Johnny Khamis, former councilmember and candidate for County Supervisor District 1, brings a special perspective to the discussion of the relationships between citizenry, residency, voting rights, and immigration status: He and his family are immigrants to the United States from Beirut, Lebanon (1976), and naturalized U.S. citizens. He speaks to Opp Now in an exclusive interview.
Read MoreAt the 1.11 SJ City Council meeting, CM's Arenas and Carrasco argued unconvincingly to allow citizens of foreign countries who are in the U.S. to vote in SJ city elections. In response, CM Dev Davis provided a thoughtful primer on why the right--and responsibility--to vote in city elections should be limited to permanent U.S. citizens. An edited excerpt from Davis' presentation follows.
Read MoreSan Jose resident Tobin Gilman joined SJ's Charter Review Commission to explore mayoral powers and election cycles. He ended up participating in a case study on how progressives hijack city boards and commissions to advance a radical agenda. In an exclusive Opp Now interview, Gilman provides his perspective on how it happened.
Read MoreCommissioner Pierluigi Oliverio takes a critical view of how city governments--including San Jose--invariably take on more and more expensive responsibilities--even if they're not funded, in the city's charter, or within its historic charge. He worries that this never-ending accumulation of expansive civic duties endangers the fulfillment of core and basic city services. An exclusive Opp Now interview.
Read MoreIn 2021, the long-standing structure of local Silicon Valley politics started imploding. The old, establishment Labor vs Business dialectic revealed itself to be increasingly powerless, and a new generation of independent political leaders and thinkers started to assert themselves. Opp Now co-founder Christopher Escher talked off record with a number of City Hall watchers, analysts, and tenants about the nature of the coming metamorphosis, and summarized his findings in the following Five SJ Fault Lines for 2022.
Read MoreIf there's one overwhelming lesson from 2021, it's this: watching history unfold before you sure is a lot of fun. There can be little doubt that Silicon Valley's political structures and power dynamics are undergoing a fundamental transition--and it looks like 2022 will teach us much about what that metamorphosis will look like. For us, chronicling this transformation is an honor and a delight.
Read MoreIn a SJ Merc op-ed, former councilmember Johnny Khamis sharply critiqued a strange new proposal from SJ's activist Housing Dept that would wildly favor local housing nonprofits over Mom-and-Pop housing providers in future property transactions. CM's Dev Davis and Matt Mahan express their concerns, and D3 CM hopeful Irene Smith provides a small business housing provider's analysis.
Read MoreIn his annual State of the City address, SJ Mayor Sam Liccardo sounded like a clear-eyed CEO as he outlined changes to the city's homelessness problem by acknowledging past mistakes and pivoting to more effective solutions. Liccardo advocated a move away from the expensive and slow Permanent Housing First strategies favored by local housing nonprofits, and towards a faster, cheaper, transitional housing model which is being implemented successfully by cutting-edge cities. Local housing advocates, predictably, decried the mayor's direction. Below are excerpts from Liccardo's speech and comments by Jennifer Loving of Destination Home and Edward Ring of the California Policy Center.
Read MorePushing back against local housing advocates, SJ City Council passed an urgency ordinance to limit the impact of SB9--the state law which strips cities of their authority over local zoning. Additionally, the city shelved a local densification proposal known as Opportunity Housing. Tobin Gilman of Families and Homes--the leading grass roots organization fighting citywide up zoning--explains the developments.
Read MoreIn a resounding defeat for the anti-Asian gerrymander efforts of Labor and local progressive nonprofits, the San Jose City Council embraced a middle ground redistricting plan championed by D4 Councilmember David Cohen. Through a series of votes on the precise details of the plan, the council refuted the false race-baiting claims hilariously floated by local progressives and endorsed a map that meets both legal and ethical parameters of good faith redistricting. City Hall Insiders provide a brief review of the major issues below.
Read MoreLocal philanthropists were gobsmacked recently to discover that many of the local environmental, health care, and community nonprofits to which they donate have lined up in public support of Labor's widely criticized redistricting maps, which have been credibly accused of suppressing Asian-American votes. It is unclear if the Board of Directors of any of the nonprofits voted to approve their group's advocacy, if the groups actually studied the various redistricting proposals, nor how such advocacy aligns with the nonprofits' publicly-stated missions. The nonprofits who signed a public letter to the City of SJ advocating the discredited, discriminatory plan, are listed below.
Read MoreJackson Reese, vice president of the California Policy Center think tank, pulls back the curtain on the county's and city's redistricting follies, and breaks down how politicians and interest groups shamelessly use the process to advance their electoral interests.
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