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Heading into a critical stretch of their Congressional race, former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and state Assemblyman Evan Low met in Palo Alto on Sunday to spar over policies, take shots at each other’s record and try to win over voters who, in many cases, would have preferred a different candidate altogether.
“This is Simitian country, we all know this,” Low acknowledged at the beginning of the Sept. 8 forum sponsored by the Peninsula Democratic Coalition.
Santa Clara Supervisor Joe Simitian was also in attendance for the candidate forum at the Mitchell Park Community Center, but only as a spectator. He left the race after finishing the election tied for second with Low and then ending up five votes short after a recount. While Liccardo and Low each advanced after receiving a swell of support from their respective power bases in the San Jose and Campbell areas, each is now looking to make inroads in the northern part of the 16th District, which includes Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Mountain View. Here, Simitian was the overwhelming popular choice, according to precinct data.
Nowhere is that truer than in in Palo Alto. Simitian, who had represented Palo Alto as mayor, county supervisor, state Assembly member and State Senator received 487 votes in the Crescent Park area, for example, while Liccardo finished second with 105. In the precinct that includes University South and Community Center, the advantage was 568 to 158 votes.
As Democrats in a highly Democratic district, Liccardo and Low share all the mainstream Democratic positions, like supporting stronger gun control laws and increased protection for reproductive rights. They oppose the Trump-era tax cut for the wealthy and believe in more federal funding to solve the homelessness epidemic.
Yet to those in the audience, the two candidates who are seeking to succeed U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo in Congress offered a contrast in styles. Low positioned himself as a progressive standard-bearer, vowing to fight for community colleges and middle-class voters, expand the “blue wall” in Congress and resist “the attack from the Supreme Court” that in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade. Liccardo portrayed himself as the practical problem-solver, pitching solutions that may fall short of the ideal but that might just get achieved. If elected, he said he would join the Problem Solvers Caucus which is devoted to bipartisan solutions and which requires each new member to bring in a member of the opposite party (“It’s like getting on Noah’s Ark — you’re getting one of each,” Liccardo said.)
Low touted his record in Sacramento in supporting reproductive rights as the co-author of Proposition 1, which passed in 2022 with 67% support and which enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution. California, he argued, should provide “the pathway for the direction of our country” that other blue states can follow. If elected to Congress, he said he would work to enshrine federal protections.
“This is the blue wall that must exist,” Low said.
Liccardo agreed with Low that Congress needs to do more to protect reproductive rights but he focused on measured policies that could potentially obtain bipartisan support. These include investing in telehealth so that residents in states where health access is a challenge can get mifepristone, a medication used to end pregnancies, prescribed. He also supported exploring how VA hospitals, which operate independently from state laws, can provide reproductive health services.
“The challenge we have is identifying solutions is a world where we have a divided Congress and know we won’t get what we want and we need for this country in this session and maybe not even after November if Republicans take the Senate,” Liccardo said.
A similar split occurred on gun control. Liccardo said he supports background checks for gun and ammunition purchases as well as “red flag” laws that allow for the removal of guns from people who are deemed a threat to themselves or others. Both efforts would make a difference, even if they don’t constitute “everything we want,” he said.
Low recalled the bill he authored in partnership Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen to make sure the state can take firearms from individuals deemed mentally unstable, an effort that netted him a grade of F- from the NRA (“That’s the F- that my Chinese dad is proud of,” he quipped). He also cited his endorsements from various police unions, including his endorsement by the San Jose Police Officers Association and his recognition of legislator of the year by Peace Officers Research Association of California.
Liccardo countered that the reason these pro-police groups endorsed him was because he did not support bills like AB 1421, which made records relating to police misconduct accessible through Public Records Act requests.
Low, for his part, questioned Liccardo’s record on homelessness. Even though Low and Liccardo both have platforms proposing more federal funding to solve the problem, Low criticized Liccardo for failing as mayor to adequately account for the funding it had received.
Rather than offer specifics on his own homelessness record, he pointed to an April audit from the California State Auditor that found that San Jose had failed to adequately track and report its spending on homelessness programs. The report also cited point-in-time data showing homelessness in San Jose rising from 4,350 individuals in 2017 to 6,097 in 2019 and to 6,650 in 2022.
“We as a federal government and we as a state continue to throw money at the problem without accountability. This is unacceptable. These are our taxpayer dollars,” Low said.
Liccardo, meanwhile, pointed to his implementation of measures like prefabricated housing and hotel conversions that can provide relief to the homeless. He said he would support changes to federal laws so that Section 8 vouchers could be applied to transitional housing and so that Medicaid could be used to provide treatment to unhoused individuals. Current law prevents that in hospitals with more than 16 beds, he said.
“These are antiquated relics of a time long since passed,” Liccardo said.
He also fought back against accusations that he had misspent money that was allocated to homelessness.
“There are billions more wasted in the state level than were ever wasted at the local money,” he said.
And while he and other cities were fighting to get funding, they “never saw Evan Low step up once to say our cities need more resources,” Liccardo said.
Things got particularly snippy when the moderator, Angie Coiro, asked them about the contentious recall process, which was requested by a Liccardo ally and which resulted in Simitian getting knocked off the ballot. Though he was the eventual winner, Low was questioned about his opposition the recount, which was officially submitted under his name.
The recount, Low noted, was funded by a Super PAC affiliated with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who tried to run for president in 2020. Liccardo was co-chair of his presidential campaign.
“I’m deeply committed to making sure every vote counts,” Low said. “In this unique circumstance, we realize that dark money plays a terrible, corrosive role in this effort. … This is was a Super PAC that was funded given the affiliation of (Liccardo) being a former co-chair of (Bloomberg’s) failed presidential campaign.”
Low said that after the recount, he sponsored a bill to mandate an automatic recount in close elections. Assembly Bill 996 would apply to any statewide race where the margin of victory is either less than 0.25% of the ballots cast or fewer than 25 votes.
Liccardo concurred that an automatic recount is a sensible solution to avoid what happened in this race. He also acknowledged that the recount was funded by his supporters and motivated by politics. His response was basically: So what? It’s politics.
“Were there supporters of mine who were funding the recount? Yes. Because there is not a law that actually required an automatic recount in this case. … You’re right, they had a political motive. Every recount that’s ever been requested in human history has usually been requested by a candidate or someone affiliated with a candidate who has a political motive,” Liccardo said. “Nonetheless, the registrar is doing the counting so we should all want to have recounts.”
While Liccardo defended his acceptance of money from Bloomberg, with whom he had worked on gun control and environmental sustainability, he criticized at Low for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from PG&E and the California Apartment Association, which advocates for landlords. The association had contributed $250,000 into a Super PAC that ran ads in support of Low.
Liccardo recalled his own record of taking a stand against PG&E to launch San Jose Clean Energy, a not-for-profit energy supplier that the city launched in 2019. He also noted that the landlord association opposes him because he supported an eviction moratorium during the Covid-19 pandemic, a decision he knew might come back to bite him but that he felt was the right thing to do.
“Folks, there are consequences for taking a stand,” Liccardo said. “But you need to know who does it.”
