Josh Becker withdraws from Assembly race

California state Assembly candidate Josh Becker announced over email on Friday, March 11, that he will no longer be running in the 2016 race for the District 24 seat due to a family health crisis.

Becker announced his candidacy in February.

In an email, he said his father just underwent surgery for a “serious and aggressive brain cancer” in Philadelphia, and after a visit there, decided to drop out of the race to “provide my Dad and my family the support they need at this difficult time.

“As important as my candidacy for the State Assembly may be to me, nothing is more important to any of us than our families,” he said.

District 24 covers Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, North Fair Oaks, Atherton, Menlo Park, Woodside, Portola Valley, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, a portion of Cupertino and the San Mateo County coastside from El Granada to the Santa Cruz County border. The Assembly seat for District 24 is now held by Rich Gordon, D-Menlo Park, who will be termed out this year.

The other candidates for the seat are Mike Kasperzak, a 14-year Mountain View city councilman; Marc Berman, development director at the Silicon Valley Education Foundation and a Palo Alto city councilman; Vicki Veenker, an intellectual property attorney and president of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley; Peter Ohtaki, Menlo Park City councilman; Barry Chang, current mayor of Cupertino; Seelam Reddy, a retired Palo Alto engineer; and two recently announced candidates: Libertarian Mountain View Councilman John Inks and Jay Blas Jacob Cabrera, a Palo Alto community volunteer who also plans to run for U.S. Senate and two seats in two different districts of the U.S. House of Representatives.