5 candidates are jostling to win what’s thought-about one of many highest-profile seats on the San Jose Metropolis Council – that of District 3, which represents the higher downtown space.
And with Councilman Raul Peralez terming out and operating for mayor, the contenders received’t have an incumbent standing of their approach within the June 7 main election.
The candidates are attorneys Elizabeth Chien-Hale and Joanna Rauh, small enterprise proprietor Irene Smith, well being care skilled Ivan Torres and San Jose-Evergreen Group School District board trustee Omar Torres. Ivan and Omar Torres aren’t associated.
District 3 encompasses the downtown core, Japantown, Mineta San Jose Worldwide Airport, San Jose State College, and the neighborhoods of Washington-Guadalupe and Spartan Keys. Lately, the District 3 seat has been a catapult to larger workplace, producing Mayor Sam Liccardo, former mayors Tom McEnery and Susan Hammer, and Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, who's now operating for San Jose mayor.
Main endorsements for the upcoming District 3 contest are cut up amongst three candidates. Rauh has been backed by the San Jose Police Officers’ Affiliation and Liccardo, Smith by the Silicon Valley Biz PAC, and Omar Torres by the South Bay Labor Council and Santa Clara County Democratic Occasion.
Smith is the race’s early fundraising frontrunner, having collected about $49,500 in outdoors donations in December. Chien-Hale raised about $1,450 that month and the opposite candidates haven’t reported any marketing campaign contributions. The following fundraising reporting deadline is April 28.
Throughout interviews, all the candidates expressed an curiosity in cleansing up blight and unlawful dumping throughout the district and making a vibrant downtown core the place residents and guests can really feel protected to stroll and luxuriate in parks.
Chien-Hale, 60, considers herself a “center of the highway” candidate who’s operating an unbiased marketing campaign. She has lived within the downtown core for greater than a decade and is president of the San Jose Downtown Residents Affiliation. She works as an legal professional with the San Jose-based agency Appleton-Luff and beforehand served on town’s appeals listening to board.
If elected, Chien-Hale mentioned she needs to spice up San Jose’s economic system by leveraging assets and relationships with a number of the area’s greatest tech companies to create improvement offers such because the one reached between town and Google final 12 months. She additionally needs to supply a “lacking voice on the council” for town’s Asian inhabitants.
“I believe it’s time for a change for quite a lot of causes – for a demographic change and time for a consultant who’s not beholden to any particular group and who is actually accountable to the residents,” she mentioned.
Rauh, 40, works as an legal professional for the accounting agency Deloitte, the place she leads the authorized group’s professional bono and philanthropic work. She moved to the downtown space about three years in the past, although her great-grandparents immigrated to town greater than 100 years in the past, she mentioned.
“I’m an skilled at bringing individuals to the desk to beat their variations, to get issues performed and get to options,” she mentioned. “I’m thrilled on the alternative to leverage my experience on behalf of my neighborhood and my household.”
With three youngsters below the age of 4, Rauh mentioned she has “very actual pores and skin within the recreation” in addressing homelessness, blight and ensuring everybody feels protected visiting and strolling by way of downtown. If elected, she hopes to work towards guaranteeing that each unhoused resident within the metropolis has a mattress to sleep in — and that none of these beds go unused.
“I’m not taken with preventing or taking an excessive place that’ll trigger us to be enjoying tug of warfare,” she mentioned. “I’m taken with getting everybody pulling in the identical route.”
Smith, 61, has had a various profession. She began off in finance at IBM, labored inside a psychological well being facility in downtown San Jose, received her legislation diploma and began her personal mediation enterprise, and has been a property supervisor in downtown San Jose since she moved to the realm in 1989. As well as, she served as a volunteer legal professional with the Professional Bono Challenge of Santa Clara County for a number of years.
Smith, who prides herself as an unbiased, needs to see town and county work collectively to create sanctioned encampments for the homeless. She additionally wish to see town create a voucher program to assist fund unbiased housing for residents who want it however are struggling to get by way of related however cumbersome state and federal applications. She has proposed launching a brand new workplace of public outreach to advertise higher transparency and outreach between metropolis authorities and residents.
“What I see is that politicians appear to get distracted by shiny objects fairly rapidly they usually fail to concentrate on the core points like security and cleanliness,” she mentioned. “I don’t have a imaginative and prescient of turning into mayor or president. I actually simply wish to go in, repair these main points and get out.”
Ivan Torres, 38, was born and raised in San Jose and is a pharmacy employee at Stanford Well being Care. He first grew to become concerned in political activism in 2020 when he volunteered as a political organizer for U.S Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential run. That led him to launch an unsuccessful run for Congress towards Rep. Zoe Lofgren in 2020, ending fourth amongst 5 candidates.
In his newest try at public workplace, the progressive candidate is proposing a spread of formidable insurance policies, together with free public transportation and tuition-free neighborhood school for all San Jose residents.
When requested how he would fund such initiatives, Ivan Torres mentioned that “if we are able to spend $450 million a 12 months on the police division finances, then I believe we are able to spare $5-6 million so individuals can attend tuition-free neighborhood school.”
“I believe that traditionally our response to an inflow in crime has all the time been extra police and what we should always actually be doing is determining the foundation reason for the crime and the place it’s coming from,” he mentioned.
Omar Torres, 40, was additionally born and raised in District 3 and has spent most of his profession serving the residents of town each in the private and non-private sectors. He's director of the California Democratic Occasion, a San Jose-Evergreen Group School District board trustee and works as a enterprise resiliency supervisor for the San Jose Downtown Affiliation, the place he helps individuals launch small companies and keep afloat amid making an attempt instances. He's additionally Councilwoman Magdalena Carrasco’s former deputy chief of workers and beforehand served on the Franklin McKinley College District.
Omar Torres is the one candidate within the race with expertise in elected workplace, and if he wins can be the primary overtly homosexual man of shade on the council. He says the relationships he’s cultivated and his observe file in fixing issues in the neighborhood each by way of his work and volunteerism are “unmatched.”
“In terms of working with our neighborhood to do away with encampments within the space, I’ve been there. Masking up graffiti in a D3 neighborhood? I’ve performed that. Serving to our housed get psychological well being care? I’ve additionally performed that,” he mentioned. “Whereas the opposite candidates proceed to speak about it, I proceed to be on the bottom, getting issues performed.”
This text is a part of a sequence we’re doing on the June 2022 open races to symbolize San Jose’s odd-number districts. To learn a narrative concerning the metropolis’s District 1 race to symbolize West San Jose, click on right here. And for the District 5 race to symbolize East San Jose, click on right here.