Lopez: Chúng tôi sẽ không im lặng về việc đội 49ers chi hàng triệu đô la cho cuộc bầu cử ở Santa Clara.

I run a grocery store in Santa Clara, and I can tell you exactly what’s happening to families here. Carts are smaller. Shoppers are putting items back at the register. People are choosing between filling the gas tank and filling the fridge.

At Arteaga’s, we’ve built our business around this community, serving many Latino and Asian families who have called District 2 home for generations. We’ve fought to keep costs low, pushed back on statewide legislation that would raise prices, and given back to the neighborhood, because a grocery store is part of the fabric of a community. That’s why I’m speaking up about what’s happening in our local election.

The Forty Niners Football Company, LLC has launched an chiến dịch chi tiêu độc lập in the District 2 Cuộc đua vào Hội đồng Thành phố with $753,411 as of Sept. 25 to boost Kimberley Williams and attack Yvonne Inciarte, the candidate who actually stands up for working families.

This isn’t new. Since 2020, political committees funded by team owner Jed York have spent hơn $ 10 triệu trying to handpick who sits on the Santa Clara City Council. The team calls itself an economic driver for this region. Its spending says otherwise.

The current amount of $753, 411 could cover a year of groceries for dozens of District 2 families, or fund rent relief and small business grants. Instead, it’s paying for mailers and attack ads to install a favored candidate at City Hall. That’s not economic development. That’s a corporation buying a council seat at our expense.

Let’s be clear: This is an outside football team deciding it knows better than District 2 residents who should represent them, and outspending our entire community to make sure of it.

It crowds out local voices with corporate money and tells Santa Clarans their vote matters less than a corporation’s checkbook. Santa Clara may have balanced this year’s budget, but the city is facing an infrastructure crisis with a bond measure that is short by $224 million, on top of economic uncertainty from Washington.

This is exactly the moment we need leaders who answer to residents, not to the NFL team that just spent more than three quarters of a million dollars trying to install them.

That’s why Arteaga’s, along with a coalition of other small businesses, is supporting Yvonne Inciarte for Santa Clara City Council District 2. Yvonne is the daughter of agriculture workers, was born and raised in this district, and has spent her career in public service working for Congressman Ro Khanna because she cares about this community. She understands what fiscal responsibility actually means for a city trying to balance its budget without balancing it on the backs of working families, and she isn’t running because a corporation decided she should.

Small business owners like me don’t have $750,000 to spend on a city council race, and we wouldn’t spend it that way if we did. What we have is a front row seat to what our neighbors are going through, and we’re not staying quiet while an outside corporation tries to buy this seat.

Lupe Lopez is the co-founder and owner of Arteaga’s Food Center, a Northern California grocery chain with a location in Santa Clara’s District 2.