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Sam Liccardo has wrestled with problems big and small, regional and local: from paving roads and adding bike lanes to preserving open spaces and building affordable housing.
During a budget crisis in 2015, he negotiated with the city of San Jose’s labor unions a deal to save about $3 billion in health care costs over 30 years. He considers that negotiation — as well as the successful effort he led in 2018 to preserve Coyote Valley as an open space preserve — as his proudest accomplishments.
More recently, he worked to advance Measure RR, a sales tax increase that voters in San Mateo, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties approved in 2020 to support Caltrain operations.
Liccardo completed last year his eight-year stint as San Jose mayor, having won a close runoff in 2014 before cruising to re-election in 2018. Now, he is one of the frontrunners to succeed Anna Eshoo in Congress. He enjoys the name recognition that comes with having led one of the nation’s 50 largest cities and as of this week he has amassed a campaign chest of more than $1 million.
He also understands — and leans into — the fact that elected leaders don’t always get the credit (or blame) they merit.
“As the mayor of a city of 1 million residents, I’m sure I got plenty of credit for things I didn’t deserve,” Liccardo said in an interview. “But I knew I was going to be responsible for problems I didn’t create as well. That level of accountability – that expectation of accountability – is what I bring to this role.”
Liccardo wants to bring the same attitude to Congress — a polarized and often dysfunctional body that is often seen as out of touch with local needs. He wants to give local issues the national prominence that he believes they deserve.
“I’ve spent hundreds of hours walking the hall of Congress as mayor and advocating for our region, and I routinely heard from Congress members that ‘those are local problems,’” Liccardo said. “We need a Congress that recognizes these are national problems.”
Take homelessness, an issue on which Liccardo spent considerable time as mayor. He noted that of the 48 largest cities in the nation, 44 have homeless populations in excess of 1,000 people. It’s a national crisis, he argued, and it requires a national response.
Same with affordable housing. He is proud of his record as mayor in developing new models for adding housing at a time when the cost of building a single unit has risen to between $900,000 and $1 million. He is proud of San Jose’s innovation, including its effort in 2015 to convert hotels into housing; its support for construction of prefabricated “tiny homes”; and its decision to use land owned by Caltrans, VTA and the city for apartment buildings.
There is, however, a problem. The Section 8 vouchers that many low-income residents rely on cannot be used on the new projects, Liccardo said. As a result, there are hundreds of homeless people in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties who have Section 8 vouchers but who cannot avail themselves of the new housing. Liccardo would like to change by creating more flexibility in the voucher program.
“Cities understand the needs and respond quickly,” he said.
Mayors, he said, “recognize the importance of being responsive and accountable because that’s how we are viewed by those we serve.” Congress needs to be equally responsive, he said.
Accountability also means being able to take the heat. Liccardo’s strong connections with Silicon Valley tech titans have made him an easy target for those who hate Google buses and who blame the tech boom for the region’s housing affordability crisis. Liccardo, who made a cameo in “Silicon Valley,” HBO’s satirical expose of the region’s many absurdities, does not shrink from these criticisms. If anything he invited them in February 2021, when he penned an opinion piece in San Francisco Chronicle with the headline that encouraged readers to “stop blaming tech.”
“The departure of a few cranky billionaires won’t doom the Bay Area, but our region’s declining appeal to early-stage companies — and entrepreneurs that drive them — will,” Liccardo wrote. “Innovators came to the Silicon Valley because we presented low barriers to entry — an egalitarian, open-source ethos that welcomed and celebrated immigrants, geeks and eccentrics. Increasingly, we’ve erected barriers — financial, regulatory and even cultural — to the new and the ambitious.”
If elected to Congress, he aims to continue to support the Silicon Valley tech industry on a national level. The Congressional district, he said, needs to have “a champion of the innovation economy.”
“Amid all the tech-bashing that’s popular in both parties, this district needs to have a representative that would advocate for the needs of the innovation economy, which are critical to our nation’s success.”
