|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Tri-Valley residents can expect two familiar faces and one new name in the June primary election for the Alameda County district attorney seat as current DA Ursula Jones Dickson seeks to maintain her position, while former DA Pamela Price — who was recalled in 2024 — looks to reclaim her old seat and newcomer Gopal Krishan aims to give voters a fresh start.
Each of the three candidates will have a chance to win the race outright on June 2 with a majority vote. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will advance to a runoff in the general election on Nov. 3.
Ursula Jones Dickson
Jones Dickson served as the acting DA before being appointed to the position by the Board of Supervisors after 63% of the county voters recalled Price in 2024.
She told the Pleasanton Weekly that as a former judge and prosecutor with decades of experience, she takes her responsibilities of protecting victims and survivors very seriously and wants to ensure residents feel safe.
“Alameda County wants a DA who is proactive, collaborative, open minded, and up to the job,” Jones Dickson said in a statement to the Weekly.
According to her campaign website, Jones Dickson grew up in an area of Los Angeles that was no stranger to violence, which only fueled her desire for justice and wanting to keep her community safe at an early age.
After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley and earning a law degree from the University of San Francisco, Jones Dickson became a prosecutor at the Alameda County DA’s Office where for 15 years, she sought justice for victims and gained “deep insights on how to navigate our complex legal system”.
“She is especially proud of her work establishing clear and enforceable policies and protocols for Commercially Sexually Exploited Minors,” according to her campaign website.
Then, in 2013, she was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to serve as an Alameda County Superior Court Judge where she spent the following 11 years presiding over cases and building a reputation as a “judge who was fair, who understood the law intimately, and who would assure that everyone in her courtroom received due process and fair treatment”.
Following her tenure as a judge, Jones Dickson became one of two dozen applicants who sought to fill the vacancy of the district attorney seat following Price’s recall in November 2024. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors eventually selected Jones Dickson in 2025 because of her extensive experience and because they thought she would be successful in managing an office that had lost the trust of many residents across the county.
And according to her campaign, Jones Dickson has stayed busy over the past year and a half, working around the clock to tackle a lot of the same issues and priorities she hopes to continue addressing if elected to the seat.
“Ursula regularly meets with victims, community leaders, and non-profit organizations that work with the county to build on her early success and transform the District Attorney’s office to one that is rooted in justice and ready to tackle the many public safety challenges Alameda County faces,” her campaign website states.
In regards to her priorities, Jones Dickson told the Weekly they are to “reduce the county’s massive backlog of cases, to deliver justice for victims and survivors, to prosecute cases in a fair and impartial manner, to restore trust in the DA’s office, to hire and promote experienced prosecutors, and to address crime and its root causes in a collaborative way.”
Pamela Price
Former DA Price is looking to regain the public’s trust following a contentious recall campaign in 2024, which she said was fueled by politics and not reflective of the work she hopes to continue if reelected.
She did not respond to request for comments as of publication time.
“Pamela Price has spent decades working in the justice system and our neighborhoods,” according to her campaign website. “She believes in a balanced approach: protecting public safety while reforming unfair systems that harm marginalized communities.”
After graduating from Yale College and the University of California, Berkeley Law School, Price’s legal career began as a criminal defense attorney in San Francisco where, as a public defender, she handled hundreds of misdemeanor and felony cases, according to her website. She often represented young people who were “caught up in the criminal justice system at San Francisco’s infamous Youth Guidance Center”.
Price then started her own private practice as a civil rights attorney in Oakland where for three decades she represented people in state and federal courts.
Price was then elected in November 2022 to serve as the Alameda County district attorney, making her the first Black woman in the history of the county to serve in that position. However, just two years into her tenure, a recall campaign gained traction and ultimately was successful in seeing her removed from the post.
Her stance, according to her campaign website, is that the recall was a political move from her opponents and was not reflective of all the positive work she and her team had done at the DA’s office.
“If you ask anyone who voted in 2022, even my critics, they will tell you that I kept my word,” her campaign website says. “I did exactly what I said I was going to do: we held corrupt public officials and rogue police and deputies accountable; we charged corporate criminals and abusive landlords; we did not over-criminalize young people and we implemented the Racial Justice Act.”
One of the key criticisms of Price’s tenure at the time was her being too soft on crime, which she maintains is not true and noted that the term “soft on crime” is “a political label used by the right-wing to poison the conversation about criminal justice reform”.
Price is hoping to regain the public’s trust once again and do things a bit differently if elected, including speaking more with members of the media and creating a Victims Advisory Committee for the survivors of homicides that are actively being prosecuted.
She also wants to establish an anti-nepotism policy that would require relatives of past district attorneys, county judges and office employees to identify themselves and encourage them to seek employment elsewhere.
“I am running for re-election because I believe we can have a fair justice system where the outcome does not depend on your wealth, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, political position or your zip code,” her campaign website states.
Gopal Krishan
The third candidate in this year’s district attorney race is Krishan, a newcomer to the political world who is hoping to bring in a fresh set of eyes to the office.
Krishan also did not respond for comments by the time of publication.
“I am not a politician. I am your neighbor, a father, and a dog lover,” Krishan stated on his campaign website. “I am running for District Attorney because I want to ensure public safety: the kind of safety we can all feel.”
According to his company website, Allied Legal PC, Krishan has 18 years of experience working as a trial attorney. His law firm focuses on family law, immigration law and estate planning.
“He has extensive experience in all phases of divorce and parental rights, including property division, spousal support, child custody and child support, as well as premarital agreements, post nuptial agreements, post judgment modifications and enforcement,” according to his company website.
As a strong believer in public safety being a non-negotiable, fundamental human right, Krishan decided to throw his hat in the race for the district attorney seat.
His campaign website states he is running on six key priorities.
The first priority is a combination of accountability and transparency because he believes the public should know what the DA’s office is doing and why. Secondly, he wishes to keep communities safe, which includes taking things like hate crimes seriously and protecting those targeted communities.
Krishan’s third campaign priority is holding repeat and violent offenders accountable in order to reduce crime and make neighborhoods safer. He also wishes to rebuild the trust between the public and the DA’s office by “using technology and modern tools to track performance and show results.”
His last two priorities include treating victims with dignity and investing in youth diversion programs, mentorship and other community-based prevention strategies that “stop crime before it starts.”
“Together, we can restore trust, protect our communities, and make Alameda County safer for everyone,” Krishan wrote in a statement on his campaign website.
