Mayor launches Solutions San Jose
The mayor of the nation’s 10th- largest city is boosting his résumé with a new personal venture: an advocacy group aimed at offering a voice to those lost in the shuffle.
But union advocates are calling the mayor’s move “disingenuous” and “an attempt to further the agenda of his corporate backers.”
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo recently filed paperwork to start a 501(c)(4) organization called Solutions San Jose. The organization doesn’t yet have a website or a board or any staff members. How it will operate, who else is behind it and its relationship to San Jose City Hall remains vague at this point.
Though backed by and aligned closely with local businesses throughout his career, Liccardo vows that this new group will not be a business organization. It will not campaign for political candidates. And it is not meant to be an indication of any future plans for Liccardo, who terms out of his mayor seat in less than two years, he said.
The mission of Solutions San Jose, Liccardo said, is to give a greater voice to residents who have been drowned out by a vocal group of advocates on the extremes of San Jose’s political spectrum, with powerful labor unions at one end and strong business alliances at the other.
“People are tired of being told what to do, whether it’s by big business or big labor,” Liccardo
said in an interview. “We think that most folks in our community would rather pass on divisive political battles among clans and engage in discussion and action that produces solutions.”
Liccardo, under the email address info@solutionssanjose.com, has sent out two mass emails on behalf of Solutions San Jose to a small group of constituents in the past week. Those messages, which were first reported by San Jose Inside, centered around the mayor’s call for reopening San Jose schools and asked recipients to sign a petition to support the cause.
In the Feb. 11 email, Liccardo wrote that “failure to re-open public schools violates the civil rights of our poorest families, creating a ‘separate but unequal’ education system.”
Within just 24 hours, the petition gained more than 2,000 signatures of support — a promising sign for new organization, the mayor said.
The organization’s launch comes just two months after Liccardo lost his business-aligned majority on San Jose’s 11-member city council to a labor-endorsed majority. It also comes four months after Silicon Valley’s largest chamber of commerce, the Silicon Valley Organization, dissolved its campaign arm as part of a fallout from a racist attack ad posted on its website against a San Jose council candidate.
The decision to dissolve the SVO PAC upended a business-vs.-labor political dynamic that has dominated San Jose campaign cycles for decades.
As of 501c4 organization, Solutions San Jose will not be replacing the SVO PAC, as it is not allowed to take part in any overt political activity, such as funding political campaigns. But its representatives can hold press conferences and appear before local governing bodies to advocate for certain policy decisions.
Some San Jose insiders consider it a counterbalance to Working Partnerships USA, an organization that works closely with unions in Silicon Valley to push pioneer policy campaigns but does not outright fund or endorse candidates.
The mayor and Working Partnerships USA do not typically align with one another on contentious policy decisions. And, Derecka Mehrens, executive director of Working Partnerships USA, said she sees the new organization as a way for the mayor to “further his political ambitions and the agenda of his corporate backers.”
“After voting just last week against hazard pay for essential workers who are overwhelmingly Black and Brown, it’s frankly disingenuous that his new organization purports to be about equity while seeking to pit parents against teachers and divide our community against one other,” Mehrens said in a statement.
Jean Cohen, executive officer of the South Bay Labor Council, added that “instead of bringing people together to solve the biggest problems we face as a community, the mayor is spending time raising money and circulating petitions to advance his political agenda.”
In addition to reopening schools, Liccardo said he plans to use the group to advocate for a more efficient and equitable COVID-19 vaccination system and in the future, to rally around certain affordable and homeless housing projects. The organization will also host a “speaker series” in which prominent city or community leaders and innovators share their ideas around hot topics and issues in the city.
Since these are issues he is already involved in, Liccardo said the new organization will not distract him from his regular duties as mayor.
“These are things that I care about and they are strongly aligned with serving the city,” he said. “We’re hoping that this organization will serve the community long past the duration of my term. I’m just the catalyst trying to get it up and running.”
Liccardo has declined to say who else he has been working with to launch the organization or identify the group’s source of funding. When he kicks off a fundraising campaign, Liccardo said he will file reports as required by law.
Former councilmember Lan Diep, who lost his bid for a second term in November, said he has been invited by the mayor to offer his ideas and contribute to the organization, prospects that he said he’s excited about.
“I think it’s being pigeon-holed by some as a group trying to get schools reopened, but my understanding is that it’s really about creating civil discourse and shaking people out of their political corners and into the center,” Diep said. “That is certainly a vision that appeals to me, and I think meets the moment of a post-Trump, Biden administration era.”