Who will succeed Eshoo? Here are the candidates

When U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo announced on Nov. 21 that she would not seek another term, she sent ripples through Silicon Valley’s political establishment. Eshoo, D-Menlo Park, has been in Congress for more than 30 years, and her decision to step down in 2024 created a rare opportunity for Peninsula’s active and aspiring politicians and activists.

By Dec. 13, a dozen people filed paperwork to run in the March 5 primary, which will winnow down the list of potential successors to two.

Some of the candidates have been in the political limelight for years and believe they have the experience needed to represent the influential district, which includes a large section of the Peninsula and portions of the south bay. This includes former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, state Assembly member Evan Low and Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian.

Others have only served on the local level but believe their ideas, values and understanding of local issues make them well qualified to represent in Congress. This group includes Palo Alto City Council members Julie Lythcott-Haims and Greg Tanaka, former Menlo Park Mayor Peter Ohtaki and former Saratoga City Council member Rishi Kumar, who also ran against Eshoo in 2020 and 2022.

Then there are those who have not held any elected office but point to their life experiences as evidence that they would be successful in Congress. This group includes Joby Bernstein, a Stanford University graduate student whose research, investment and activism focus on curbing climate change; Peter Dixon, a Marine veteran who worked as an adviser in the State Department and co-founded a cybersecurity company; and Ahmed Mostafa, an attorney who until recently worked for Google and whose campaign is themed around “human dignity.”

In addition to these candidates, the list of people who have filed papers at the county registrar’s office includes several individuals who could not be reached by press deadline and whose profiles are not included in this voting guide. They are Republican Karl Ryan of Los Gatos, physician Richard Fox (who has regularly challenged Eshoo since 2014 as a Republican but who is now running with no party affiliation) and Gabriel Warshauer-Baker, whose company focuses on machine learning.

THE HEAVYWEIGHTS: Liccardo, Low, Simitian

Sam Liccardo

‘Responsive and accountable’

Sam Liccardo has wrestled with problems big and small, regional and local: from paving roads and adding bike lanes to preserving open spaces and building affordable housing.

During a budget crisis in 2015, he negotiated with the city of San Jose’s labor unions a deal to save about $3 billion in health care costs over 30 years. He considers that negotiation — as well as the successful effort he led in 2018 to preserve Coyote Valley as an open space preserve — as his proudest accomplishments.

More recently, he worked to advance Measure RR, a sales tax increase that voters in San Mateo, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties approved in 2020 to support Caltrain operations.

Liccardo completed last year his eight-year stint as San Jose mayor, having won a close runoff in 2014 before cruising to re-election in 2018. Now, he is one of the frontrunners to succeed Anna Eshoo in Congress. He enjoys the name recognition that comes with having led one of the nation’s 50 largest cities and as of this week he has amassed a campaign chest of more than $1 million.

He also understands — and leans into — the fact that elected leaders don’t always get the credit (or blame) they merit.

“As the mayor of a city of 1 million residents, I’m sure I got plenty of credit for things I didn’t deserve,” Liccardo said in an interview. “But I knew I was going to be responsible for problems I didn’t create as well. That level of accountability – that expectation of accountability – is what I bring to this role.”

Liccardo wants to bring the same attitude to Congress — a polarized and often dysfunctional body that is often seen as out of touch with local needs. He wants to give local issues the national prominence that he believes they deserve.

“I’ve spent hundreds of hours walking the hall of Congress as mayor and advocating for our region, and I routinely heard from Congress members that ‘those are local problems,’” Liccardo said. “We need a Congress that recognizes these are national problems.”

Take homelessness, an issue on which Liccardo spent considerable time as mayor. He noted that of the 48 largest cities in the nation, 44 have homeless populations in excess of 1,000 people. It’s a national crisis, he argued, and it requires a national response.

Same with affordable housing. He is proud of his record as mayor in developing new models for adding housing at a time when the cost of building a single unit has risen to between $900,000 and $1 million. He is proud of San Jose’s innovation, including its effort in 2015 to convert hotels into housing; its support for construction of prefabricated “tiny homes”; and its decision to use land owned by Caltrans, VTA and the city for apartment buildings.

There is, however, a problem. The Section 8 vouchers that many low-income residents rely on cannot be used on the new projects, Liccardo said. As a result, there are hundreds of homeless people in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties who have Section 8 vouchers but who cannot avail themselves of the new housing. Liccardo would like to change by creating more flexibility in the voucher program.

