DA, primary challenger cite encouraging campaign signs
SAN JOSE >> With the calendar flipping into 2022, a three-term incumbent and his main challenger are both pointing to encouraging signs of support in their early campaigns for the office of district attorney in Santa Clara County.
The June primary election will mark the first time that sitting District Attorney Jeff Rosen will face a contested re-election bid, after having gone without a challenger in 2014 and 2018.
One of his opponents, deputy public defender Sajid Khan, is running on an aggressive criminal-justice reform platform with the hopes of repeating the political fortunes of Rosen, who in 2010 became the first person in the county to unseat an incumbent DA in nearly a century. On the fundraising front, Khan’s campaign reports raising about $236,000 — spread among more than 1,1000 contributors, half of whom donated less than $100 — since he publicly declared his candidacy in July. Rosen’s campaign, meanwhile, reports having raised more than double Khan’s total, putting him at the $500,000 fundraising limit for the June 7 primary election.
A second challenger, Daniel Chung, who was recently a prosecutor working under Rosen but has become a harsh critic of his old boss since a public falling out, declined to provide information about the status of his campaign.
A multi-term officeholder, Rosen enjoys wide support across the county’s political leadership — including backing from South Bay Rep. Zoe Lofgren, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, and county Supervisor Cindy Chavez — while Khan has cultivated a grassroots support base of social-justice groups, as well as endorsements from former Rep. Mike Honda, Assemblymember Alex Lee and Mountain View Mayor Ellen Kamei.
Garrick Percival, chair of the political science department at San Jose State University, said that for Rosen, incumbency remains a formidable strength.
“DA races inevitably favor the incumbent. They’re going into the campaign and the election with that history,” Percival said. “It’s going to be an uphill battle for both Chung and Khan.”
But he also pointed to recent district attorney races in San Francisco and Los Angeles that saw reform-minded candidates Chesa Boudin and George Gascón upset incumbents in those cities.
Khan is looking to capitalize on the same type of voter sentiment in his electoral bid. His campaign commissioned a poll of 350 county voters conducted by Florida-based SEA Polling and Strategic Design that found Khan is competitive with Rosen after polling
subjects were given “brief candidate descriptions,” as well as strong support for alternatives to incarceration and transparency and accountability for law enforcement. However, that same poll also found Khan trailing in initial name recognition, with 8 percent compared to 20 percent for Rosen and 10 percent for Chung, who has done minimal campaigning.
Citing voter support for criminal-justice reform ballot measures — at least one of which Rosen has unsuccessfully challenged in court — Khan asserts that people in Santa Clara County “are not satisfied with the status quo,” and that his lack of past political office is an asset. “I have not been a county official. I have not been part of this carceral system and part of the system that has led to a need for an alternative and a path forward.”
“We live in a community and state where we have invested heavily over the paste several years and decades in policing, arresting, punishing and incarcerating our people, and feelings of unsafety have risen despite this overwhelming investment,” Khan said. “It has proven to us and demonstrated that our pathway forward to community safety is not the continuation of a broken system.”
But Rosen’s political advisor, Leo Briones, suggested that Khan does not have exclusive claim to reform causes, and expressed skepticism at that campaign’s poll findings.
“DA Rosen’s office is not interested in internal polls or base politics,” Briones said. “They are too busy working for the safety of the two million people who live and work in Santa Clara County.”
In a statement, Rosen added that he is “honored to have the endorsement of more than eighty Santa Clara County elected and retired public servants. I believe their support reflects the fact that while Santa Clara County remains one of the Bay Area’s safest, we have also cut incarceration rates in half during my time as district attorney.”
Percival said people would do “well to give a lot of caution” to the Khan campaign’s poll, noting that the results could be reflective of how the county’s general voting population hasn’t had a lot of practice talking about the district attorney given how long it’s been since the office was contested.
“It’s mostly instructive in that it shows there are a lot of undecided voters, and a lot who don’t know what a DA does. We would hope that people do become more engaged in the race and more knowledgeable in the office,” Percival said. “There’s room for campaigning and persuasion, which could make it potentially a competitive race.”