This is a momentous election in many ways, and it’s fair to say a lot is riding on its outcome. But often lost in the noise from the national and statewide elections are the local elections that are also taking place. These elections will have a far more profound impact on the lives of residents than anything that happens at a higher level. Yet, they get less attention. That’s wrong. Residents need to care about what’s happening in their local governments, and make sure they’re casting their votes wisely.
For Sunnyvale, here is who I am supporting.
Mayor of Sunnyvale
The race is between three candidates – current Mayor Larry Klein, current Vice Mayor Nancy Smith, and current Councilmember Michael Goldman. Both Smith and Goldman are impacted by the new districted elections. Goldman cannot run for re-election in his district for two years. Smith could have chosen to run for her district, but she chose to run for Mayor instead. [EDIT: Klein and Smith both had the option of running for re-election. However, unlike Klein, districting placed Smith in the same district as another incumbent councilmember, Melton, meaning Smith had to choose between running against another incumbent or running for Mayor.]
I’ve served with all three of these candidates, and my choice is clear. I’ll be voting for Larry Klein for Mayor.
Klein had been a terrific Mayor, becoming not just the leader Sunnyvale needs, but also a leader on regional issues. That’s critical to Sunnyvale, which, despite being the second largest city in Santa Clara County, sits in the shadow of San Jose. It is difficult for the other cities to get traction on regional issues against this behemoth. But Klein has done so as the President of the Cities Association of Santa Clara County. Back in April, when COVID was hitting its stride, Klein led the effort to have all 15 cities explain their needs and expectations to the County Health Department for COVID testing. The 15 cities unanimously drafted a position on their expectations, which influenced how the County Health Department reacted to COVID. I was a CASCC President myself, and I know just how effective a President can be in Sunnyvale’s hands. Larry’s done a great job – and he has a lot of endorsements from other CASCC members to show for his work.
Klein has led the city well through one of its most tumultuous times, including a horrible hate crime that shocked the city, the ongoing COVID pandemic, BLM and racial injustice protests, and nationwide concerns about law enforcement practices. Through it all, Sunnyvale has been a place where residents stand up to speak their minds peacefully and productively. Setting that tone comes from the top, and Klein was there, through all of it.
Klein has also guided the City through this very difficult transition from numbered seats to council districts. There were great opportunities for that to go sideways (just look at the train wreck in Santa Clara). But Klein struck the perfect tone, doing what he needed to do from the dais, while largely staying out of the political fray. And the results speak for themselves – the transition was overwhelmingly accepted by voters, and it has been smooth.
As for the smaller issues, Klein knows how to mayor well. He runs a good meeting. The council discord from years past is absent. The city gets done what it needs to get done, as drama-free as possible. That’s what we need most from a Mayor. Sunnyvale doesn’t have a strong Mayor system. The Mayor has exactly as much power as the Council decides to allow him or her to have. More than anything, the Mayor serves as the voice of the Council, championing its initiatives after the Council decides on a course of action. Larry has done incredibly well in that role, and he’ll continue to do so.
I’ve served with Nancy Smith, and in some ways, my politics align more closely with hers than with Larry’s. I’m closer to Larry on fiscal and administrative issues, closer to Nancy on progressive and social issues (she succeeded me on the Silicon Valley Clean Energy Board). But my impression from serving with Nancy is not all positive. On several occasions, I found her to be unprepared for specific discussions, confused by the details of certain issues, and even confused just by parliamentary procedure. That hasn’t gotten markedly better over time. She’s had some success with initiatives off the dais, but less so on the dais, and that’s a problem for someone seeking to be Mayor. I’m struck by the fact that not a single person who has served with her on Council has chosen to endorse her, to date. That’s a huge red flag, and it confirms my own concerns and experiences. I just don’t believe Smith will mayor as well as Klein already has. Had Smith chosen to run for election in her district, I would have happily and enthusiastically supported her as the best candidate in that race. But Klein is better prepared to serve as Mayor than Smith.