“Cities understand the needs and respond quickly,” he said.

Mayors, he said, “recognize the importance of being responsive and accountable because that’s how we are viewed by those we serve.” Congress needs to be equally responsive, he said.

Accountability also means being able to take the heat. Liccardo’s strong connections with Silicon Valley tech titans have made him an easy target for those who hate Google buses and who blame the tech boom for the region’s housing affordability crisis. Liccardo, who made a cameo in “Silicon Valley,” HBO’s satirical expose of the region’s many absurdities, does not shrink from these criticisms. If anything he invited them in February 2021, when he penned an opinion piece in San Francisco Chronicle with the headline that encouraged readers to “stop blaming tech.”

“The departure of a few cranky billionaires won’t doom the Bay Area, but our region’s declining appeal to early-stage companies — and entrepreneurs that drive them — will,” Liccardo wrote. “Innovators came to the Silicon Valley because we presented low barriers to entry — an egalitarian, open-source ethos that welcomed and celebrated immigrants, geeks and eccentrics. Increasingly, we’ve erected barriers — financial, regulatory and even cultural — to the new and the ambitious.”

If elected to Congress, he aims to continue to support the Silicon Valley tech industry on a national level. The Congressional district, he said, needs to have “a champion of the innovation economy.”

“Amid all the tech-bashing that’s popular in both parties, this district needs to have a representative that would advocate for the needs of the innovation economy, which are critical to our nation’s success.”

Evan Low

‘Run toward the challenge’

Evan Low is proud of all the barriers he broke through on his way to Sacramento.

Even before he was sworn into the state Assembly a decade ago — becoming the youngest Asian American legislator in the history of that august body — he had been racking up “firsts.” His campaign biography notes that he was the first openly gay person to get elected to the Campbell City Council (2006) and then the youngest Asian American lawmaker and LGBTQ mayor in the nation (2009).

Now, he is seeking another first. He noted in an interview that there has never been an openly gay person or an Asian American elected to Congress from the Bay Area.

“The Republican party has become the party of Trump, and we have one of the most homophobic speakers of the House in generations,” Low said. “The best way to combat that is to send more gays to Congress.”

Low, 40, believes his experiences as an Asian American, an openly gay politician and a millennial give him a unique perspective in the crowded race to succeed Anna Eshoo in Congress. So does his experience as a tech-savvy legislator whose bills helped shape state regulations around everything from ride-sharing companies and child abuse to health screenings for underserved communities and the posting of mugshots by police departments on social media (a 2021 bill authored by Low outlaws this practice for nonviolent suspects).

The Sacramento Bee in 2018 dubbed him the state’s most prolific lawmaker (he had 34 bills move to the governor’s desk that year, more than any other Assembly member).

For Low, whose Assembly district includes Cupertino, Sunnyvale and a portion of San Jose, there is a clear link between his personal story and his policy priorities. In June, he was part of a group of lawmakers who proposed a constitutional amendment that would enshrine the right to same-sex marriage — a change that will appear on the November 2024 ballot. In a June hearing on the Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5, he called the proposal “very personal” and recalled 2008, when 52% of the voters approved Proposition 8, which rejected same-sex marriage.

“As a 20-something-year-old at the time, I remember the painful experience it caused not just to me but to countless Californians who were left wondering: What did we do wrong? Why would our rights be eliminated? Why would the majority of Californians vote to eliminate a fundamental basic human right?” Low said. “This proposal helps ensure that marriage is a fundamental human right.”

His campaign, somewhat paradoxically, embraces both continuity and change. He credits Eshoo with demonstrating “the importance of tenure and seniority in Congress to delivering to our district” and for helping to maintain the global competitiveness of Silicon Valley when it comes to technology and innovation. But as someone who has worked to combat xenophobia, he wants to do more to defend the nation’s LGBTQ residents against the recent onslaught of Republican legislation.

“We know that there’s been over 475 pieces of anti-LGBT legislation introduced, targeting members of my community just for trying to survive being authentic to ourselves. That’s why it’s important to have representation,” Low said.

Similarly, he believes the U.S. Congress could use more millennial voices. Many people in his generation are concerned about issues like high housing costs. Low can relate, he said. Along with public safety, his campaign priorities include addressing climate change and lowering the cost of living for middle-class families, topics that resonate acutely with young voters.

