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With the upcoming March primary election just weeks away, candidates for the newly drawn State Senate district that will see portions of the Tri-Valley represented by the same new legislator as a majority of the Central Valley are seeking to woo local voters in order to ensure a spot on the ballot in November.
Asm. Carlos Villapudua (D-Stockton), former congressmember Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton) and businessman Jim Shoemaker (R-San Joaquin County) are running for State Senate District 5 in a wide-open race following the implementation of new district boundaries and the terming out of incumbent Susan Eggman (D-Stockton).
Earlier in the campaign season, the three candidates specifically sought to highlight their platforms to Tri-Valley voters in a candidate forum hosted by Livermore Indivisible on Jan. 21, discussing the region’s relationship to the Central Valley and their proposed solutions to the challenges faced by entirety of the newly-drawn district including water, transportation, jobs, housing and crime and their relationships to the state’s political landscape.
Villapudua, who was elected to his current position representing Assembly District 13 in 2020, made a last-minute decision not to run for reelection to that seat in this year’s race, instead opting to campaign for the State Senate seat that his wife Edith Villapudua (D-Stockton) had initially been eying before shifting gears to campaign for Carlos Villapudua’s current seat on the Assembly.
Villapudua said he had already been getting familiar with the Tri-Valley in January, pointing to his recent exploration of the area as inspiration for current and future plans closer to home for him in Stockton.
“I was actually sending spending some time in the Tri-Valley, especially in in Pleasanton just because I was looking at what they’ve done with their downtown,” Villapudua said.
“I brought in $23 million for a certain part of Stockton, and it’s about five blocks, I worked closely with their planning department – I’m one that if if I see a wheel that is working, I try not to reinvent the wheel; I try to figure out what can we do we’ll copy it and try to use it and then try to figure out if there’s any kinks that we need to figure out,” he added. “And so I’ve been working in the Tri-Valley getting to know folks and I’m excited about this race.”
Despite the last-minute change in both Villapuduas’ political aspirations and career plans, Carlos Villapudua noted that he had already been excited for this year’s election, and that he was particularly excited about the possibility of uniting the Tri-Valley and Central Valley regions under the new State Senate map.
“Obviously you guys heard that there were a few changes, and here I am running,” Villapudua said. “I’ve now been trying to spend some time in Livermore, Dublin – you know the whole Tri-Valley, it’s not that it’s new to me. I’m excited, and what I hear from folks is they want to be part of the Central Valley, so I’m going to be the member that’s going to try to make sure we merge this and bring back and listen to my community and what they need, and that’s who I’ve been in the Central Valley.”
Villapudua pointed to highlights of his tenure in the assembly thus far, including funding for higher education and transportation, in particular the goal of increasing rail transit options throughout the district.
In his opening statement, Shoemaker – who previously ran for McNerney’s former congressional seat in the 2022 election – pointed to what he characterized as existing issues at the state level, including education, water and business closures.
“Today our education system is failing our children; our state’s failing the people of this state,” Shoemaker said. “Over-regulations have affected so many people that our food costs, our utilities, everything has sky-rocketed.”
“The Central Valley and also in the Tri-Valley, we need water, the water issue in the Tri-Valley right now, and what they’re going through is something that concerns me greatly,” he added. “We need to start saving our water instead of sending it to the ocean, and these are issues that I’m really focused on along with the crime situation that we’re dealing with today, that we have no accountability, that we have no follow-through, that we have businesses closing and leaving the state.”
Overall, the lone Republican on the ballot said that the major issue he would seek to contend with if elected is what he characterized as overreach and bad decision-making at the state level.
“All I’ve seen is the state seeming to get more and more powerful, and controlling our lives, taking more of what we work for, taking our money and utilizing it in areas that are detrimental,” Shoemaker said.
McNerney echoed some of the concerns raised by his fellow candidates, including housing, water, jobs and transportation, as well as highlighting the focal points of his 16-year tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives – from 2007 to 2023 – and pointing toward the importance of addressing challenges brought on by new technology.
“I’m going to focus again on Veterans issues but I’m very excited about Valley Link – it’s very important to open up that corridor of transportation so the people that live in the Central Valley can commute more easily and with less time and stress to jobs here in the Bay Area now, and I think bringing jobs to the Central Valley is very important,” McNerney said. “We need to make sure we do everything we can to open up, and that means improving the perception of public safety in the valley. We need to make sure that schools are turning out students that can work and provide good service to these jobs.”
“There’s a lot happening in Sacramento, and it’s going to be a good term to really go after some of these issues,” McNerney continued. “One of the things I’m very focused on is artificial intelligence. I was chair of the artificial intelligence caucus in the House of Representatives, and what I want to do is make sure that AI is beneficial to the residents of my district, of our state and our country, and the world has a big challenge.”
McNerney also noted that he was keen on using technology to address climate and energy challenges, particularly by way of nuclear energy and its potential for replacing fossil fuels.
“I’m also focused on energy policy,” McNerney said. “I’m a big proponent of developing fusion energy. I support nuclear energy. We need to move away from fossil fuels in a way that doesn’t disrupt the economy but does reduce carbon emissions so that our children and grandchildren and successive generations can enjoy the same quality of environment on this earth that we have been given. I think that we are borrowing from the future, from our children, and we want to be good stewards and hand down to them the best that we possibly can.”
The three candidates answered a number of questions submitted by Tri-Valley residents and provided by moderators in last month’s forum, with a recording available on YouTube.
In the upcoming primary, the two candidates to receive the most votes are poised to move forward to face off in the general election at the end of the year, regardless of party affiliation.
