District 10 City Council race changes course

By Kymberli W. Brady
Staff Writer

Although the race for the District 10 City Council seat is just getting started, players are jockeying for positions, finding some would-be candidates joining forces behind others instead of running themselves.

The Almaden Times received word Nov. 10 that both Claude Fletcher and Alexander Vassar will withdraw from the race and join the Rich De La Rosa team. Also joining forces with De La Rosa is transportation engineer Matt Kamkar, an Almaden resident previously considering a run for the office, but instead feeling he could better serve the community by throwing his support in a different direction.

Fletcher realizes that he needs to direct more effort toward his business interests and feels that he could do more by helping with De La Rosa’s campaign. “Rich has a good grasp of the needs of District 10 and we’re quite close in our positions on the issues,” he says. “I think he’ll do a good job.”

After meeting with De La Rosa, Vassar opted to drop out as well. “We talked about the issues and where we saw San Jose headed,” he said. “I was really impressed with him and thought if I stayed in the race, I’d be taking votes away from a really great candidate. I am willing to do everything including walking door to door for his campaign.”

Kamkar, a member of the steering committee for the newly formed Almaden Valley Business Association, is an active member of the Almaden community, both as a small business owner and part of the Middle Eastern community. He is expected to help push the De La Rosa campaign closer to a win in the upcoming election. “After seeing Rich’s platform, it was similar to mine and I didn’t want to weaken it,” he says. “I feel I’ll be better served by throwing my support his way. Almaden is a beautiful place for families and we need to do what we can, even if it means giving up our own likings for the community.”

According to City Clerk Patricia O’Hearn, Almaden’s Ronald Siporen has taken out papers to run for office as well.

“I want to help take the local politics to a higher level,” Siporen says. “We need to get beyond the sound byte issues and move toward solutions and ideas for those issues.”

Siporen serves on the board of directors for Almaden Country School. He was a banker for 13 years before owning and operating an advertising agency in downtown San Jose. After his wife passed away from cancer two years ago, he left the business to become a stay-at-home dad for his 8-year old son. Among his priorities, if elected, are seeing that the sports fields issues are resolved, underutilized local shopping centers are redeveloped, and providing people more access to the political process via “an old-fashioned party-line,” utilizing public message boards and secure e-mail where concerns and issues can be discussed. “We are the capital of the Silicon Valley,” he says. “It’s time we started acting like it.”

O’Hearn says that Siporen and De La Rosa are the only two candidates who have officially filed so far. “This is the nomination period and candidates are pulling papers and circulating nomination petitions among the voters in the district,” she adds. “It is a critical part of the process and the closing is Dec. 5 at noon. Anyone with intentions of running has until then to do so.”

Ronald Siporen’s campaign Web site is www.ronforcitycouncil.com