Patrick Ahrens donned a brown apron embroidered with the words “Baskin Robins” on his birthday. He doled out scoops of ice cream to dozens of supporters and potential voters, flavors ranging from Baseball Nut and Jamoca Almond Fudge to mint chocolate chip.
The candidate for the District 26 state Assembly seat said the ice cream was a good symbol for many things, from how he wants to serve residents to how a policymaker might have to split their attention between different topics.
“I’m here to serve the community, that’s what I did in scooping ice cream and that’s the kind of servant leadership style I want to emulate in Sacramento,” Ahrens told San José Spotlight.
Ahrens, 35, is Assemblymember Evan Low’s district director. Now Ahrens is vying for his boss’ seat in District 26 as Low runs for Congress. The district includes Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino and parts of North and West San Jose. He’s running against Tara Sreekrishnan, Sen. Dave Cortese’s deputy chief of staff and legislative director and who serves on the Santa Clara County Board of Education.
Ahrens, a trustee on the Foothill-De Anza Community College District board, secured the top spot in the March primaries with 25,057 votes, or 34.4%. Sreekrishnan received 19,617, or 26.9%. Sreekrishnan has turned the tides since then, leading in fundraising with $703,877 to Ahren’s $672,300.
Working at the district office has brought Ahrens face-to-face with residents, and he said he’s spent a decade connecting residents to resources. For example, during the first years of the COVID pandemic, his office helped more than 11,000 people get unemployment insurance.
“I have over 10 or 11 years of experience working in the district,” he told San José Spotlight. “Not just policy work in Sacramento, but understanding the hopes, fears, desires of the constituents. I get a very front row seat.”
Health care and housing affordability are two key issues of Ahrens’ campaign, which thousands of Californians struggle with every day. In 2022, Ahren’s twin brother, Sean, died of cancer. He said the experience of watching his brother struggle to receive treatment showed that health care needs to be more accessible, particularly to low-income residents.
Ahrens said he wants to be able to work across verticals to support residents, pointing to how most support services overlap with multiple communities and benefactors. While on the community college district’s board of trustees, Ahrens worked with Santa Clara County officials to build a full-service health clinic on De Anza College, supported by the county’s health department.
The clinic will bring more accessible health services closer to students, Ahrens said. He added it would also benefit the college’s nursing program through students apprenticing at the clinic. Ahrens said he wants to replicate this type of collaborative work and multi-faceted solutions at the state level.
“That’s what the voters want, collaboration. They don’t care who’s jurisdiction it is,” Ahrens told San José Spotlight. “What solutions can we work on together.”
Former Cupertino Mayor Dolly Sandoval watched Ahrens prepare ice cream for the party’s visitors. She first met him when he was a De Anza College student trustee — and from the beginning she noticed he was an ardent public servant.
“Working for Evan Low, Patrick knows the community inside and out. He’s a doer, not a white paper producer,” Sandoval told San José Spotlight before enjoying a scoop of Jamoca Almond Fudge.
Housing is another area where Ahrens said he wants to bring local solutions statewide, and where his approach has been informed by his lived experiences. He was homeless while young, staying in motels with his mother, brother and sister. He was also housing insecure while attending De Anza College.
On the district board of trustees, Ahrens increased student housing and pushed to create housing for faculty and staff. Now, he wants to replicate that for the 116 community colleges across the state, so they can best serve their communities in multiple ways.
A handful of Silicon Valley school districts are working on teacher housing projects to keep educators in the area despite the high cost of living. This is another example Ahrens pointed to as a solution that can be uplifted and replicated at the state level.
“We need someone who has lived experiences to … oversee those programs, and make them more effective and work more effectively with our county and local governments,” Ahrens said.
Isabel Caballero-Teixeira attended Ahrens’ ice cream birthday event. She first met him while attending De Anza College, when he was board president of the college district and she regularly gave public comments at meetings. She was part of the college district Faculty Association Political Action Committee, a political action branch of the faculty union.
She said while Ahrens was board president, he reached out to collaborate. She said they worked on multiple projects together, including faculty housing. When Ahrens announced his run for Assembly, Caballero-Teixeira said the committee provided about 130 student volunteers for his campaign.
“He’s one of the only politicians I’ve met who seemed like he gives a s**t,” Caballero-Teixeira told San José Spotlight. “He’s gone through and worked through the same things we have. We don’t see that much in politics.”
Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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