Fremont's Mei best replacement for Wieckowski
A new district thanks to redistricting. No incumbent due to term limits. The result: Six candidates, including three well-qualified, vying to represent parts of Alameda and Santa Clara counties in the state Senate.
Had Sen. Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, been eligible to run again, this would not be a competitive race. But he is ending his allotted 12 years in the Legislature. So, instead, there's a wide-open race in District 10, which includes Fremont, Hayward, Milpitas, Newark, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Union City and northeast San Jose.
Our pick: Fremont Mayor Lily Mei, who brings the broadest elective-office experience — six years as a Fremont Unified School District trustee and eight years on the Fremont City Council, including six as elected mayor.
Mei is a well-prepared, pragmatic leader able to work with people with divergent opinions. She was the first Asian American elected mayor in Fremont, one of the Bay Area's better fiscally managed cities.
District 10's population is 52% Asian, the largest portion of any of the state's 40 Senate districts, 21% Latino, 18% White and 3% Black. It's considered a safe Democratic seat, with 52% of voters Democrats, 14% Republicans and 29% holding no party preference.
The only Republican in the race, Paul Pimentel, did not return our emails and phone calls. Attorney Jamal Khan did not show up for our interview. Of the other three candidates joining Mei in the race, engineer Raymond Liu has no political experience — and it showed in his answers with sweeping and at times poorly informed generalizations.
However, Jim Canova, a 30-year Santa Clara Unified School District trustee, and Aisha Wahab, finishing her first term on the Hayward City Council, are both credible and thoughtful candidates.
But it's Mei who is the standout. She was a supporter, for example, of COVID-19 masking mandates during the pandemic, eviction moratoriums that consider the plights of both tenants and landlords, and reforms to ensure the state's environmental laws are not used as special-interest cudgels to extract unrelated concessions.
We don't always agree with Mei, but she is considerate of opposing viewpoints. She's the sort of leader needed in the state Capitol. Voters in Senate District 10 should elect her.