Leigh Hanson came under fire this week after a note in which she referred to Black people as “tokens” became public.
Leigh Hanson came under fire this week after a note in which she referred to Black people as “tokens” became public.
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OAKLAND — The former chief of staff to ex-Mayor Sheng Thao has been fired over a reference to Black people that she wrote down during a meeting last year in which Thao’s supporters organized political opposition to the mayor’s removal from office.
Leigh Hanson, a central player in Thao’s administration, had remained in her role following her boss’ successful recall to help guide the turnover between the city’s mayoral administrations.
She came under fire this past week after the note was publicly released among thousands of pages of Oakland city documents seized by federal prosecutors ahead of criminal indictments against the ex-mayor and three others.
Until her firing Sunday, Hanson was the chief of staff to Councilmember Kevin Jenkins, who is filling in as interim mayor before Oakland voters on April 15 select a permanent replacement to Thao, who was recalled by voters last November.
“Effective Sunday, Leigh Hanson is no longer an employee of the City of Oakland,” City Administrator Jestin Johnson said Sunday, in a statement distributed by a city spokesperson. “I thank Ms. Hanson for her service. Deputy Mayor Burt Jones will be serving as the Mayor’s Office chief of staff until further notice, and I thank him for stepping up to the role.”
Hanson declined to comment Sunday evening on her termination.
She arrived in Oakland in 2016 after working in the mayor’s office in Pittsburgh, Pa. She was a strong-willed mainstay of City Hall during Thao’s tenure and for several months afterward, taking the lead on critical negotiations between the city and major land buyers, such as the A’s baseball franchise and the group seeking to acquire the Oakland Coliseum.
She appears to have written the explosive note that led to her firing during a meeting in March 2024, at a time when Thao and a circle of political advisors were planning for a political fight against an expensive recall effort lodged against her.
Oakland voters approved Thao’s removal from office in November — a couple months before the ex-mayor was indicted on felony charges of bribery and conspiracy.
The relevant excerpt of Hanson’s note, which reads “Use BP as tokens,” seems to refer to Black people in the context of being “tokenized” — a tactic often attributed to people or groups accused of cynically taking advantage of Black voices for political gain.
In the full context of the note, Hanson outlines strategies of the campaign against Thao’s recall — election finances, political allies and public relations — on a piece of paper, listing several multicultural nonprofits under the heading “Black supporters.”
An aside to that section seems to note Councilmember Carroll Fife — a longtime ally of the former mayor — as one of those supporters, and warns of Councilmember Treva Reid, a frequent Thao critic, as someone to whom Thao’s camp must “pay attention.”
“CM Fife can outreach to NAACP,” Hanson writes, referring to the historic Black civil rights organization whose Oakland chapter took a particular dislike of Thao during her fraught tenure as mayor.
Noted out by dashes underneath: “Use BP as tokens.”
Hanson, whose firing was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, has faced swift backlash in the days since the document became public as part of a trove of thousands of records that the city last year turned over to the feds.
In a statement to this news organization, Hanson said the note was taken out of context.
“These handwritten meeting notes record a group discussion that included proposed messaging points that the anti-recall campaign wanted to provide to potential surrogates. They are a specific reference to Seneca Scott, a paid African American political operative, who was hired by the wealthy white funders of the recall campaign to obscure the public’s understanding of the recall’s political origins,” Hanson said. “It was Mayor Thao and her political team’s belief that this operative’s paid involvement constituted tokenization by the recall’s financier, and Oakland voters had a right to understand this connectionI regret that my short-hand note-taking has been taken out of context on social media and inadvertently harmed close friends, colleagues and members of my community who have been marginalized by our political system.”
Tokenism is widely believed to be common practice in politics, though the phrase is often a pejorative term attributed by political groups to their opponents, doubling as an accusation of racism.
The documents released this past week have been instrumental in helping piece together the inner workings of the Thao administration in 2023 and 2024, illustrating how the ex-mayor directed conversations between top city officials and the men who are now accused of bribing her in federal indictments.
This news organization reported last week that Hanson referred — in text messages included in the documents — to a plan considered by Thao to hire a former campaign manager to whom the ex-mayor owed tens of thousands of dollars.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.