Marshawn Lynch Teases Potential Oakland Mayoral Run in Talk With California Governor

The ex-California running back knows the Bay Area well.

Marshawn Lynch at California's game against Washington in 2022. / Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

In the five years since his retirement from the NFL, ex-running back Marshawn Lynch has been everywhere. There he is on the silver screen, playing a teacher in 2023's farcical Bottoms. There he is on College GameDay, picking games in the show's first trip to Berkeley, Calif.

Now, however, Lynch appears to have bigger ambitions. On Thursday's episode of Politickin'—a podcast involving Lynch, his agent Doug Hendrickson, and California Governor Gavin Newsom—the former California running back teased a potential run for mayor of Oakland.

“It might be a possibility,” Lynch said he told someone recently.

Oakland has endured a sluggish recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and has spent much of the last two years in the sports world's headlines as it struggled against unscrupulous Athletics owner John Fisher to keep its MLB team.

Its scandal-plagued mayor, Sheng Thao, is facing a recall just two years after being elected.

“We don’t want to jump the gun just yet, from what I was told,” Lynch said. “I got a good internal team, you know, and I want to make sure I take this offline with my internal team and make sure this is something that we really wanna do.”

Lynch, a social welfare major during his time playing for the Golden Bears, was born in Oakland and played at Oakland Technical High School.

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