“I cannot afford to purchase a single-family home in the Congressional district that I hope to represent. …When we talk about the lived experience, that will be the key core issue for this generation,” Low said.

Low believes his legislative record, as well as his background, make him well-suited to finding compromise even in a deeply divided Congress.

“I’ve always run toward the challenge,” Low said. “No one ever said governing is supposed to be easy.”

Joe Simitian

‘A steady hand for shaky times’

The crowded race to succeed Anna Eshoo includes an attorney, a former mayor, a veteran Sacramento legislator and a county supervisor.

His name is Joe Simitian.

For the past 40 years, Simitian has been a visible presence on the Peninsula’s political scene, first in Palo Alto, where he served on the school board and on the City Council (including a stint as mayor in 1995); then in Sacramento, where he served in the state Assembly and the state Senate; and now in San Jose, where he represents north county on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors.

As a lawmaker, he has championed bills that raised California’s goals for renewable energy, established regulations for use of red-light cameras, and protected seniors from financial elder abuse. He authored legislation that required drivers to use hands-free devices while talking on the cell phone and that established transitional kindergarten in California — the first time in more than a century that the state effectively created a new grade level, Simitian said in a recent interview.

As a county supervisor, he has been an influential voice in limiting Stanford University’s expansion plans (or, rather, demanding “full mitigation” for any growth) and obtaining funds to create new housing developments for Palo Alto educators and for adults with disabilities (both projects are now being constructed).

He also led the effort to preserve the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, which was on the verge of being demolished and redeveloped before Simitian helped arrange the park’s purchase by the Santa Clara County Housing Authority.

He is most proud, however, of his local connections. At some point or other, he has represented 15 of the 16 communities that make up Congressional District 16. And he enjoys a long list of endorsement from mayors and council members up and down the district. This includes backing from four Palo Alto council members — no mean feat considering that two Palo Alto council members are also running for Eshoo’s seat.

In every position, Simitian said, he has had the same goal: trying to improve the lives of the people he represents. That is also the reason he is now running to succeed Eshoo, he said.

“That’s the reason to go to public service. That’s the reason to go to Congress.

“It’s healthy that there’s 11 candidates stepping up, and I think that’s a good thing for our democracy. That being said, I think uniquely among candidates I have a track record of accomplishments that indicate I can and will get big things done in Washington.”

Simitian is undaunted by the political polarization in Washington and points to his history of reaching across the aisle. Democrats may enjoy a supermajority in Sacramento today, he notes, but his stint coincided with a period of narrow margins and a Republican governor. The transitional kindergarten bill, for example, passed on a narrow vote that required Republican support.

Simitian said he has always worked hard to bring other people along on major legislation, an approach that he found engenders the most successful results for the people he represents. He believes this style will help him in Congress, where he plans to prioritize climate change, protection of reproductive rights and the housing crisis. Because of his long history as a legislator, he believes he is the candidate best suited for delivering for his constituents from day one. This is particularly key at a time when the Congress is in disarray and the nation is divided, he said.

“We have to be genuinely concerned about the growing authoritarianism we see in the political arena,” Simitian said. “That’s all the more reason why you need a steady hand during shaky times. You need someone with a fresh perspective, which I bring, but also a seasoned approach to managing issues.”

THE CHALLENGERS: Kumar, Lythcott-Haims, Ohtaki, Tanaka

Rishi Kumar

‘Corrective course’

When Rishi Kumar ran against Anna Eshoo in 2020 — and again in 2022 — he made doing away with “tainted money” and political corruption the theme of his campaign.

Kumar, a former Saratoga City Council member, strongly supports Medicare for All and he argued that Eshoo didn’t go far enough as a representative in supporting universal health care, a position that he suggests was influenced by money from the pharmaceutical industry.

Kumar’s long-shot campaigns against the powerful incumbent did not prevail, but his showing in the 2022 election has given him reason to be more hopeful this time around. He finished second to Eshoo in the seven-candidate primary — which also included current contenders Greg Tanaka, Peter Ohtaki and Richard Fox. And while he lost to her in the November showdown, Kumar picked up 42.2% of the vote — a showing that his campaign now touts as the “best performance by a challenger in three decades.”

With Eshoo not in the race, Kumar believes he can do even better. In a recent interview, he alluded to a recent public-opinion poll that was released by the campaign of Sam Liccardo, which showed Liccardo and Santa Clara County Joe Simitian as currently first and second (Kumar was fourth in the poll, right behind state Assemblymember Evan Low).

