Santa Clara County District 2 Election

If it is now official with 5 candidates running to replace termed-out Cindy Chavez for the superivorial seat that she occupied since 2012.   The District 2 Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors was redistricted in 2020 with the intention of having a Hispanic majority with over 40% of the total population living in the district.  However, the registered voter breakdown shows Hispanic at 35%, Asian at 29% and non-Asian, non-Latino, non-Black at 33%.   The Vietnamese-American voters make up 18.5% of the total registration.  

The county district covers most of San Jose City Districts 7, 3 and 5.  The primary election in March 2024, will qualify two top candidates for the November general election unless a single candidate reaches 50% plus one. 

Two relative unknown candidates are Jennifer Margaret Celaya and Corina Herrera-Loera and at this moment unlikely to raise adequate money to gain any strong attractions.   However, one of the viable strategies is relying on their Hispanic heritage to garner enough vote to get into the general election.  The general trend observed across the board in a recent survey done by Viet Poll Media  is when there are multiple candidates in the primary, especially in a nonpartisan election with no real major issues separating candidates, voters tend to vote along the ethnic line.

A last minute candidate, criminal lawyer Nelson McElmurry, is also new to the political scene and with no track records.  With 33% of the votes coming from the usually high turnout White voting bloc, McElmurry also has a chance to survive the primary.  

The two candidates with the most name recognition, money and big name endorsements are former SJ City Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen and Supervisor Cindy Chavez's Chief of Staff Betty Duong.  Both candidates are experience campaigners and have outraised their opponents by a wide margin so far.

Betty Duong is endorsed by Chavez to replace her and receiving the full support of South Bay Labor Council and Santa Clara County Democratic Party.  She is a familiar face in the Vietnamese-American community in San Jose, notably with her work on the Vietnamese - Amerian Service Center.   Her latest significant political coup was the withdrawal of Van Le, ESUHS Board Trustee, from the race.  This is to her advantage for Le would most likely take a bite out of her Vietnamese voting base.  Even though the latest FPPC 460 campaign contribution disclosure has not been posted, Duong has expressed earlier in the year that her campaign fund raising would aim to reach the voluntary expenditure limit of $250,000 or more.  She  received over $165,000 by June 2023.   

Madison Nguyen was left for dead politically after her resounding defeat by Ash Kalra for state assembly in 2016, and of course her involvement with the racist mailer as EVP of the defunct Silicon Valley Oranization responsible for public policy and campaign. Reportedly, she recently moved out of California but returned this year and was the first to announce the candidacy for the seat.  Her time in  City Council was marred with controversy including a violation of Brown Act costing the city over $1 million in legal fee settement, and the majority of the Vietnamese community turning against her for refusing to name 3 street blocks of mostly Vietnamese businesses Little Saigon.  However, she still has her supporters in San Jose and they helped raised over $115,000 by August 2023.

The two Vietnamese-American candidates are trying to appeal to all voters across the general demographics but they are focusing particularly on winning their ethnic base.  Madison Nguyen has reached out for the supports of D7 Councilmember  Bien Doan and Mayor Matt Mahan but considering her political baggages, they are playing both sides of the fence.  With no major differences in policy and ideology since they are all progressive candidates in a nonpartisan race,  it will come down to who will work harder to knock on doors, have better media outreach, and more favorable name recognition.  

Just as a flavor of things to come, there are already complaints about stolen Betty Duong's campaign signs at various Vietnamese strip malls.  Nguyen's antagongists are reposting the epic Little Saigon naming battle and the divisiveness she created in the community.  They even staged a protest at her fund raiser on 6/23/2023 in fron the Dynasty Restaurant in Grand Century Mall.  There were about 70 protestors with signs reminding her about the Little Saigon controversy.

The conventional wisdom suggests that Betty Duong and Madison Nguyen would most likely survive the March primary and face each other in the November general election. Whoever wins will be the first Vietnamese-American to be elected to the Santa Clary County Board of Supervisors.  However, depending on the turnout of Hispanic voters, the White voting bloc sentiment,  and with the Asian vote splitting by the two Asian candidates, there might be only either Duong or Nguyen  getting in the runoff. 

