District attorney campaigns give progress reports for 2022 primary
Local politics expert says middling voter familiarity means ‘there's room for campaigning and persuasion' before June election
SAN JOSE >> With the calendar flipping into 2022, a three-term incumbent and his main challenger are both pointing to encouraging signs of support in their early campaigns for the office of district attorney in Santa Clara County.
The June primary election will mark the first time that sitting District Attorney Jeff Rosen will face a contested re-election bid, after having gone without a challenger in 2014 and 2018.
One of his opponents, deputy public defender Sajid Khan, is running on an aggressive criminal-justice reform platform with the hopes of repeating the political fortunes of Rosen, who in 2010 became the first person in the county to unseat an incumbent DA in nearly a century. On the fundraising front, Khan’s campaign reports raising about $236,000 — spread among more than 1,1000 contributors, half of whom donated less than $100 — since he publicly declared his candidacy in July. Rosen’s campaign, meanwhile, reports having raised more than double Khan’s total, putting him at the $500,000 fundraising limit for the June 7 primary election.
A second challenger, Daniel Chung, who was recently a prosecutor working under Rosen but has become a harsh critic of his old boss since a public falling out, declined to provide information about the status of his campaign.
A multi-term officeholder, Rosen enjoys wide support across the county’s political leadership — including backing from South Bay Rep. Zoe Lofgren, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, and county Supervisor Cindy Chavez — while Khan has cultivated a grassroots support base of social-justice groups, as well as endorsements from former Rep. Mike Honda, Assemblymember Alex Lee and Mountain View Mayor Ellen Kamei.
Garrick Percival, chair of the political science department at San Jose State University, said that for Rosen, incumbency remains a formidable strength.
“DA races inevitably favor the incumbent. They’re going into the campaign and the election with that history,” Percival said. “It’s going to be an uphill battle for both Chung and Khan.”
But he also pointed to recent district attorney races in San Francisco and Los Angeles that saw reform-minded candidates Chesa Boudin and George Gascón upset incumbents in those cities.
Khan is looking to capitalize on the same type of voter sentiment in his electoral bid. His campaign commissioned a poll of 350 county voters conducted by Florida-based SEA Polling and Strategic Design that found Khan is competitive with Rosen after polling subjects were given “brief candidate descriptions,” as well as strong support for alternatives to incarceration and transparency and accountability for law enforcement.
However, that same poll also found Khan trailing in initial name recognition, with 8 percent compared to 20 percent for Rosen and 10 percent for Chung, who has done minimal campaigning.
Citing voter support for criminal-justice reform ballot measures — at least one of which Rosen has unsuccessfully challenged in court — Khan asserts that people in Santa Clara County “are not satisfied with the status quo,” and that his lack of past political office is an asset. “I have not been a county official. I have not been part of this carceral system and part of the system that has led to a need for an alternative and a path forward.”
“We live in a community and state where we have invested heavily over the paste several years and decades in policing, arresting, punishing and incarcerating our people, and feelings of unsafety have risen despite this overwhelming investment,” Khan said. “It has proven to us and demonstrated that our pathway forward to community safety is not the continuation of a broken system.”
But Rosen’s political advisor, Leo Briones, suggested that Khan does not have exclusive claim to reform causes, and expressed skepticism at that campaign’s poll findings.
“DA Rosen’s office is not interested in internal polls or base politics,” Briones said. “They are too busy working for the safety of the 2 million people who live and work in Santa Clara County.”
The pain on players’ faces. The eyes after the tears. The selfless flogging. The emotions.
It oozed from every 49ers player, and coach Kyle Shanahan, Jan. 30 after their season ended a win — a fourth quarter — short of the Super Bowl.
Such heartfelt feelings are not necessarily an annual ritual.
The 49ers have had 27 straight seasons end without a Lombardi Trophy. This was the most entertaining, dramatic and enjoyable one since I began covering them in 2000.
Jimmy Garoppolo was front and center at it all, from the instant he showed up after the draft brought in his heir apparent to the final throw that was intercepted. He handled it with class, when everyone demanded controversy, perfection and a Lombardi Trophy.