He dismissed those results and cited the 42.2% number from 2022.

“There are lots of polls released, but the only poll that matters is the last election where I was on the ballot,” Kumar said.

The issues that he is most passionate about in the current campaign — housing, traffic and crime — are the same ones that he dealt with in Saratoga, where he was elected to the city council in 2014 and served two terms.

And as in his last campaign, Kumar is vowing to fight for the people against deep-pocketed “special interests.” He cites his experiences as a local leader in battling proposed rate hikes from the San Jose Water Company, pushing back against PG&E’s attempts to diminish California’s solar programs and opposing the state Department of Housing and Community Development’s (HCD) housing mandates. This includes pushing for an audit of the state’s Regional Needs Housing Allocation process, which gives each city a housing quota and requires each to adopt plans for meeting its housing allocation.

The system, he argues on his campaign website, has “been rigged for cities to fail and for developers to make money.” This opposition to Sacramento housing mandates — as well as to recent legislation like Senate Bill 9 (which allows construction of up to four housing units on a single-family lot) and Senate Bill 35 (which creates a streamlined approval process for housing projects in areas that do not have a state-compliant housing plan) has earned Kumar support from like-minded champions of “local control.”

Palo Alto Mayor Lydia Kou, who is very much in this category, is among those endorsing Kumar’s campaign, favoring the Saratoga tech executive over her own two council colleagues who are in the race.

Kumar, an engineer and tech executive in software sales and marketing, moved to Saratoga from Michigan in 2000. He said in an interview that he remains struck by the lack of strategic planning he has seen in Silicon Valley over the past 23 years to address problems like traffic. Over the past two decades of living here, he has not seen any serious effort to curb this problem, something he intends to fix. He also criticized some of the region’s existing transportation services, including light rail programs that he described as “completely dysfunctional.”

“I’m a big proponent of public transportation — if done right and people use it. … But it’s been a failure in the Bay Area,” he said.

Kumar is critical of California’s high-speed rail project, which his website calls “ill-conceived.” His proposed solution aims even higher (as well as lower): a “cutting-edge, tunnel-enclosed high-speed transportation system” with average speeds of 600 mph, operating in 21 counties in and around northern California.

And just like in past elections, he is favoring political reforms such as term limits for federal officeholders. In 2021, he signed a term-limit pledge that supported a cap of three terms for members of the House of Representatives and two terms for members of the Senate. He has also pledged to not accept money from political action committees, a position that he believes makes him distinct from the rest of the candidate field.

“I believe the culture in Washington is completely on the wrong path and that there is some corrective course that is needed,” Kumar said.

Julie Lythcott-Haims

‘Representation matters’

Julie Lythcott-Haims recently recalled a drive from Syracuse to Binghamton, N.Y., where she was scheduled to do a book talk.

A best-selling author and former Stanford University dean of students whose work takes on issues on race, education, parenting and identities, she was in the backseat when the driver, a man named Tony, mentioned that his sister in Florida just experienced flooding because of a hurricane.

Lythcott-Haims responded with a comment about climate change, lamenting that there’s too much water in Florida and not enough in California. Tony, a white Italian man, disagreed and said he doesn’t believe in climate change.

“I looked at him and said, ‘I think if we don’t insult each other we’re gonna be fine,’” she said.

After that initial awkwardness, they spent the next hour and a half talking about everything from national politics to race. By the time they arrived, she said, they had forged a bond and were having a meaningful discussion about racism and bullying while valets were wondering why she was not getting out of the vehicle.

“In that moment, because we’ve been trapped in a car, we went from absolute politically polarized individuals with viewpoints to human beings who can share compassion with each other about hardships we had both experienced as children,” Lythcott-Haims said.

Now, she wants to bring the same approach to Congress, a deeply polarized and often dysfunctional body that she wants to infuse with empathy and kindness.

“I believe that most humans have the capacity to listen and connect, if you first treat them with dignity and kindness,” she said. “I know so many of our sitting impasses result from feeling, ‘I’m not respected by this person.’”

While Lythcott-Haims has a long history of serving on nonprofit boards, holding workshops and giving TED talks that draw millions of views, she is a relative newcomer to politics, having just completed her first year on the Palo Alto City Council. During this time, she learned that she loved policymaking. Whereas some might find approving zone changes and utility policies tedious and prosaic, she described it as an “exquisite combination of head and heart” that allows her to apply both her legal mind and her compassionate way of dealing with people.

