OAKLAND >> San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan has endorsed Loren Taylor in next month’s Oakland mayoral election, bucking the trend of nearly unanimous support among Bay Area politicians for Taylor’s opponent, Barbara Lee.

“I want a leader who’s going to be honest and direct with the community when he’s campaigning,” Mahan said Thursday at a news conference in Oakland’s Laurel neighborhood.

“Not just the ‘bad news later’ when he’s forced to do something he doesn’t want to do,” Mahan added, “but to say upfront, ‘Here’s how we’re going to get through this. It’s going to be rough, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel.’ ”

Mahan’s input marked a rare crossover by a leader of the South Bay’s largest city into the politics of Oakland, where the recall of ex-Mayor Sheng Thao has created a vacuum in the town’s leadership.

The endorsement further signals Mahan’s split from the Democratic establishment amid a turbulent time for the party, which is grappling with its political future even in the Bay Area’s most progressive corners.

And it provides a rare ally to Taylor from among the region’s established leaders, as the former council member attempts to overcome Lee’s political name recognition as a popular veteran of Congress.

Lee, 78, has support from seven of eight Oakland City Council members, along with a wide array of California legislators and former city mayors, including Libby Schaaf, who supported Taylor during his unsuccessful bid for the office in 2022.

Taylor has sought to bill himself as a pragmatic critic of powerful “special interests,” which many Oakland voters interpret as a salvo against the unions that represent city workers.

The most meaningful policy divide between Lee and Taylor appears to be how strongly each would consider layoffs or demands for salary concessions from the unions, which through a political committee are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Lee.

Taylor has promised to make “hard choices” around the city’s spending, and Lee has called the prospect of worker layoffs a “last resort.”

In a statement responding to Mahan’s endorsement, officials for Lee’s campaign called the former congresswoman the “only candidate who has built the coalition needed to govern in Oakland on Day 1.”

Mahan, a former Silicon Valley tech executive who was first elected in 2022, beating South Bay labor heavyweight Cindy Chavez, is seen as representing a shift in where the region’s political power is sourced.

The mayor has shaped his rhetoric around a “data-driven” approach to governing — a style around which he and Taylor have found a kinship.

He praised Taylor for his idea to track local crime on publicly viewable dashboards, pointing to a culture of “denialism” in the Bay led by a “club of insiders who look out for one another” instead of meaningfully addressing public safety and homelessness.

Taylor, meanwhile, said at the news conference that Oakland voters “should embrace innovation, whole-heartedly.”

“So many of those folks who are fueling the tech industry live in Oakland,” he added. “Are we going to ostracize the significant number of Oaklanders who live here and want to raise their children in an environment that’s safe?”

On Saturday, the Taylor campaign publicized a new poll that indicates a wide lead held by Lee earlier in the race had narrowed to just 4 points — 45% to 41%.

The poll, commissioned by the Taylor campaign and conducted by the pro-Democrat political company Blueprint Polling, surveyed 854 likely voters in Oakland, with a 3.35 percentage point margin of error.

Bilen Mesfin, a spokesperson for Lee’s campaign, said in response to the poll results that an informal survey taken by door knockers for the former congresswoman had yielded a different outlook.

“Over the last week, our field team knocked on more than 4,800 doors across key precincts,” Mesfin said in an email. “We’re seeing support consistently above 56% among high-propensity voters we’ve contacted — and climbing.”

Staff writers Devan Patel and Grace Hase contributed reporting.