San Jose, California Mayoral Candidate Sam Liccardo (center). (Photo: The Ethiopian American Council)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Wednesday, May 7th, 2014
San Jose, CA (TADIAS) — The Ethiopian American Council (EAC) announced that it will be supporting Council Member Sam Liccardo in his bid to become the next Mayor of San Jose. Liccardo represents San Jose’s downtown neighborhood (District Three) in the San Jose City Council and he is is one of five candidates running for the city’s top position. The primary election will take place on June 3rd, 2014.
“The EAC endorsement joins those of organizations and individuals who recognize the need to sustain and grow small businesses in the area,” the Ethiopian American Council announced in a press release. “Many Ethiopian-Americans in San Jose are entrepreneurs and small business owners.” EAC added: “Two of Liccardo’s catch-phrases are “Small Is Beautiful” and “Start Up San Jose.” His “Start Up” initiative focuses on improving the relationship between City Hall and small businesses with a focus on enabling entrepreneurs to procure vacant business spaces in the downtown area.”
Liccardo states that his efforts as a councilman include making San Jose a safe place to live and do business. “I wrote the plan to make San José safer not by spending more, but spending smarter: using pension savings to hire 200 more cops, implement cost-saving technologies, and restore community policing. Without increasing city spending, I’ve launched successful efforts to cut red tape to create middle class jobs, provide tutoring for hundreds of youth, install energy-efficient streetlights, and improve parks,” he noted in a statement posted on the city’s election website. “Our campaign for a smarter, more innovative government has earned the support of over 100 Silicon Valley tech leaders [and] former Mayor Susan Hammer.”
In its press release EAC, which raised over $5,000 as a contribution to Mr. Liccardo’s mayoral campaign last month, also highlights that the candidate’s “focus on environmental and traffic problems in the city has also gained him the endorsement of the Sierra Club.”
“He is also looking for ways to recycle industrial or factory sites in the city, increase the ability of the local airport to be a jobs engine, and other initiatives, such as decreasing the time for business permits, to grow the ever-important small business sector that contributes so much to a city’s economic vibrancy,” EAC emphasized. “His social concerns regard leveraging libraries and community centers as job training centers; he wants to make San Jose a place that grows its own talent, especially among “the thousands of kids trapped on the wrong side of the achievement gap.” His ideas and his focus on small businesses, increasing employment, revamping the city’s aesthetics, and lowering crime appear to make him an excellent leader and servant for entrepreneurial immigrant populations.”
Before his election to his current post in 2006 Liccardo (age 44), who is a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard University Law School, served as a criminal prosecutor in the District Attorney’s office. “My grandparents started a small grocery store here in the 1940s,” he shared in his statement. “I was raised to love San José as they did, and will lead our city with honor.”
San Jose Mayoral Candidate Sam Liccardo. (Photo: Courtesy The Ethiopian American Council – EAC)
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You can learn more about Councilmember Sam Liccardo at www.samliccardo.com.
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