yibin Shen, city attorney for the city of Alameda
• Elgin Lowe, senior deputy district attorney in Alameda County -Jimmie Wilson, deputy district attorney in Alameda County -Ocean Mottley, private attorney
• Simona Farrise, senior assistant district attorney in Alameda County’s Consumer Justice Bureau -Miiko Anderson, former Fresno County senior deputy district attorney -Arvon Perteet, deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice, former prosecutor in San Francisco and Contra Costa counties and a former federal prosecutor.
• Ian Seth Steward, executive director at the Crucible, an industrial art studio and education center, was former Oakland city councilmember Dan Kalb’s chief of staff, former prosecutor in San Francisco and Portland, Oregon.