California Congressional District 16 Race and Anna Eshoo

With a suprised announcement on November 21,  Democrat Representative Anna Eschoo, 81, joined a dozen House Democrats opting to retire next year.  The race for this safe Democratic seat  occupied by her since 1992 will likely be fierce among the thirteen candidates, 11 Democrats and 2 Republicans.  

The California's 16th congressional district covers the Peninsula and South Bay cities including Palo Altos, Mountain View, Pacifica, Halfmoon Bay, Saratoga, Campbell, Los Altos, Los Gatos, and the southwestern part of San Jose. 

There are roughly 445,000 registered voters in the district with the breakddown of 20% Asian, 11% Hispanic and the rest is lumped into a voting demographic of non-Asian, non-Latino and non-Black.  Vietnamese-American voters make up about 6% of the total and they will likely play a significant role in the primary because of the  divided votes among the large number of candidates.  

The 2024 March  primary will determine which top two candidates will advance to the general election regardless of party's affiliation.  

Currently, due to just 7 weeks before the absentee ballot is available,  the three leading candidates with the most name recognition, connection and fundraising networks are Sam Liccardo, Evan Low and Joe Simitian. 

Sam Liccardo, 53, is the favorite to be in the runoff by virtual of being the former mayor of San Jose and roughly a third of the registered voters in the district live in San Jose.  His name recognition in the Vietnamese-American community is high and San Jose voters historically will vote  for San Jose candidates.  Within weeks of announcement, he has raised over $900,000.  His tenure as mayor is controversial with the city being fined heavily for non-compliance with transparency and open government rules and the spiral escalation of the homeless crisis.  

Joe Simitian, 70, has been waiting for Eshoo's seat for quite a while now and he has been raising money over the past decade and amassing a war chest of more than $700,000.  His name recognion in the Peninsula cities is substantial considering that he is currently the Santa Clara County supervisor, former state senator and Palo Alto mayor.  He is probably the most experience politician on issues and his liberal views fit with the district progressive bend.  His age might come into play but conventional wisdom is that most voters are more interested in getting things done in congress.  

Evan Low, 40,  is an openly gay state legislator serving since 2014 in a district that has a strong Chinese-American constituents.  So far, he has raised over $300,000 with a strong support of labor unions.  He has received endorsement from Rep. Rho Khanna and will like from Zoe Lofgren also.

The two wild cards that have remote ousider chance are Julie Lythcott-Haimes, an attorney who is current serving on the Palo Alto City Council, and Rishi Kumar, a former Saratoga City Councilmember and ran against Eshoo in the last two elections.  

The other candidates will capture the attention of voters but they are likely playing a role of spoilers.  However the two Republican candidates can sneak in since 16% of total voters are Repbulican and with this many Democratic candidates siphoning votes from each other, anything can happen.

At any rate, the current conventional wisdom predicts at this stage of the race,  Sam Liccardo will be one of the candidates in the runoff.   And if Evan Low can consolidate his Asian and Hispanic supporters, he has a good chance to break the likely needed 20% threshold to be in the general election.

Recall Alameda County DA Pamela Price

 

Since the start of Price recall in the first week of October, the leaders of the recall group, SAFE, are confident that they will gather more than 73,195 signatures to get the recall on the ballot by the end of November. The minimum signatures representing 15% of the entire vote cast for the last gubernatorial election are not due until mid-March, and it is a major hurdle in the process of having the recall placed on the ballot for the November General Election. Without saying, this is an astonishing feat considering the county comprises a large geography and diverse population.  

 Pamela Price, a civil rights attorney, won the seat of Alamed County DA over Terry Wiley, the county's chief deputy DA, in the November 2022 election.  She ran with a progressive platform of eliminating racialy inequity in the criminal legal system and providing alternative to incaceration focused on healing.

