Marc Yu declares Vacaville candidacy
Sales manager for a Vacaville mortgage firm, Yu, 44 and father of five, says his top concern is postpandemic economic development
Using a sports analogy, Marc Yu of Vacaville, a former varsity wrestler at Pennsylvania State University, said Wednesday that he encourages people to run for the vacant District 2 seat on the Vacaville City Council.
“When you have more people competing in a particular weight class,” said the 44-year- old sales manager for a Vacaville mortgage firm, “then the winner is going to be the best.”
His statement came as the father of five announced his candidacy on Monday, a declaration on his personal Facebook page, for the Council seat vacated by Mitch Mashburn, the Solano County Jail commander who has been elected to the Board of Supervisors.
The special election will be held May 4, and Yu, a native of Quezon, Philippines, will face off against at least two challengers: Gregory Ritchie, also a mortgage broker, and Joe Desmarais, the brother of Juan Desmarais, the owner of Primo’s Barbershop and the subject of widespread media coverage for defying county and state public safety orders to shut down his business during COVID-19 surges.
Yu’s “biggest concern,” he said, is “economic development” after the pandemic begins to subside with widespread vaccinations of the public.
“I’m trying to get more jobs for local businesses and the community,” he said during a brief telephone interview. “I will try to help them reopen, and I want the ones that went out of business to
come back.”
As sales manager for the Vacaville branch of the Loan Depot, a nationwide mortgage company, where he oversees five employees, his concern for local businesses’s financial health is understandable.
But a lso in rec ent months, Yu, who was raised for some years in San Francisco and later attended the Milton Hershey School, a private school in Hershey, Pa., has heard from fellow residents of District 2, which primarily includes Vacaville’s northeastern sector.
He referred to the burgeoning awareness of social and racial injustice in the United States in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police in May and the subsequent nationwide demonstrations.
“A lot of people were talking to me,” said Yu, who earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical and material science engineering from Penn State, “about how things were being run here.”
So he started to attend City Council meetings and “listening to the voices of the people speaking,” he said.
Calling himself “a big finance guy,” Yu also paid attention to budget allocations made by the Council, some of them disagreeable to him.
“Where I live, I believe I could be a very good voice for my community,” he said.
His path to his candidacy announcement star ted with wife Sandy’s social media activity, noted Yu.
“My wife is very opinionated and likes to argue about politics,” he said. “My name was brought up. Multiple groups said, ‘Marc should run for City Council.’ I didn’t really consider running for City Council. I was out there talking to people, listening to their concerns.”
Of his philosophy of governing, Yu again emphasized his willingness to listen carefully to others.
“My ears are always open,” he said. “I want to be able to relay based on what I hear and make sound decisions based on what I hear. I want to be the type of Council member that hears the voices of my community and represents them in the best possible way.”
Vacaville residents and Reporter readers may recall that Yu’s name surfaced in April 2019, when he found a racist threatening letter in his mailbox, an incident that made headlines in Bay Area newspapers and on TV stations after he posted the letter on Facebook.
The letter-writer encouraged Yu and his family to “find another place to live” and also stated “Renters like yourselves can’t possibly afford a home in our area” and “we may sound harsh but your interracial family isn’t welcome here.”
Yu owns his Meadowlands home, wife Sandy is of Mexican descent and he is biracial, Chinese and Filipino. He said the person singled out him and his wife for being an interracial couple, not the only such family in the neighborhood.
“They judged us, pretty much,” he said. “No one likes that feeling. And the way it was written, the person did not pay attention to grammar in school.”
“If I have enemies, or have people who are competing against me for anything, I don’t try to fight back — I try to collaborate,” said Yu.