Michael Goldman should be an immediate non-starter for anyone who views the race seriously. A constant dissenting vote on 6-1 council votes, he has no significant accomplishments to speak of. Rather, he’s been a source of discord, backing the disastrous and needless 2016 Measure M, and opposing Sunnyvale’s redistricting efforts in 2018.
He’s still attempting to litigate the parks issue, years later – it’s, bizarrely, a centerpiece of his campaign – despite no actual threats to Sunnyvale’s open spaces. In fact a dedicated 20-year city plan to expand green spaces has already resulted in three new parks, consistently increasing park space, and close to $200 million in additional capital funding for park spaces at no taxpayer expense. Yet, Goldman never once acknowledges any of this in his continued fear-mongering that “they’re coming for your parks!”. He’s still invoking canards from almost a decade ago about land being leased or parks being sold, none of which is even remotely relevant or true today. But hey, if it scares voters, it must be good for Goldman. Unfortunately, too few residents educate themselves well enough to learn that it’s all nonsense.
Goldman is factually-challenged, far too often. He recently sent out a campaign email castigating the city for what he views as a too-expensive City Hall project – but Goldman inflated the actual projected costs by over $100 million. If you complain about a project’s cost without actually knowing what those costs are – especially after casting votes on it – you have no credibility.
My favorite instance of Goldman being factually challenged is this blog post of his, in which he declares Sunnyvale’s Food Cycle program to be among the worst options for reducing GHG emissions. He uses as the basis of this claim a website that shows GHG emissions for various solid waste disposal methods. Unfortunately, he never noticed that the methods discussed on the website use radically different tonnages of food, and his graphs and numbers don’t account for that. In actuality, when measured by GHG per ton of food waste – the correct scientific metric – Sunnyvale’s Food Cycle methodology ranks #2 in GHG reduction. That’s a pretty stupid error, when making policy decisions (and voting on them), and had he consulted with staff, he’d never have claimed this. I know this because I did consult with staff.
These kinds of factual errors aren’t obvious when he speaks, because there’s usually no opportunity for those who know the facts to correct him. As a consequence, people who don’t know better often mistake Goldman’s errors for intelligence, rather than actual ignorance. It’s even more egregious that factual errors such as this form the backbone of much of his advocacy.
Goldman also simply lacks the qualities of a good Mayor. He’s frequently made bizarre and thoughtless comments from the dais, well-documented. He avoids voting on controversial votes that cast him in a bad light – he abstains, so he can claim “I didn’t vote against this”. That’s a fatal character flaw for me. Win or lose, we should expect our elected officials to take a stand. I always did. But way too often, Goldman doesn’t. A Mayor needs backbone on tough issues, and he lacks one. Smith is another councilmember who sometimes casts abstentions for non-recusal reasons, which just isn’t good – but not nearly as egregiously and deliberately as Goldman.
And again, it doesn’t speak highly of a candidate when not a single person who’s served with him has endorsed him.
But all this aside, there’s a more fatal problem with Goldman’s candidacy. When moving to districts, we recognized the risk of electing a Mayor who is out of step with the Council. This creates a Council that spends all of its time overriding actions of the Mayor, while adding a significant amount of discord on the dais. Goldman has no hope of leading the Council anywhere it doesn’t want to go, which is too often the case with his initiatives. Sunnyvale doesn’t need that.
Councilmember, District 2
District 2 will introduce a new Councilmember, regardless of the outcome. The District 2 race features Alysa Cisneros, Hina Siddiqui, and Josh Grossman.