Within 3 mongths into her term, her critics started to blame  sky rocket increase in crime on her office's practice of not seeking maximum possible punishment for criminal defendants while removing 4 seasoned prosecutors and 2 police inspectors for political reasons.  Recent hiring of her boyfriend as Senior Program Specialist with no prior experience and not disclosing their relationship, has brought questions about her workplace ethics.  Antwon Cloird joined her team with a based salary of $115,502. 

Despite public pressure to change her criminal prosecution practice, she has refused to diverge from her own mandate of decriminalization and take the responsibility for a 30% or more surge in violent and non-violent crimes in Oakland.  To her the recall effort is lead by election deniers and run by outside special-interest groups supported by the right-wing agenda.

Save Alameda for Everyone (SAFE),  the Price recall committee has raised over $240,000 from individual and corporate sources so far.  A second recall committee, "Reviving the Bay Area", has additional funded SAFE over $385,000.  The principal members of the committee are Brenda Grisham, Philip Dreyfuss and Carl Chan.  Brenda's 17-year-old son was shot and killed in East Oakland outside their home in 2010.  

Carl Chan, President of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, was assaulted in 2021 by anti-Asian hate felon.  Philip Dreyfuss is a hedge fund investor at the SF-based Farallon Capital Management.  He resigned from SAFE and established  the "Reviving the Bay Area" committee.

Meanwhile, Price has raised about $15,000 to defeat the recall effort.  Clearly, the sentiment is against Price and the momentum is growing to gather 100,000 signatures to ensure the recall will be a success.  Recall organizers are being helped with hundreds of people from all over California volunteering to gather signatures, some came far away as San Diego and Sacramento.   If successfully being removed in 2024 by the will of the people, Price can take into comfort that she will be one of the two DA's ousted from their seats by recall in the last 2 years.  Remember San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin anyone?

Housing Choice Voucher Program in Orange County

 

From Supervisor Andrew Do: 

The Orange County Housing Authority (OCHA) will be opening the Housing Choice Voucher Program - Section 8 - waiting list and accepting applications beginning September 18, 2023, 8:00 a.m. PDT and ending September 29, 2023, 11:59 p.m. PDT.

To help residents who may not have access to a computer, lack transportation, or just need assistance submitting an application, I am hosting a 3-hour event at Mile Square Park next Monday where trained staff from Abrazar, Inc. and the Asian American Senior Citizens Service Center will help residents submit their applications electronically.

For thousands of people and families who have been waiting to apply for rental assistance, this comes as a welcome relief. With a housing voucher, individuals and families can choose their own housing that meet their needs, including single-family homes, townhomes, and apartments.

 PLEASE NOTE: Submitted applications are not considered on a first-come, first-served basis, and the timing of the application submittal has no bearing on the waiting list position or how soon an applicant may receive assistance. The waiting list will be limited to 12,000 applicants.

Santa Clara County D2 Board of Supervisors Race

In late February this year, at the Vietnamese American Business Association  (VABA) Anual Gala 2023 where over 800 guests enjoying their multi-course gourmet dinner and listening to speeches of  elected officials from Sacramento to Orange County,  one of the attention-grabbing buzzes  is the presence of Madison Nguyen and her hinting of a run for the soon to be vacant D2  Board of Supervisors seat. 

Conventional wisdom predicts that Madison Nguyen, former SJ city councilmember who has not been seen for the last 4 years with a rumor that she mostly lives in Nevada, will be one of the 3 or 4 Vietnamese-American candidates for this hotly contested seat.   Not to be outdone, the Latino community will have at least 3 or 4 candidates also. 

So who are the potential candidates and why D2 is so appealing?

District 2 after the 2022 redistricting to reflect the 2020 census was drawn with a heavy Latino population by the Board of Supervisors.  This is to counterbalance District 3 where the boundary was designed for an Asian majority.  The current Supervisor Cindy Chavez is termed out in 2024 and her chief staff,  Betty Duong, will officially anounce her candidacy this coming Sunday at her sister's coffee shop in downtown San Jose.