So why is she seeking higher office before her first council term is up?

For one thing, opportunities to go to Congress don’t come too often. Anna Eshoo, who is stepping down next year, has been in office for more than 30 years. For another, the Bay Area’s once robust cohort of female representatives has been on the wane in recent years, with the recent retirement of U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, the death of Sen. Diane Feinstein and Eshoo’s decision to step down when her term expires next year. Seeing no other women entering the race, Lythcott-Haims decided to jump in.

“I looked left and I looked right and then I looked in the mirror,” Lythcott-Haims said in an interview.

As the only woman in the race, Lythcott-Haims believes this distinction matters. With the Supreme Court recently dismantling Roe v. Wade, she feels it’s particularly important now to have a representative who understands what it’s like to be a woman in the United States; to be a mother; to be someone who has had difficult conversations with an OB-GYN and who also knows that she doesn’t want the government anywhere near that conversation.

“Representation matters. I am the embodiment of that buzz phrase. I’m the only woman in the field, the only African American in the field, the only mother in the field,” Lythcott-Haims said. “And I think in this American moment, having a woman who is also a mother and is a member of a marginalized community makes me the right ambassador to represent the needs of Silicon Valley in Congress at a time of such polarization and deep inequities.”

She also strongly believes the candidates in the race don’t spend enough time talking about the needs of youth, which she said she will prioritize. This includes building more housing — a topic that she has been passionate about as a council member and that she said would champion if elected to Congress. It also includes climate change, a topic on which she said she has been inspired by Palo Alto’s passionate youth activists.

“Our youth are facing the potential for a planet that is literally unlivable,” Lythcott-Haims said. “It isn’t their fault, and they are leaders on this issue.”

Peter Ohtaki

‘The sensible middle’

In his years as a Menlo Park council member, Peter Ohtaki honed a reputation as the numbers guy — a reasonable moderate better known for budget wonkiness than political flair.

As one of just two Republicans in the race to succeed Anna Eshoo in Congress, he believes that’s a strength. Partisan politics have gotten out of control in Washington, D.C., hindering the ability of elected leaders to advance important priorities like reducing crime, lowering inflation and increasing national security. He is running to turn down the temperature.

“The parties are in gridlock,” Ohtaki told this publication. “It’s a zero sum game between the two parties.

“In the meantime, most Americans, including in this district, are in the sensible middle and they have no voice in Congress.”

Though Ohtaki is himself a former elected official, he is quick to distance himself from the “career politicians” in the candidate field, people who he said would “toe the party line” and not dare to risk reaching out to the other side.

He has no such qualms. His somewhat modest ambition, if elected, is to join the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of 64 lawmakers that is evenly divided between the two parties.

“I believe in a Congress that is split pretty evenly, those 64 can make a big difference to get legislation passed,” Ohtaki said. “I’d want to not only join those 64 but work my way to chair it. to try to expedite solutions.”

Not surprisingly for someone with a background in finance, Ohtaki is particularly concerned about the national budget and the tendency of lawmakers to pass “continuing resolutions” without actually addressing the rising national deficit or inflation. His recent trip to pick up a Christmas tree, which cost him $260, underscored that point.

Ohtaki believes it’s time to change the “trajectory of the budget” and reduce the nation’s $83-trillion deficit by actually going through all the programs being funded and getting rid of those that don’t work. He believes his background in parsing city budgets and working in finance will help with this endeavor.

While Republicans face an inherent challenge in winning an election in the heavily Democratic district, Ohtaki has some reasons for optimism. Two years ago, he ran against Eshoo and finished third in the seven-candidate race. He was 5,000 votes away from getting to second, which would have placed him in a race against Eshoo. He finished well above Richard Fox, who is also a Republican, and Democrat Greg Tanaka, both of whom are once again running for Congress. It’s not infeasible that the large number of Democratic candidates will splinter the vote, creating a path for him through the primary.

Ohtaki’s tone and proposed policies are markedly different from some of the more mainstream voices of the Republican establishment. He does not support the Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, which he said creates a “hodgepodge of standards” from one state to another. Nor does he support the nascent effort to impeach President Joe Biden.

Rather, he would prefer to talk about clean energy, which he wants to expand through incentives (not mandates, he says). He believes it’s critical to convert the electric grid to solar, wind and other renewable sources before residents are asked to get rid of their natural gas appliances and switch to electricity.

