Former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told the Los Gatan, Monday, he hadn’t decided whether to join the race for retiring Congresswoman Anna Eshoo’s 16th District seat, joining Supervisor Joe Simitian and former Saratoga Council member Rishi Kumar, but the way he talked about it, it sure sounded like he was about to.
And then on Tuesday, frequent Los Gatos Council contributor Evan Low, who grew up in San Jose and later moved to Campbell, and now represents the 26th District in the California Assembly, said he, too, was applying for the job, putting West Valley communities at the heart of the battle for one of the most important ridings in the country.
“I’m currently doing my due-diligence, reaching out to supporters and to community leaders about a potential campaign,” said Liccardo, who was spotted at a fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris in the Los Gatos hills last year. “I expect I’ll make a formal announcement about my plans in the week to come.”
In his announcement, Low pitched himself as someone who could become the first openly-gay or trans person to represent constituents from the Bay Area in Congress.
Meanwhile, Simitian touted 130 local endorsements and the more than half-a-million dollars he’s raised already for his war chest.
“I’m the only candidate who’s represented 14 of the 15 cities,” he said in an interview. “I really do think I can make a difference. These are challenging times at the national level.”
Simitian is referring to his political career that’s spanned several decades and included positions at the Palo Alto School Board, both State houses and the Board of Supervisors, but he suggests his experience in international diplomacy might serve him just as well.
He prides himself on having visited several troubled regions around the globe and wears the fact he was banned from Azerbaijan by its government, following a visit to Nagorno-Karabakh, as a badge of honor.
“John McCain was banned from Russia because he spoke out for democracy,” he said, pointing to how people of all political stripes can come under fire from authoritarian regimes, noting he’s also traveled to Israel, Egypt and Jordan. “I wanted to see firsthand what happened.”
Simitian says his background in education would be an asset on the national stage—although he promises he wouldn’t use a heavy hand.
“Relatively little direction comes from Washington, and I think that’s appropriate,” he said. “An area where I think the feds have a key role to play is with respect to career and technical education.”
Simitian also highlighted his work on data privacy and says he’d take his anti-fentanyl advocacy across the nation—and beyond.
“The fentanyl epidemic is one that has international implications,” he said. “We’re going to have to be dealing with the Chinese and the Mexican governments.”
Liccardo described his two terms at the helm in San Jose as a period where cost-effective solutions to homelessness were rolled out and a big bite was taken out of urban crime.
“I wasn’t fundraising for a federal account, because I was busy with my day job, which was running a city of a million people,” he said, adding he’s no stranger to Capitol Hill, recalling a trip East to secure support for residential vouchers for veterans. “I know that Washington could do more to address these kinds of kitchen table issues for the residents of our Valley.”
And in September 2022, Liccardo joined President Joe Biden for the signing of a key climate and health care law.
Should he decide to run, Liccardo will also have to answer for his data use practices, after a judge ruled he violated the transparency laws in connection with a public records request.
David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, who was on the other side of that civil action, along with local blog San Jose Spotlight, said they were concerned about whether or not Liccardo was using personal emails to avoid having to reveal certain information.
“We wanted to be able to educate and inform the public on the extent to which this was an ongoing concern,” Loy said. “Transparency is the oxygen of accountability.”
Liccardo says after the court determined the City’s declaration was insufficient, they tried to remedy the issue but the judge refused to hear the new evidence.
San Jose agreed, last month, to pay $500,000 to settle the case, Spotlight reported.
“The City had unlawfully withheld a substantial number of public records,” Loy told the Los Gatan. “The former mayor’s conduct was at the heart of the lawsuit.”
According to Liccardo—whether he chooses to seek Eshoo’s seat or not—his background preserving hillsides and protecting open space from development, while tackling the rising cost-of-living, makes him an attractive prospect for the gig.
Kumar is trying to carve out a lane for himself as a non-career politician who comes from the C-suite with two decades of experience in software and Artificial Intelligence.
He’s been an Executive Board member of the California Democratic Party, and on the Governor’s University of California Regents Selection Committee.
He only lost to Eshoo by 15.6%, in the 2022 election.
A Clarity Campaign Labs poll shows Kumar in the lead at 12%, followed by Simitian at 10%, Liccardo at 7%, Low at 6% and Peter Ohtaki at 3% (57% are still undecided).
“We are pretty pumped with this polling,” Kumar said. “I’m here to fix problems.”
Meanwhile, Morgan Hill resident Charlene Nijmeh, the Chairwoman of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe—who stopped by Los Gatos’ holiday tree-lighting on Friday—is also running for Congress.
She’s seeking to represent District 18, which includes a portion of San Jose and the hills to the east, and covers land the way down through Gilroy to the border with San Luis Obispo County.
After the Muwekma Ohlone lost their battle to secure federal status through the courts, the tribe has been trying to convince Washington to pass a law that would achieve the same end.
In a way, she too is contending for Eshoo’s seat, as Eshoo used to represent District 18, before the boundaries were redrawn.
It’s currently represented by Zoe Lofgren.
