☆ (#1) Progressives ignore anti-Arab, anti-immigrant tropes suffusing Arenas' hit-pieces on Khamis
Santa Clara County is deep blue, so it's (sadly) no surprise that our local political and media class fails to hold its leaders accountable when their favored candidates break democratic norms. But even so: in 2022, Sylvia Arenas' supervisor campaign may have set a new record for ugly campaigning, as her team trafficked in anti-Arab, anti-immigrant and (arguably) homophobic conventions in her campaign against independent Johnny Khamis. Local media and progressive advocates, predictably, ignored the shameful bigotry, leaving it to Opp Now to daylight the unpleasantries in the article below. The piece went viral, was picked up by national media, thus catapulting the story to our #1 slot for 2022.
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☆ (#2) Lefty Labor campaigns behaving badly
A staple campaign technique of local Labor/left media and advocates has been to fling ridiculous charges of racism against moderate candidates — while indulging in straight-up, deplorable race-baiting themselves (see 10/10). Something very different happened in 2022, however, as centrist candidates--for the first time--responded to the bogus charges with muscular argument, effectively standing down the Woke mobs. In October, we reported on this refreshing change in local political dynamics with our Trump Tactics story, below, which went viral across a broad range of social media platforms.
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☆ (#3) Outrageous bias discredits local media election coverage
Our readers constantly tell us that extreme--and often hilarious--local media partisanship is a key reason for their support of Opp Now. The Mountain View Voice provided a classic case study in June: The Voice may be Sally Lieber's hometown newspaper (she's currently a Mtn View City Councilmember and is running for Board of Equalization), but home-cookin' can go a little too far, as we discovered from their election night coverage.
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☆ (#4) How to end school board divisiveness and partisanship: candidates' perspectives
In October, Campbell Union High School District board candidates James Kim and Elisabeth Halliday addressed pursuing unity on boards with ideologically diverse members. In the thick of contentious conversations around CUHSD board campaigns, Kim and Halliday emphasized that school boards must serve constituents first and foremost — not squabble and build petty divides. An Opp Now exclusive.
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☆ (#5) Mayoral candidates examine roots of our housing fiasco, and how to fix it
Opp Now was honored to host finalists in the SJ Mayoral race in a thoughtful discussion on the key issues in their race. In this August posting, County Supervisor Cindy Chavez and D10 Councilmember Matt Mahan dig into the history of land use and housing policy decisions that led to our unaffordability crisis, and their plans to fix it. An Opp Now exclusive.
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☆ (#6) Scott Beyer's three-part series on how to implement a free-market housing strategy in San Jose
Scott Beyer, Founder of the influential Market Urbanism Report and author of the widely respected book: Market Urbanism: A vision for free-market cities, is a leading proponent of classical liberal reforms to address the national housing crisis. In Part I of an exclusive, epic 3-part series for Opportunity Now, Beyer introduced housing solutions ignored by our Housing Department and local media. An Opp Now exclusive.
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☆ (#7) Inside union schemes to dominate local school boards
Perhaps the funniest--and most revealing--headline in local media during the year was in a Labor-funded website that bemoaned how conservatives were trying to "Infiltrate" local schoolboards by--get this--actually running for election. Shocking: The California Policy Center’s Jackson Reese got inside how liberal-leaning school boards fund teachers unions, which fund the Democrat party—together keeping state gov’t overinflated and progressive. An Opp Now exclusive.
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☆ (#8) Après Liccardo: How to control Mission Creep
Most of the analysis of Sam Liccardo's eight years as mayor have focused on the failures of the SJ Housing Dept to address homelessness and housing supply. Local political watcher Tobin Gilman used the mayor's September State of the City address to ask an even better question: how does the next mayor refocus council spending where it's supposed to be: onto core city services? An Opp Now exclusive.
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☆ (#9) Housing Dept strategy comes under fire
2022 was a bad year for Housing First advocates, as national and state media—along with an increasing number of politicians (see Newsom)—came to the belated conclusion that Shelter and Services needed to be the priority for addressing homelessness, not $1m/unit apartments a decade from now. SJ's Dean Hotop wondered where all of SJ's Housing money went. An Opp Now exclusive.
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☆ (#10) Woke follies on display at SJCC
In February, SJ's Dept.of Racial Equity raised some eyebrows at a Council meeting, in which any questions of its sweeping goals and contortions of language were met with howls of--you guessed it--"racist" by councilmembers and city staffers alike. Our editorial team reviewed the theater. An Opp Now exclusive.
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Why school choice (not diversity-based admission) combats segregation
Larry Sand, renowned educational analyst, argues that the National Education Association should fight for local school choice initiatives rather than racially-based admission criteria. Without the freedom to choose, lower-income students are frequently “imprison[ed]” in subpar schools that reside in their zip code — a far cry from NEA’s (and CA Teachers Association’s) purportedly equitable ideals.
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A long overdue call for civility at 4th and Santa Clara
Maybe it was the explosive device found on a CM's lawn. Or the mayor's house being vandalized. Or CMs falsely calling their colleagues and whole neighborhoods racist. Or city staffers publicly—and inaccurately—accusing citizens of bigoted motives. Or maybe it was all the yelling and name calling and overall nastiness that overwhelmed the Dec. 5 public meeting on special elections. But CM Chappie Jones has had enough, and offered, on Dec. 5, a call for a return to civility in the City Council Chambers. His comments excerpted below, edited for clarity.
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