He also wants to increase funding through grants for programs that aim to reduce shoplifting and to address the fentanyl crisis in San Francisco and other cities. He cited his experiences in Menlo Park, which used federal COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) grants to provide officers with non-lethal and investigative tools to address crime.

Above all, he wants to change the tenor of the nation’s political conversation and allow pragmatism to triumph over ideology.

“Growing up here, I fervently believe that Silicon Valley thrives because we reinvent ourselves,” Ohtaki said. “We reinvent and we don’t let ideology prevent innovative solutions.”

Greg Tanaka

‘Grow the pie’

Ever since Greg Tanaka joined the Palo Alto City Council seven years ago, he has been defined as much by what he is against as for what he is for.

A fiscal hawk, he routinely casts the lone vote of dissent when confronted with the city budget or a proposal to raise employees’ salaries. He has been a steadfast critic of new programs with costs that, in his opinion, outweigh benefits.

Just in the past few months, he was the sole council member who voted against creation of the city’s rental registry; the lease of city land to enable construction of transitional housing for homeless individuals; the purchase of insurance to protect the city against a winter spike in gas prices; and the approval of a new five-year deal with the nonprofit Pets In Need to provide animal services; and an increase in council members’ salaries.

“We’re not doing it for the money,” Tanaka said during the council’s Dec. 8 discussion of the salary hike. “We do it because we care.”

Tanaka also discovered in recent years that many of the issues that his constituents care about cannot be solved on the local level. These include lowering the volume on airplane noise, enhancing local creeks’ flood protection and redesigning the rail corridor so that roads and tracks no longer intersect.

He said in an interview that he would pursue, if elected, the construction of a tunnel for Caltrain through the Peninsula, ideally between San Francisco and San Jose. This would reduce road congestion around the rail corridor, reduce noise and address safety issues on the tracks, he said in an interview. It would also open up land above the tunnel for other uses.

“We’re one of the most expensive areas in the world, if we look at dollars per square foot. We have this upgrade of mass transit happening. Anywhere else in the world, it would be underground already,” Tanaka said.

Tanaka was the last Congressional candidate who filed his papers, submitting them just before the Dec. 13 deadline. He had also run in 2022, finishing sixth in an eight-member primary — and he said he wasn’t sure he wanted to do it again. What swayed him was his realization, he said, that none of the other candidates are talking about the issues that his constituents care about. His experiences a year ago, when record storms caused flooding in Crescent Park and other neighborhoods, further underscored his belief that the city needs federal help to speed up long deferred projects like the replacement of the Pope-Chaucer Bridge.

“We had folks who had water in their house,” Tanaka said. “For a community as wealthy as ours, for as much as people pay in taxes, they deserve better.”

Tanaka believes his background in founding tech startups make him well-suited to representing Silicon Valley in Washington, D.C. He had founded two startups, one that provides marketing assistance to retailers and, more recently, another that helps to automate day trading, according to his campaign website.

He is bullish on technology, whether it’s Bitcoin or artificial intelligence, and believes that common fears about intelligent machines threatening humanity are overblown.

Artificial intelligence, in fact, appears to be one of few issues on which he is not a fiscal hawk. He believes the United States needs to remain ahead of other nations when it comes to advancing artificial intelligence, technology that he believes can significantly benefit humanity.

“With technology like AI, I really believe this is the way to grow the pie,” Tanaka said. “It could be a win-win for everyone. … If you look at where China and Russia (are), it’s a real competition and it’s very important that we stay number one and invest in research and development.”

THE HOPEFULS: Bernstein, Dixon, Mostafa

Joby Bernstein

‘Change the game’

Joby Bernstein is not a seasoned politician, but the Palo Alto resident believes his energy, enthusiasm and passion for investing and tackling climate change will serve him well in his next venture: running for the Congressional seat currently occupied by U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo.

Even before Eshoo announced in November that she would not seek another term, triggering a cascade of speculation as to who would vie to succeed her, Bernstein was preparing to run for her District 16 seat. He has talked to people around the Silicon Valley district and raised about $30,000 for the campaign, he said in a recent interview.

As a 28-year-old student at Stanford University, he doesn’t have the name recognition enjoyed by veteran policymakers who have entered the field. But Bernstein doesn’t see this as a problem. An avid outdoorsman who likes to bike, backpack and run the trails, he said he has been alarmed by the damage that climate change has wrought, including fires, floods and droughts. The problem needs to be addressed urgently, within the next five to 10 years. As such, he is not inclined to spend years in local and state politics before making his bid for Washington, D.C.

