City Council’s slight power shift to begin

2 newest members give board labor-leaning majority starting Tuesday

It’s a new era in San Jose City Hall.

For the first time in more than a decade, the city’s most powerful lawmaking body is controlled by a labor-backed majority. On top of that, two of the most conservative members of the council have been replaced by those who lean more to the left.

While it has yet to be seen how the new dynamic will alter the city’s direction on contentious issues from the extent of fee waivers given to developers to the amount of power the mayor should hold, San Jose’s two newest council members are ready to get to work.

Both leaving their technology companies behind, David Cohen and Matt Mahan will begin their new roles, taking part in their first meeting Tuesday.

Cohen’s narrow victory over former District 4 Council member Lan Diep in November sealed the power shift on the 11-member council from a business-aligned majority led by Mayor Sam Liccardo to a labor-endorsed majority that will include the city’s five Latino council members and Cohen.

Yet, Cohen said he doesn’t have a set agenda and instead is seeking to “add some balance” to the lawmaking body.

“I don’t want to act like there won’t still be some controversial decisions, but my goal in the short term is to try and bridge some of the differences that have manifested themselves recently and maybe break up that divide,” he said in a recent interview.

Mahan, who was backed by the other side of the aisle — the city’s now-defunct Silicon Valley Organization PAC — similarly vows that he “didn’t run to be part of a political team or faction” and that he aims to join Cohen in creating space for more collaboration on the council. Mahan replaces Johnny Khamis, the most conservative member on the council who was termed out of office and represented the city’s District 10 residents.

“I think (all of the council members) mostly want the same things,” Mahan, said, “but when

we have scarce resources and different views about how to best get what we want then the debates can get very intense and unfortunately, sometimes very personal.”

The last time the council was controlled by a labor majority was during Mayor Chuck Reed’s tenure in the late 2000s.

Terr y Christensen, a longtime political science professor emeritus at San Jose State who has been tapped into the city’s political makeup for decades, said this new shift will “push the council further to the left” and create a “more collaborative” and “less antagonistic” lawmaking body than was seen in recent years during a number of highly contentious debates.

Liccardo, who served as a council member when the council was last controlled by a labor-backed majority, said in an interview last week that the power shift was “nothing new” and that he was looking forward to working with the new members despite losing his majority.

“Unlike in Congress, people expect cities and mayors to get things done, to be pragmatic and to put ideological battles aside,” Liccardo said. “And with a lot of important issues ahead of us, I expect we’ll be able to do just that.”

So do Cohen and Mahan, albeit amid some unexpected obstacles.

Although they both have long envisioned reaching this point, doing so in a midst of a roaring pandemic has changed everything from how they’ve rolled out their transition plans to how they will communicate with their constituents to what they’re hoping to accomplish while in office.

Cohen’s new role as a San Jose council member caps off the end of a 21-year career at the Fremont-based tech company Lam Research and 14 years on the Berryessa Union School District board. The beginning of his term will mirror a lot of the same restrictions as his campaign: No in-person meetings, virtual planning among his new team and a focus on how to help residents eventually recover from the pandemic.

Mahan clinched the District 10 seat in early March, winning the three- candidate contest by a wide margin. At that time, coronavirus cases were just starting to surface in the Bay Area, but mask mandates and stay- at- home orders had yet to come down and most people didn’t yet know how serious the pandemic would alter society.

Last summer Mahan started blogging as a way to connect with his constituents in the midst of the pandemic, which triggered many people to stay holed up inside their homes. His blog, which he hopes to transition over to his district newsletter once he takes office, covers a wide array of topics, including racial inequality, the region’s housing shortage and the city’s budgetary downfalls.

“My favorite part about the campaign was knocking on doors and talking to voters on their doorstep, but since that was no longer possible, I wanted to find other ways to communicate with residents, hear their ideas and share my thoughts,” Mahan said.

Mahan, who grew up i n Wat s onville and attended high school at San Jose’s Bellarmine Prep, previously served as the cofounder and CEO of Brigade, a technology company that provides tools to promote civic engagement, political transparency and government accountability.

One of Mahan’s biggest goals during his four-year term is to create a public-facing data dashboard to track the city’s performance on key indicators — from police response times to roadway repairs to park maintenance. But first, he said, the city needs to figure out how to maintain city services while dealing with deep budget shortfalls caused by the pandemic and the recession that it has created.

“Top of mind for me now is going to be ‘ how do we do more with less’ and ‘how do we preserve the institutional knowledge, memory and skills that our cit y staff possess’ and ensure that we continue to keep our staff focused and motivated on producing results for residents,” Mahan said.

Meanwhile, Cohen’s primary objective is to “build a customer service organization” where he and his team are visible and readily accessible to his constituents. Doing so in the middle of a pandemic, however, adds a layer of complexity.

Instead of meeting residents face to face and holding in-person office hours, Cohen and his team will be attending various neighborhood association meetings in January over Zoom, introducing themselves to community members and hearing what concerns they might have. Then once some of the public health restrictions are lifted, he plans to hold some office hours in neighborhood parks and go door to door introducing himself and his team to residents.

“There are a lot of difficult decisions coming with this pandemic, like how we deal with the incoming recession,” Cohen said. “But there are also a lot of opportunities to do some interesting things in our city to make a difference.”