Following an 8-year mayoral tenure defined more by his crises than successes, Sam Liccardo appears ready to try his luck running for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Recently, an opinion poll began circulating testing former San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo‘s viability in a hypothetical race against incumbent congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, who has represented San Jose in Congress for nearly 30 years. This week, Liccardo confirmed the rumors by calling Lofgren to admit he had funded the poll and that he was eyeing her seat.
In addition to noting Liccardo will have trouble gaining traction within the newly-drawn boundaries of California’s 18th congressional district, which now includes more voters in Monterey County than in the city of San Jose, local political observers have widely been struck by the sheer audacity of Liccardo’s ambitions.
San Jose appears just days away from declaring a homelessness crisis. A recently study by the United Way of the National Capital Area identified San Jose as having the highest number of homeless young adults per capita in the country.
San Jose’s Police Department remains in the midst of a years long staffing crisis. When former Mayor Liccardo took office, the police department had 150 vacancies. At the end of his two terms, the department had 151 vacancies, a deficiency that costs taxpayers a staggering $45 million in police overtime annually. City audits show the police department has repeatedly failed to meet its response time targets. Violent crime have jumped 50 percent in the last 8 years. Incidents of rape have risen 170 percent since 2013.
Liccardo led a botched flood response in 2017, displacing 14,000 residents and costing homeowners $100 million in damages, and he presided over a mismanaged a chaotic response to the George Floyd protests in 2020, which resulted in numerous civil rights lawsuits accusing officers of using excessive force.
The past 8 years have been so clearly defined by failure and disfunction that Liccardo’s hand-picked successor, Matt Mahan, was forced to campaign on the promise to bring a “revolution of common sense” to solve the various crises the city now faces.
Most political veterans would consider such a record of failure to be disqualifying to a run for the U.S. Congress. But Liccardo appears determined not to let his long list of failures stymie his ambitions.
Audacious, indeed.
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