The San Francisco 49ers Team owner Jed York has spent an astounding $3 million into the 2020 Santa Clara City Council election. He wants to put Anthony Becker, Harbir Bhatia, Suds Jain and Kevin Park on the City Council. You can track the election spending on the City Clerk’s website.
Jed is funding The Citizens for Efficient Government and Full Voting Rights – a political action committee that has blanketed Santa Clara with TV commercials, social media advertising, direct mailers and robocalls.
“It’s shocking and obnoxious. He’s unhappy with the way Santa Clara is holding him accountable and he seems to figure it’s cheaper to buy the city-council seats. Money seems to be no object,” said Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor.
The question for Santa Clara residents is, “what does Jed expect for his $3M investment into these four council seats?”
The on-going battle between York and the City Council started in 2015, when Jed demanded that ex-Mayor Jamie Matthews’s City Council sell the 49ers the Santa Clara Youth Soccer Park for pennies on the dollar. York used his influence over Mayor Matthews, and council members Dominic Caserta, Pat Kolstad and Jerry Marseli to support the 49ers land grab. Fortunately, their plot failed.
Since then, the 49ers have fought Mayor Gillmor and the city council over rent, the curfew regulation at Levis Stadium, have withheld stadium financial statements, and their mis-management of the stadium led to battles over the control of the stadium authority.
