OAKLAND >> Nearly two weeks after Election Day, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price conceded defeat in an unprecedented recall battle that saw her historic tenure end after less than two years.

“The voters have spoken, and while the outcome is not what we had hoped for, I respect their decision,” said Price, adding that she had hoped to bring “change and hope to a broken criminal justice system,” as well as “incredible strides toward serving the victims in this county.”

Price, who took office at the start of 2023 as the first Black woman to serve as the county’s top prosecutor, now becomes the county’s first district attorney recalled from office. Her concession came a full week after the Associated Press called the election, which saw a vast majority of voters voice dissatisfaction with her performance in office.

The recall measure continued to lead by a nearly 2-to-1 margin when the most recent ballot count was posted online Friday evening, showing nearly 583,000 votes counted. Between 17,000 and 22,000 votes remained to be counted, leaving no mathematical path for Price to overcome her 153,000-vote deficit and remain in office.

In a 20-minute speech before dozens of supporters and current employees in downtown Oakland on Monday, Price offered an exhaustive list of steps she took in office to reimagine the East Bay’s criminal justice system and revamp her office’s staffing.

“Previous leaders of this office turned a blind eye to prosecutorial misconduct and cases of the worst kind of abuse and neglect and criminal negligence by some members of our law enforcement community,” Price said. “It is important that the work continues beyond my tenure. We must not continue to have two systems of justice that are separate and unequal in Alameda County. That is the way of the past.”

Price said she and her staff were “working internally to ensure a smooth transition” to a new leader. As she has often done at press conferences over the last two years, she criticized the county’s former district attorney, Nancy O’Malley, and suggested that “I will not abandon the residents of Alameda County as my predecessor did by simply walking away.”

She ended the press conference without taking any questions.

Prior to Monday, Price and her campaign had repeatedly declined to comment on the Nov. 5 election and issued a lone statement on Nov. 6 urging residents to be patient while the votes were counted.

Even before Monday’s concession speech, several former Alameda County prosecutors had begun publicly expressing interest in succeeding Price.

Among the people announcing plans to apply for the job are: Venus Johnson, the chief deputy and senior advisor to state Attorney General Rob Bonta; L.D. Louis, an Alameda County deputy county counsel; Amilcar “Butch” Ford, now a prosecutor with the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.

Price is expected to remain in office until the election’s results are certified next month, at which point Chief Assistant District Attorney Royl Roberts would be expected to take over, county leaders have said. The five-member Board of Supervisors would then be tasked with appointing an interim district attorney, a scenario that’s never before happened in the county.

Price’s appointed replacement would serve until the next general election in 2026. The winner of that election would be expected to serve until the 2028 election, when Price’s first term was originally slated to end.