The NFL is a quarterback-driven league. This was a team that rallied around its quarterback, or its embattled cornerbacks, or its newfound All-Pro catalyst in Deebo Samuel.
It was a team. And what a hoot it was the past three months.
Any ending other than a Super Bowl victory is crushing. Were they playing with house money each of the past few weeks?
Sure, but no one gave them anything.
They made it into the playoffs themselves by beating the (eventual NFC champion) Rams, on the road. Then they won a playoff debut in Dallas, barely. Then another playoff game, in the most picturesque setting possible in the NFL, amid the snow with a second-half comeback at storied Lambeau Field.
Lose any of those games and a shrug might suffice. Lose in the NFC Championship Game, as a 3 ½-point underdog? It should have been expected.
But to blow a 10-point, fourth-quarter lead was just a cruel reminder about the 49ers’ last playoff exit, their 2019 team’s Super Bowl collapse against the Kansas City Chiefs and their third-down, “2-3-jetchip-wasp” harbinger of doom.
Teammates consoled Jacquiski Tartt, who flogged himself for dropping a potential, win-clinching interception.
They defended Garoppolo, for perhaps their final, necessary time.
They each took ownership of not doing more, after someone each of the past 12 games or so did something unexpectedly phenomenal — as should be expected out of professional football players.
Covering a team like this usually evokes a neat connection among beat reporters and players, having traveled the same lands and witnessed the same highs and lows.
Only, the NFL locker room still bars reporters from entering, essentially serving as a bouncer between any true human interaction. That is why attending every possible practice, even if for only the allotted 20 or even 5 minutes, was crucial, to get a taste of what was evolving.
It began with expected victories in Detroit and
Philadelphia sandwiched around the annual teambonding layover, which included the Bay Area media’s inclusion for those practices at The Greenbrier in West Virginia’s Week 2 seclusion.
A four-game losing streak should have broken them. It would have cost Garoppolo his job, from what everyone prescribed in the preseason.
Instead, subtle changes took place at every position, from someone stepping up or shifting to a new spot.
The wins stacked up to the point the 49ers became the team no one wanted to play. No one except the Rams, to defend their $5.5 billion palace where the 49ers had won both of their prior regular-season visits.
The Rams, George Kittle made a point of saying afterward, are a team of superstars. That, at least to me, was a way to say the 49ers were more of a true team, rather than just a bunch of names on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Another offseason has begun. The familiar pain of a premature exit is back.
Sunday’s Pro Bowl is a consolation prize for five players, though it’s unimaginable that Trent Williams and his bad ankle would play in that all-star buffoonery. Samuel, Kittle, Nick Bosa and Kyle Juszczyk are on the invitation list, and alternates could get summoned.
Now comes speculation season, starting with where Garoppolo will go, what the market will bear.
Does he fill the Pittsburgh Steelers’ void? Do new coaches in Denver, New Orleans, Houston, Miami and elsewhere want him? Can the 49ers cajole a Day 2 draft pick for the man who, more often than not since Halloween 2017, made them feel great, baby?
Having shipped their first-round pick (No. 29 overall) plus a thirdrounder to Miami as part of last season’s trade up
(for Trey Lance, Garoppolo’s successor, the combine and draft won’t be as alluring. Free agency won’t bear more than one or two highpriced starters. Extensions for Samuel and Bosa must be budgeted.
Bosa called this a “super special” team, and it was, adding: “I don’t think the era comes to an end. We have a lot to build off of this year and I’m proud of all the guys I play with.”
No one wanted to race ahead with those thoughts at the postgame podium, and that started with Shanahan saying it wasn’t time for a “farewell address” to Garoppolo.
Later, as Shanahan and general manager John Lynch walked out of the losing locker from Sunday night, they strolled across the confetti-strewn field, took a glance at the gigantic scoreboard and were reminded it was the Rams, not them, Super Bowlbound.
Pain. Again.
Lips are being bit. A Lombardi Trophy seemed within reach. And that is what made for so many conflicting emotions, because players and everyone involved with the 49ers wanted to take pride in this season’s resiliency and down-to-the-wire wins.
They eventually will feel better. They will make another run. They again will seek a storybook, championship ending.