Robinson: Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor’s Trumpian politics

Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor is known for her vengefulness. She is the Trumpian equivalent for small government.

Early in her career she lost her first attempt running for mayor. The Mercury News called her tactics “loony” in an editorial as she went after the Santa Clara Chamber of Commerce with no evidence. The irony is Gillmor refused to pass judgement on the local garbage company, an ally, who had been convicted of money laundering. Garbage in, garbage out.

Through third party trolls, who are as misinformed as they are malicious, the political opponents of Gillmor are targeted for revenge through the FPPC, at their work and through the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury. Judy Nadler, the most ethical mayor in the history of Santa Clara, was a target of an FPPC complaint. The charge never came to anything, as the attempt was frivolous and obvious.

In the case of the San Francisco 49ers, a civil grand jury whose members include individuals known to be close to Gillmor wrote a highly critical and seriously flawed report about the team. No action was taken, but the headlines remain.

Gillmor has a long running feud with the 49ers, yet she once championed their stadium and is most responsible for the contracts she sought to disavow, costing taxpayers millions.

When the 49ers backed candidates who eviscerated her Trump-like power and fired the servile city manager and city attorney, she redoubled her attacks on the championship team.

Former Councilmember Dominic Caserta found himself on the wrong side of the mayor and, somehow, his personnel file at Santa Clara High School where he worked as a teacher was illegally leaked. It led to unconfirmed salacious charges that forced him out of a job and out of politics. Coincidentally, Gillmor has a close relationship with the Santa Clara Unified School District, having served as a consultant to the entity. But there is no evidence she illegally coordinated the effort to leak the former councilmember’s file.

Now it’s Anthony Becker’s turn, currently in a trial for his personal life. The charge against Becker is that he lied about leaking civil grand jury findings to the public. Ironically, those documents had already appeared on a police union website and a story was written by the San Francisco Chronicle from a leaked source. One day after Gillmor received the confidential report lambasting her political enemies, she forwarded it from her city account to her personal email.

But it is Becker who appeared before a grand jury with no legal counsel who gets indicted. Funny how that works. Becker’s real crime was that he ran against Gillmor for mayor and narrowly lost.

Meanwhile, there has been no investigation as to how the report was leaked to the SF Chronicle or how it appeared on the police union website ahead of being made public.

Full disclosure: In the past I have praised Gillmor when she was right and taken her to task when I felt she was wrong. I was the campaign consultant against her when Nadler beat her.

But in my lifetime of politics, I have never seen a more vengeful individual than the Santa Clara mayor, with the possible exception of the notorious former state Sen. Quentin Kopp. I’m proudly on his enemies list and, not surprisingly, he is an ally of Gillmor.

The voters of Santa Clara have choices to make this fall. Gillmor is obviously focused on taking back power with new allies running for council. That would be chaos.

San José Spotlight columnist Rich Robinson is a political consultant, attorney and author of “The Shadow Candidate.” His columns appear every fourth Wednesday of the month.