With a median household income of over $160,000, CA-16 is filled with wealthy voters and has the highest percentage of homes valued at $1 million or more in the country. The district, which has a D+49 partisan lean, includes parts of Santa Clara, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties. It has both urban and suburban components and includes part of San Jose as well as the heart of the Silicon Valley: Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Campbell, Stanford, Los Altos, Mountain View and Saratoga. The district’s residents are 56.7% white, 25.4% Asian, 13.7% Hispanic and 2.5% Black. Trump only managed to win 22.4% of the vote there in 2020.
Democrat Anna Eshoo, 81 years old, has represented the area in Congress since 1993 and has been a dedicated pawn of both the tech industry and Big Pharma. Fortunately, she’s finally retiring. There are 9 Democrats and a pair of vanity candidate Republicans running for the seat. The money race, as you can imagine, is frightening, with 3 candidates having already raised over a million dollars and 5 at over $300,000.
Sam Liccardo- $1.6 million
Peter Dixon (self-funder)- $1.4 million
Joe Simitian- $1.1 million
Evan Low- $889,000
Julie Lythcott-Harris- $375,000
Rishi Kumar, an engineer and former Saratoga council member, ran against Eshoo in 2020 and 2022 so he has significant name recognition but it will be hard for him to compete against all the communication that money like that is going to be able to buy.
Public polling released last week show-- even before the big money is being spent-- former San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo, Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, Kumar and Assemblyman Evan Low ahead of the pack, but with about a third of the likely voters undecided.
Sam Liccardo- 16.0%
Joe Simitian- 13.3%
Rishi Kumar- 7.5%
Evan Low- 7.3%
Liccardo has been endorsed by the current mayor of San Jose, Matt Mahan and by the San Francisco Chronicle. Simitian was endorsed by Eshoo. Dixon, a former marine, has endorsements from 8 former military members of Congress, none of them from California: Jason Crow (CO), Mike Sherrill (NJ), Pat Ryan (NY), Seth Moulton (MA), Don Davis (NC), Chrissy Houlahan (PA), Jared Golden (ME) and Chris Deluzio (PA). With the exception of Deluzio, they are all right-of-center Democrats including two of Congress’ worst members— Golden and Davis. Low has been endorsed by the California Labor Foundation, Ro Khanna, Laphonza Butler and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. From what I can tell, all of them oppose a ceasefire in Gaza.
The reason CA-16 was on my mind was because an organization whose endorsement committee I serve on is lobbying for us to endorse Evan Low. Most people would just rubber-stamp a request like the one we got. I checked with a DNC friend of mine who works in the housing area and she told me that Low is very anti-progressive when it comes to housing and completely in the pocket of the California Apartment Association, supporting their anti-rent control mania. They give him a lot of money to lead their efforts in Sacramento. So he’s the worst possible kind of person to elect to Congress-- regardless of identity politics. Corporate real estate has financed his career and he always sides with them against people who need help from government. Does this look like a progressive to you?
So far, I haven’t found anyone running in the district who I’d vote for... although I’m still investigating. Blue America once endorsed Rishi Kumar but he didn’t turn out as good in real life as he did on paper (and on the phone). There’s something about political careerists that very frequently just does not work out— and that’s basically what this bunch is, other than Dixon, who’s likely the most conservative of them all, and richest of them all, which is usually a very bad sign when looking for a candidate who will turn out to be a good member of Congress. I'll report back, likely after the voters narrow the field to two in the jungle primary on March 5th.
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