But not too be outdone, other potential candidates including ESHUSD Board Trustee Van Le and the newly elected SJ Councilmember Bien Doan also have expressed their interests.  

On the Latino side, rumors are picking up that former SJ Councilmembers Nora Campos, Maya Esparza and Magdalena Carrasco will be running.  

District 2 has about 176,000 registered voters.  The breakdown is 29% Asian, 35% Latino and 34% non-Latino, non-African American, and non-Asian.   Vietnamese-American registered voters make up 17% of the total.  This is not unexpected since D2 covers most of San Jose City D7, D5 and D3 where there are a lot of Vietnamese-American families. 

Madison Nguyen, if runs, will be a business friendly candidate while Betty Duong is loyal to Labor Union. This will make another interesting race where the two will be vying hard for their natural base, Vietnamese voters, as well as other voters in a very diverse demographic.  

"Are You Feeling Blue?" Art Exhibtion

 

Coalition Against Red-baiting and Race-baiting in San Jose Political Arena

 

STATEMENT SHOWING SOLIDARITY AMONG COMMUNITIES OF COLOR AND CONDEMNING RACIST MAILERS TARGETING ASIAN AMERICANS

FROM SILICON VALLEY BIZ PAC

 

Last week, the Silicon Valley Biz PAC issued a mailer attacking Supervisor Cindy Chavez by falsely claiming that she is “trying to silence the Asian American community in San José” in addition to using a darkened photo of her in the hit piece. The undersigned members of the REAL Coalition and allies unequivocally condemn this racist mailer from Silicon Valley Biz Political Action Committee (PAC) and call for all PACs, political operatives, and candidates to stop using dog whistles, baseless claims, and outright lies to try to confuse, manipulate, and exploit the general public.

 

This race-baiting tactic has been used before in 2016 and 2020 when Councilmember Sergio Jimenez’s and Sylvia Arenas’ faces were darkened in campaign mailers. SVOPAC also used race baiting to attack Candidate Jake Tonkel by using a photo of Black men from South Africa to scare voters, which led to the dissolution of the Silicon Valley Organization PAC (SVOPAC), the resignation of their longtime CEO, and a months-long restructuring process of the once “San José/Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce.” Rather than learning from the mistakes of its predecessor, the Silicon Valley Biz PAC uses abhorrent race-baiting tactics and exploits an entire community for political gain.

 

The mailer in question darkens the face of Supervisor Chavez and attempts to victimize the Asian American community in San José by driving the narrative that Asians are being targeted for political oppression. It attempts to instill fear in us by turning a candidate into an enemy. It weaponizes the issue of Asian representation to target a woman of color.  This is on top of several other instances of inflammatory tactics used in this election cycle: in-language comments using racial stereotypes of Mexican Americans and crime made by an East Side Union School Board Trustee that the above-mailer references; a mailer sent by San Jose council candidate grouping three white women in contrast to two men of color, “portray[ing] white women as innocent and virtuous and men of color as dangerous and predatory.” These actions are unacceptable and must be addressed in written and community fora.

 

We are angry. We are angry at how political strategists can so easily try to manipulate our communities. We are angry at how politics is the justification for race-baiting. We are angry at how special interests who have never paid attention to our representation are now using this issue to drive communities of color apart.

 

A tenet and tactic of white supremacist logic is to divide and conquer – to pit communities of different racial and ethnic backgrounds against one another in an attempt to distract them from broader issues that uphold oppressive institutions. Power does not have to be a zero-sum game. We gain true power in working together, not in tearing each other apart. This is why the REAL (Race Equity Action Leadership) Coalition was created - to practice and advance racial justice through a coalition of nonprofit leaders, committed to learning, advocacy, and organizing while building power in authentic community solidarity.

 

We refuse to be pitted against other communities of color in political gamesmanship. We are not your model minority nor are we pawns. We choose solidarity!

