In a six-person race for the open state Senate District 10 seat, two city council members have snagged the lion’s share of campaign contributions — more than $1 million combined.
And one of them, Hayward City Councilmember Aisha Wahab, also will benefit from an additional $1 million that a powerful public employee union has pledged to raise on her behalf.
Wahab meanwhile has amassed roughly $633,000 in direct contributions as of April 29, a little more than Fremont Mayor Lily Mei, who has raised almost $528,000.
In contrast, the other four candidates have raised less than $100,000 among them, much of that from their own pockets.
The candidates are vying to replace state Sen. Bob Wieckowski, who terms out at the end of this year, to represent a district of 1 million people in Alameda and Santa Clara counties.
The district, after having been redrawn to reflect population shifts picked up in the latest census, includes all of Hayward, Fremont, Union City, Newark, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, as well as a small portion of northeast San Jose.
Besides Wahab and Mei, the other candidates on the June 7 primary ballot are longtime Santa Clara Unified School District board member Jim Canova, attorney Jamal Khan, software engineer Raymond Liu, and church pastor Paul Pimentel, the lone Republican.
The top two vote-getters in the primary will advance to the general election runoff in November.
All candidates agree the lack of affordable housing and the state’s growing wealth gap are major issues, though they would approach them differently.
Wahab said the state should create more carrots and use a bigger stick to encourage cities to meet the regional housing production targets it sets.
She said the state should explore giving cities money to help them create affordable housing and offer bonuses to help them build more parks and other infrastructure. She noted the state offers incentives to developers, such as density bonuses for projects with affordable housing and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit financing program.
“It’s in their best interest to have higher-cost homes; they benefit from the revenue that’s generated off the property tax,” Wahab said of cities. “So my concern and my focus would be for more middle-income and lower-income housing.”
On the other hand, if cities are not making good progress toward housing goals, the state should withhold funds for local infrastructure projects, she said.
Canova, a longtime appointee to the board of MetroEd, a career technical program in the South Bay, has proposed that the state issue vouchers to “economically displaced” residents to pay their rent or mortgage while attending career technical education programs.
Canova also said he would like to convert “empty high-tech campuses” to affordable housing.
Pimentel and Liu both want to remove red tape for builders, and say the housing affordability crisis is simply a function of supply and demand.
“At this point, I think we just need to build as much as possible, and let them set the prices as high as possible, but just keep on building,” Liu said.
Khan said he is interested in expanding SB 9, a new law that allows single-family lots to be split so another house or duplex could be built on them. He’d like the law to also allow triplexes and fourplexes.
Mei’s website says she will fight to expand affordable housing. “Under my leadership, Fremont has consistently exceeded our affordable housing goals,” the site says.
The city has seen 935 affordable housing units built since 2015, many more than in the past, but like almost all cities, it has fallen short of the target set by the state, or more than 2,600 short in Fremont’s case. Fremont does not have formal housing goals separate from the state’s.
Mei said she is proud that the city has built more affordable housing than it has in past state housing goals cycles.
For some of the candidates, the high cost of entering the race has been an awakening. Political newcomers Liu and Khan, along with veteran school board member Canova, bemoaned the cost of filing for the race and having to spend thousands of additional dollars if they choose to submit candidate statements in voter pamphlets. They also took issue with candidates who have accepted large amounts of money from special interest groups.
Wahab’s major backing comes largely from unions, including health care workers, building trade groups such as boilermakers and sheet metal workers, teachers and firefighters.
In addition to the $633,000 she has raised, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 — the University of California’s largest employee union — announced in late March it would back her candidacy with a $1 million independent expenditure campaign.
Among those who have donated almost $528,000 to Mei’s campaign are developers and financial management firms, as well as political action committees including “Californians for Jobs and a Strong Economy,” which is funded heavily by oil industry titan Chevron, other oil industry groups, casinos, pharmaceutical companies, real estate agents and landlord associations.
Tesla, whose factory is in Fremont, also donated to her campaign, as did some Tesla attorneys and government affairs employees.
Mei taking money from developers represents a big shift in her politics. When she first ran for mayor in 2016, she used the slogan, “Stop rampant development!” and proclaimed proudly she refused donations from developers.
Asked why she decided to accept developer money for her Senate campaign, she said, “At the city level, you are taking direct votes on the project. At the state level, if you’re going to ask that question, people take labor money, people take corporate money and some people choose not to. At the state level, I think it is a different perspective.”
Mei said as a legislator, “the reality is we want to make sure that all parties are being represented,” but added that, “me having the funding doesn’t make me biased either way.”
Wahab also denied that her major labor donors will influence her, adding that anyone who backs her has done so because of her record.
“The financial contributions, to be quite frank, do not influence my vote and does not influence the work I do for the people of this district,” she said.
Khan begs to differ.
“That’s why you have so many candidates who say all the right things on the campaign trail, but when they get into office, they don’t seem to be doing very much. It’s because their hands are tied by the endorsements and the money that got them into office in the first place,” Khan said.
Canova said special interest fundraising is problematic, no matter the source.
“To get that kind of special interest money from unions, for example, I’d have to go out and schmooze so many union leaders on an ongoing basis,” he said.
“I run a small business. I serve on a school board. I don’t have time to do those things. So when you see candidates line up these kinds of resources, I do have a problem with that,” he said.
“We have so many wonderful people on this ballot who could give so much, and contribute so much, but the big money is corrosive, it’s just corrosive.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com