☆ Oliverio on Campaign 2022: Same, but different.

Before the votes start getting counted, longtime officeholder and candidate Pierluigi Oliverio joins Opp Now's Christopher Escher in a quick phone call about the bigger trends informing the election, and finds that money and political conformity are more important than ever. An Opp Now exclusive.

Christopher Escher, Opp Now: We obviously have our free market goggles on at Opp Now, but it's hard not to see this election as continuing the liberal drift of county politics. It looks a lot like 50 Shades of Left to us.

Pierluligi Oliverio: San Jose, like other large US cities, tends to be a blue bubble. However when significant issues arise, such as the non enforcement of criminal actions, inflation, homelessness, and Woke extremism, I think bubbles may burst. Look at the San Francisco recall of the school board members and District Attorney; and the City of Sacramento ballot measure to ban homeless encampments on the November ballot. There is no real organized interest group for everyday residents, and thus public sentiment is measured by elections.

ON: You can see that bubble phenomenom in the over-the-top attacks on Mahan, Khamis, and Smith. Merely questioning existing housing policy, police policy, financial policy invites unhinged leftwing advocate- and media-counterattack. But it seems to me that this season, the moderate candidates fired back a lot more, in many ways turned the tables on those attacks. Did the local Left overshoot this season?

PO: People are fed up with the homelessness and the externalities of the unhoused in neighborhood parks, business districts, creeks, freeway entrances and exits. And thus a lot of people want forceful action to address it. Even Newsom seems fed up, and it's the number one issue in the LA Mayoral race. New construction costs for housing units are approaching a million dollars a unit, as showcased by SJ, SF, and LA. These costs are ridiculous, do not scale, require billions in additional property tax increases, and even then take decades to build. People are now realizing this approach will not work and has opened the door to legitimate criticism. The dogmatic defense of Housing First may be found to be a mistake once the upcoming mayoral results come in from LA, Portland, and SJ, plus the Sacramento ballot measure.

Regarding how candidates respond to overheated charges: I think candidates should push back on attacks, but unfortunately the responses do not get the same notice that the attacks do. Negative campaigns regrettably work, and this is why they are common. Not everybody reads the Mercury—but almost everybody gets the flyers with all sorts of disinformation, malinformation, and misinformation. Voters must simply assume all candidates will be eventually portrayed as Satan.

But with that said, the local Left has a long history of completely inaccurate attacks—I've been on the receiving end of a number of them. Their modus operandi is to demand that the other side apologize when they get aggressive, but I cannot recall them ever apologizing themselves. They just trundle on. I don't see a big change this year, as it is the same election after election.

ON: We obviously pay a lot of attention to the media landscape—as we're a smaller but established player (20k unique visitors). And we sense that there's been a structural change since the last election cycle. There's a lot more political chatter online and among the smaller outlets—San Jose Spotlight, San Jose Inside, Opp Now, and of course conversations on NextDoor and neighborhood email lists. And while the Merc remains the Big Dog, it seems to have stepped back a bit on their day-to-day political coverage, leaving the kerfuffles to the online realm. It seems they're taking more of a thoughtful, bigger picture approach. Are you seeing anything like this?

PO: There is no doubt that the Mercury remains the major media influencer in the area as a trusted brand, and you are right: They appear to have taken a step back from day-to-day local political coverage and let blogs take the lead. I am assuming they do this because the corporate owners don't see uber-local content as that important to their business, and not all coverage of local events is truly newsworthy. And I do agree that web-based conversations are increasingly important, however hard to track.

ON: Eight million bucks spent on the mayor's race. As an old direct mail marketeer, I don't even want to do the math to figure out what the cost/vote is. Is this sustainable? Is it sane?

PO: The local Left is as powerful and united as before—and with the implosion of the Chamber of Commerce as a political player, they have a real advantage in both money and individuals with a vested interest volunteering in the field. They have consistent access to revenue through thousands of employee dues and now have access to billionaire folks like the 49er corporation as another revenue stream. The moderate's money-raising effort is uncoordinated and unreliable. Mayor Sam Liccardo and others tried to step in to fill the gaps created by the SVO self-immolation, but it's just not as big or as powerful and may not have the staying power. This time around, the Left has had a big money advantage, and the moderates need to get this fixed, or moderate voices, which are the majority of the populace, will be further diminished.

But the money phenomenon here in San Jose is no different than the rest of the country. The spending just goes up, especially for competitive races. As long as the country views political contributions as free speech, and as long as government policy is so important to various interests, then we are going to get more and more money spent on elections. This obviously makes it very tough on independent voices—which is where an increasing number of voters are—as they don't have access to the institutional money, and the cost of participating is so high.

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Image by Genaro Molina