After stints at several climate funds, where he was mainly involved in research, he now wants to bring his enthusiasm for innovation to the political realm.

“Climate change is an issue that I was naïve enough for a while to think that I could address on the investing and advising side,” Bernstein told this publication. “But it won’t scale enough when compared to what policy can do.”

Bernstein, who is currently pursuing master’s degrees in business and in environmental resources, said his campaign priorities will be climate change, education and immigration. This includes enhancing America’s primary education and vocational schools. It also includes working on comprehensive immigration reform to make it easier for foreign-born workers to pursue the American Dream while contributing to Silicon Valley companies, he said.

A native of Westchester County in New York, Bernstein moved to California six years ago. He highlighted his prior work in public policy, including conducting research for Republican politicians in Utah and Ohio and working as an intern for the recently retired Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

While Bernstein is himself a Democrat, he said he believes there are people across the political aisle with whom he could find common ground on topics like energy efficiency and grid resilience, which are central to his climate-change platform.

He also said that he wants to bring Silicon Valley’s innovation culture to Washington, D.C. The district has seen a significant transformation since Eshoo came into office three decades ago.

“It is unreal what has taken place in Silicon Valley over those 30 years,” Bernstein said. “It is unmatched in the history of the world the amount of technology innovation and wealth created here.

“We need someone who will innovate. I want to be as innovative and willing to change the game in D.C. as young people have been in this district,” Bernstein said.

Peter Dixon

‘Lived experience’

Peter Dixon may be new to politics, but the U.S. Marine Corps veteran is no stranger to big pressure and high stakes.

In 2008, he was in Afghanistan, leading a platoon that battled the Taliban in a deserted village of Now Zad. In a conversation with the Almanac the following year, Dixon recounted his experiences in traveling to towns and cities to train village elders to defend their communities.

He described the Taliban at the time as an association of crooks and mercenaries using violence to rule the 98% of the population that do not agree with their ideology.

Dixon, who is running to succeed Anna Eshoo in Congress, sees some parallel between those days and what’s happening with abortion access in the United States in the aftermath of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade.

“I served in Afghanistan and saw firsthand what happens when you have a bunch of religiously driven old men making decisions for their population. … Having a bunch of old male politicians here at home making decisions on reproductive health care is leading to terrible outcomes for many parts of the country for reproductive rights,” Dixon said in an interview.

His proposed remedy — codifying Roe v. Wade — does not set him apart from the largely progressive candidate field in the heavily Democratic district. What does, however, is his background. As a Marine veteran who went on to co-found a cybersecurity company, Second Front Systems, Dixon believes he is particularly well-suited to parsing the Pentagon budget, improving efficiency and reducing waste in defense spending.

Silicon Valley can play a central role in this mission, Dixon said. He would like to see the country move away from the existing system in which the vast majority of security contracts go to five giant defense companies and open it up to more competition in the private sector. The results today are often dismal, he said, with high failure rates and long delivery cycles.

Military spending may not be the top priority for many voters, but Dixon sees it as directly related to issues that are issues closer to their homes and their hearts. America spends about $900 billion on defense spending annually, he said, and about $700 billion on everything else. Saving money in the former category would free up more for the latter.

“If we bring American capitalism and competition to defense spending, it can actually create much better outcomes for the folks in uniform and free up more than $100 billion that can go into domestic priorities,” Dixon said.

Though Dixon has not held an elected office, he believes his experiences on the world stage distinguish him from the rest of the candidate field. He worked with the State Department and the Pentagon during the Obama administration and focused on countering corruption and improving policing efforts in Africa and in Mexico. As a special adviser on innovation and tech, Dixon worked with government officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo to curb gender-based violence.

His job in Congo, he said, was to leverage global money to professionalize local national security forces in Africa and get them to start protecting local populations. In Juarez, he also worked with Mexican nonprofit groups and federal police to improve response times and community engagement as they took on drug cartels, Dixon said in an interview.

Little surprise then that his campaign has resonated with other sitting lawmakers with military backgrounds. This week, he announced that his bid for Congress has been endorsed by six Congress members: Rep Jason Crow, D-Colorado, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-New Jersey, Rep. Pat Ryan, D-New York, Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, Rep. Don Davis, D-North Carolina, and Rep. Chris Delusion, D-Pennsylvania.

