Since no candidate secured a majority in the first round, a runoff election was held between the top-two finishers, Harris and Ted Dang.

[1] In Elihu Harris' first term, the city had been beset by numerous issues stemming from the damage of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the Oakland firestorm of 1991.

[1] The city's inefficient bureaucratic structure had hampered Harris' ability to lead a quick response to these disasters.

[1][2] King would suffer from a lack of name recognition, and would fail to voice a consistent message or outline a clear policy agenda for her candidacy.

[1] Ted Dang launched his candidacy in late February, becoming the thirteenth challenger to enter the race against Harris.

[1] Upon entering the race, Dang was seen as a longshot, as he lacked major political experience, had not raised funds before launching his campaign, and announced his candidacy a mere four month before the initial round of the election.

[1] Dang took stances such as hiring 100 additional police officers (to appear tough-on-crime), term-limited city council members to two terms, and freezing wages and cutting "exorbitant" salaries in order to decrease the city's spending (this would include cutting the mayor's salary by 10%).

[6] Early into his candidacy, Dang showed strength as a candidate, performing contrary to the expectations of political analysts.

[1] This group had successfully gathered enough signatures to secure a ballot initiative on the repeal of this tax as part of the November elections.

[3] The most widely reported incident of Bey's campaign was a May 13 fundraiser at the city's Calvin Simmons Theater, where guest speaker Khalid Abdul Muhammad gave a speech which attacked White people, Jews, conventional black leaders, and Pope John Paul II.

[1] Concerning to Harris, as he looked to the runoff, was that many of the areas where he had received the greatest share of the vote in the first round had low turnout.

[1] Despite having been considered to have performed weakly in the first round, Harrison was regarded as the front-runner to win the runoff, as analysts anticipated that Mary V. King's supporters would largely migrate to his candidacy over Dang's.

[1] In the closing week of the campaign, Dang sent out mailers which received criticism by some for verging on racism, including once that included an extreme close-up image of Harris, that some Oakland residents argued was reminiscent of the tactics used in the Willie Horton ad run by the campaign of George H. W. Bush in the 1988 United States presidential election.

[1] Analysis demonstrate that, towards the end of the runoff campaign, a portion of Dang's support in the affluent "hill" parts of the city had dissipated.

[1] Harris won the majority of the white and Latino vote, which were seen as critical to either candidate's prospective victory in this election.

[1] Timothy P. Fong would publish a paper in the June 1998 edition of the Journal of Asian American Studies which attributed Dang's defeat to three factors.

Fong argues that Dang would have needed to have fostered a broad multiracial coalition of support to have won the election.