As voters start to receive their ballots for the November election, one Menlo Park man is looking two years ahead to a state Senate bid.
Formerly a venture capitalist and CEO of Lex Machina, philanthropist Josh Becker announced recently via Facebook that he plans to run for the California Senate in 2020.
Pre-empting what could be a rush to fill California’s District 13 seat when current state Sen. Jerry Hill terms out, Becker acknowledged, “This is obviously very early.”
But, he noted, 2020 will be California’s first year with an earlier primary, set in March, so he expects the next election cycle to start sooner than people expect.
District 13 runs from South San Francisco to Sunnyvale, and also includes the Coastside.
Becker said his priorities are to improve transportation infrastructure, build more housing, expand early childhood education opportunities, and provide health insurance to everyone. Criminal justice reform and immigration are key topics for him too, but he noted he intends to roll out more specific plans and policy proposals.
In his 2010 campaign, he received a number of campaign contributions from tech and venture capital companies. Before he withdrew from the race in 2016, he attended a forum where he expressed skepticism of high-speed rail and said he didn’t believe its existing business model is viable.
On the transportation front, he said he supports a better-integrated transit fare system, and strongly supports early plans to revitalize the Dumbarton rail corridor. The traffic that plagues the Dumbarton Bridge and the fact that the cars release emissions into the community of East Palo Alto, he said, is a “fundamental equity question as well as a Bay Area competitiveness issue.”
In the public sector, Becker helped launch the University of California at Merced as a founding trustee, and is currently on the university foundation’s board of trustees. Demographically speaking, he said, the university is now more reflective of the future of California than others in the UC system, with 53 percent of the university’s students identified as Latino.
Becker is also a member of Gov. Jerry Brown’s California Workforce Development Board, and a member of the San Mateo County Childcare Partnership Council.
For a longer version of this story, go to tinyurl.com/jbecker20.
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