He was also pleased to receive $350,000 in donations within the first 24 hours of announcing his candidacy. This outpouring of support, he said, reflects his track record of achieving change at the federal level.

“I’m particularly excited about giving to the voters of this district the chance to have somebody who has practical problem-solving experience and a deep understanding of technology – and what it can do for us but also harm it can provide,” he said.

“I have lived experience in that regard, and that’s something that distinguishes me from the rest of the field.”

Ahmed Mostafa

‘For human dignity’

Palo Alto resident Ahmed Mostafa is not a regular presence at City Council meetings but he made an exception this week when he joined about two dozen people urging the city to adopt a resolution supporting a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

For a political newcomer, wading into the debate on one of the world’s most polarizing, emotional and complex geopolitical topics may seem like a bold strategy. It is also, however, completely consistent with Mostafa’s history and his philosophy. At 35, he is one of the youngest candidates in the race for the District 16 seat in Congress. But he is not shy about taking on complex and contentious topics, whether at Google, when he led a unit on election integrity, or at Stanford University, where he provided pro bono work to help victims of sexual assault.

If his campaign can be boiled down to two words, they are “human dignity.” He believes local communities, much like the national government, need to ensure everyone feels safe and respected — a position that has taken on more resonance since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel and the ensuing uptick in both antisemitism and Islamophobic sentiment.

In his comments to the council, Mostafa said that, both as a child and more recently, he heard himself being described by other people as “one of the good ones.” He rejected the implication in such comments that somehow his “roots are rotten” and that some people are “lesser than” others, he said.

“When we say ceasefire, we mean human dignity for everybody and that nobody is ‘lesser than,’” Mostafa told the council. “When we say ceasefire, we mean to say that nobody should be treated as a ‘lesser than’ in any capacity. We mean that Palestinian children should live. But we also know that ‘ceasefire’ means a safe return of Israeli hostages.”

Mostafa became involved in human rights as a student, first at Foothill College, where he served as student body president, and then at University of California, Santa Barbara, where he served as student body vice president. Among his proudest accomplishments at UCSB was brokering a joint agreement between Hillel (a Jewish campus organization), American Students for Israel, and Students for Justice in Palestine to condemn hate speech.

After completing law school, Mostafa worked as a clerk at the Santa Clara County Public Defender Office and as director of the Stanford Survivors’ Pro Bono Clinic, where he served survivors of sexual assault. More recently, he was employed by Google, where he drafted policies on election integrity, misinformation and hate speech, he said in an interview. (He recently quit the Google job so that he can spend time campaigning.)

Mostafa’s local experiences are central to his campaign, which is distinct for its global flavor. He doesn’t just want to push for peace in the Middle East; he also wants to see an international treaty to govern how artificial intelligence is used, a topic that he became well familiar with during his stint at Google and through his interactions with technologists in the nascent but quickly accelerating field.

He hopes to see “smart tech legislation” that balances support for Silicon Valley innovation with protections against deep fakes and other nefarious uses. This would include things like a “hash database” to help identify bad actors and “digital fingerprinting” that would allow people to distinguish people from machines.

“If you’re hearing my voice now, your phone should be able to tell you if it’s me or AI,” Mostafa said in an interview.

These issues, he noted, will require national and global cooperation. That’s why he is foregoing the common route to Congress (through local and state offices) and setting his sights on Washington, D.C. But even as he is thinking globally, Mostafa pointed to his recent history on the local level in fighting for human rights. This included meeting with Muslim students on Stanford University campus to hear their concerns about the rise of hate crimes and calling out antisemitism in Oakland, where a menorah near Lake Merritt was desecrate earlier this month.

His focus on human dignity extends to domestic policies. He shares the progressive position that health care is a “human right,” and he decries the housing situation in his community, where even people with six-digit salaries find it difficult to afford a living. He lists making housing more affordable as one of his priorities.

Mostafa is also hoping to change the tone of the community conversation to increase support for victims of crime, whether it’s sexual assault on campus (he believes Title IX needs to be strengthened) or discrimination based on ethnic or religious grounds.

“Nobody is actually calling it out when it happens,” Mostafa said. “Nobody says the people’s names. It’s really disheartening.

“I don’t want to be the only one. Even though it might distinguish me, I don’t want to be the only one.”

TALK ABOUT IT

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