I’m supporting Alysa Cisneros. Cisneros is a Sunnyvale Library Board Trustee with extensive public policy experience from her work for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. She represents not one but several demographics that we hoped would be attracted to public office after the transition to districted elections. And, of course, she comes from the Sunnyvale Board of Library Trustees, the true source of power in Sunnyvale politics…
It says a lot that six of the seven sitting councilmembers have endorsed Cisneros. She has a viewpoint and a voice that is desperately needed on Council now and the skillset to make that voice effective. Council has been “a bunch of white guys” for far too long, and Cisneros is exactly what Sunnyvale needs, now more than ever. In fact, I daresay that when the proponents of the district switch envisioned the results, they had someone exactly like Cisneros in mind. She will serve Sunnyvale well.
Hina Siddiqui strikes me as someone who could make a good councilmember some day, but she lacks the policy experience to deliver on it. Her website discusses the importance of STEM – but the City Council has no jurisdiction over STEM issues. That’s the school boards’ jurisdictions. She says some good things, particularly about housing, but she seems unlikely to be effective in advocating for them, at least without some greater experience in city government. With some time on a Commission, she’d probably make a good candidate in a few years.
Josh Grossman is a former Housing and Human Services Commissioner and Council gadfly for the past several years. He opposed the districting ballot measure, and his advocacy has largely consisted of attacks on councilmembers and opposition to whatever Council is attempting to do at a given moment (with the exception of the occasional pandering on issues that are going to get a 7-0 vote anyway). His primary claim to political experience comes from serving on a school board in far northern California – one governing a school of about 45 students – from the decade or so when he wasn’t a Sunnyvale resident.
Grossman was a HHS Commissioner, but he wasn’t reappointed to another term, something that normally happens as a matter of course. It says a lot about your ability to contribute when Council won’t even let you keep a volunteer position that you’ve already been holding.
My concerns with Grossman are similar to my concerns about Goldman for Mayor – even if he does manage to properly understand an issue, he simply won’t accomplish anything as the constant lone dissenter, and his colleagues won’t ever follow his lead. And simply put, in a city as diverse as Sunnyvale, the last thing Sunnyvale needs right now is one more old white guy on Council. The “old white guy worldview” is already adequately represented on Council by Districts 1, 2, 3, and 5, thank you very much.
Councilmember, District 6
Sunnyvale’s 6th District race features Omar Din, Leia Mehlman, and Charlotte Thornton. This is my district, and it’s the one I’ve been agonizing over the most. I’ll be voting for Omar Din.
Omar Din is a former Parks and Recreation Commissioner, with a lot of experience in politics, having worked for Assemblymember Evan Low and Congressmember Mike Honda. Din is getting all of the endorsements, including 3 current Sunnyvale councilmembers. He is a strong advocate for housing policy, and he’s likely dealing with the worst difficulties of housing in Sunnyvale, personally. His concerns about policing policy come from a good place, but some of his proposals show his inexperience. He really needs to sit down with the Chief and understand the practical realities of some of his ideas. And the value he places on the Police Scorecard metrics is simply misplaced.
Nevertheless, he’s a bright guy with the right intentions, an ability to learn and adapt quickly, and a policy background that will serve him, and Sunnyvale, well.
Leia Mehlman is a Bicycle and Pedestrian Commissioner who works with the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition on cycling issues. I interviewed her for her commission seat, and I remember her being one of the more impressive candidates we interviewed. She has a lot of very general positions on issues such as climate change and city transit. However, she doesn’t get into any specifics, and she doesn’t give me the impression that she knows the administrative and policy details that go into Council decisions. I think she’s got potential, but she really needs to demonstrate a solid grasp of some policies other than cycling before she’d get my support. And I just haven’t seen it. Note that it was a fairly close call between Mehlman and Din – I actually wanted to end up supporting Mehlman. But I believe Din has a better grasp of the overall policies Council must deal with than Mehlman.
Charlotte Thornton should be a non-starter. A Palo Alto resident who only moved to Sunnyvale in the past few months, her twitter feed promotes QAnon and InfoWars talking points. Someone who frequently dives into those rabbit holes lacks the judgment to be a good City Councilmember in Sunnyvale. Hard pass.
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