________________________________________________________________________

Organization Signatories (to sign on behalf of an organization, type in your name, title, and organization)

 

Angelica Cortez, Executive Director, LEAD Filipino

Angelica Ramos-Allen, President, National Women’s Political Caucus of Silicon Valley

Anna Nguyen, Co-Executive Director, Friends of Hue Foundation

Bao Trieu, President, Vietnamese Voluntary Foundation (VIVO)

Darcie Green, Executive Director, Latinas Contra Cancer

David Mineta, Executive Director, Momentum Health

Diane Fisher, Executive Director, Jewish Community Relations Council

Jahmal Williams, Black Leadership Kitchen Cabinet of Silicon Valley

Jean Cohen, Executive Officer, South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council

Josh Selo, Executive Director, West Valley Community Services

Felicia Gershberg, Co-Lead, Together We Will - San José

Kyra Kazantzis, Executive Director, Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits

Lam Nguyen, Co-Chair of Orchard City Indivisible and Board President of EM Collective

Mimi Nguyen, Executive Director, Step Forward Foundation

MyLinh Pham, CEO & Founder, Asian American Center of Santa Clara County

Nassim Nouri, Green Party of Santa Clara County Councilmember

Philip Nguyen, Executive Director, Vietnamese American Roundtable

Quyen Vuong, Executive Director, International Children Assistance Network (ICAN)

Richard Konda, Executive Director, Asian Law Alliance

Ruth Silver Taube, Coordinator, Santa Clara County Wage Theft Coalition

Susan Hayase, San Jose Nikkei Resisters

Saul Ramos, Co-Executive Director, SOMOS Mayfair

Victor Vasquez, Co-Executive Director, SOMOS Mayfair

Silicon Valley Asian Pacific American Democratic Club

 

 

Individual Signatories (to sign on your individual behalf, type in your name and title, which is used for identification purposes only)

 

Carmen Brammer, Political Strategist & Community Advocate

Daniel Cao

Dieu Huynh, VietUnity - Southbay

Elizabeth Barcelos, South Bay Progressive Alliance

Elly Matsumura, Powerswitch Action

Emily Ann Ramos, Northern Vice-Chair, California Democratic Party API Caucus

Felwina Opiso-Mondina, PAWIS

Hong Cao, Board Member, Viet Museum

Huy Tran, Justice at Work Law Group, LLP

Jane Do Bui

Linda D. Nguyen

Lucy Tran

Mary Cheryl B. Gloner

Matt King, policy director, Sacred Heart Community Service

Michele Lew

Milan Balinton

Nadia Nouri, Iranian American SCC Green Party

Nick Cortez, South Bay Progressive Alliance

Patricia Gardner

Peggy Elwell, South Bay Progressive Alliance

Peter Allen, Political Strategist

Regina Celestin Williams

Richard Hobbs, Executive Director, Human Agenda

Robin Goka Huynh, San Jose Nikkei Resisters

Sarita Kohli, Executive Director, Asian Americans for Community Involvement

Vanessa Shieh

 

 

Elected Officials (to sign on your individual behalf, type in your name and title, which is used for identification purposes only)

 

Ash Kalra, Assemblymember, 27th Assembly District

Derek Grasty, Mt. Pleasant Elementary School District Trustee

Naomi Nakano-Matsumoto, Member of Fremont Union High School District Board

James Chang, Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board Commissioner

Javed Ellahie, Mayor, Monte Sereno

Jorge Pacheco Jr, Oak Grove School District Trustee

Ruben Abrica, Mayor, City of East Palo Alto

Sergio Jimenez, Councilmember, City of San Jose

Tara Sreekrishnan, Santa Clara County Board of Education Trustee

Tony Alexander, San Jose Evergreen Community College District Trustee

Tony Estremera, Director, Santa Clara Valley Water District

Van Le, East Side Union High School Trustee

Wendy Ho, San Jose-Evergreen Community College District Trustee