An independent ethics pledge is gaining notoriety in Santa Clara’s elections, while some candidates call it a political tool.
The pledge — created by Tom Shanks, former Santa Clara ethics advisor and former executive director for the Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics — has been touted as a way to restore public trust and confidence in city government. But Shanks no longer has any affiliation with the city and his suggested language in the pledge has some candidates, like incumbent Councilmember Suds Jain, calling it unfairly biased and questioning the motives.
Jain said he signed off on the city’s own fair campaign practices. He isn’t planning on signing the independent pledge because of its biases, including having to accept past Santa Clara County Grand Jury report findings , which Jain and others on the Santa Clara City Council openly disavowed .
“They’re beating this drum about ethics constantly,” Jain told San José Spotlight. “They’re trying to paint us as unethical, when to be honest, I think it’s projection.”
Come November, Santa Clara voters will be deciding on four council seats. District 1 is an open race, with Councilmember Kathy Watanabe terming out. Incumbent District 4 Councilmember Kevin Park is facing off against former Councilmember Teresa O’Neill. Jain in District 5 is being challenged by David Kertes, vice president of sales at American Equipment, and incumbent District 6 Councilmember Anthony Becker has two challengers: Santa Clara University Assistant Dean of the School of Engineering Kelly Cox and telecom manager George Guerra.
Taking the pledge
Jain and Park said they weren’t contacted about the pledge until Aug. 9, the deadline for candidates to file their ballot statements.
Park had other ethics concerns about the independent pledge itself, as well as Shanks, who he’s had bad experiences with in the past. Park said there were numerous ethics complaints during the 2014 elections, some which he filed. That was the last year Shanks worked with the city in ethics advising. A final forum for candidates to discuss ethics issues from the campaign trail was scheduled, but Park said it closed early, as Shanks announced there weren’t any issues.
He said Shanks’ credentials as the former city ethics advisor don’t actually demonstrate Shanks’ own ethics, alleging he created the independent ethics pledge to have a reason to call certain candidates unethical.
Shanks declined to comment for this article and referred San José Spotlight to his website where he wrote current city officials have “failed to uphold high ethical standards,” so he created the pledge for candidates to show their commitment to rebuilding public trust.
In an email exchange with Park, Shanks wrote that just questioning the ethics of the pledge undermined the city’s ethics. He also rebutted Park questioning his credentials with another reference to his experience at the city and Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.
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Kertes, who is running against Jain, said ethics is one of the foremost concerns he hears from residents. He signed the independent pledge and said restoring transparency and ethics to the council are the center of his campaign.
“(Residents are) fed up with the council we have, they want transparency, ethics and honesty,” Kertes told San José Spotlight.
While Santa Clara has an official code of ethics, Kertes said Shanks’ independent pledge “goes much deeper” than the city’s code. Along with respect and and honesty requirements, the independent ethics pledge explicitly discourages negative campaigning, and requires supporting the hiring of an ethics advisor in the city and establishing an ethics commission with subpoena power.
Councilmembers have discussed reestablishing the ethics advisor and creating a commission following the publication of two grand jury reports this year. Kertes said the independent pledge better explains what ethics means and what candidates are signing up for by listing specific topics and actions.
O’Neill, who’s running against Park, said she first learned of the independent ethics pledge after Shanks wrote an article about it on a local blog. She said she’s talked with Shanks about revamping the city’s ethics program and suggested he add a public process to create an ethics commission.
Cox, who’s running against Becker, wrote in her candidate statement that she signed the “Santa Clara Ethics Pledge,” a reference the independent ethics pledge. She said she saw it as an opportunity to commit to improving the city government’s integrity.
“The ethics pledge is an opportunity to not only state our principles as candidates, but do so publicly as an act of response to the multitudes of citizens who have made pleas for a more functional and professional council,” Cox told San José Spotlight. “It is both a personal and collegial commitment.”
Park agreed the council has a litany of ethics issues, and often doesn’t get along, but he added those ethics issues are different from the issues that Shanks identified, alleging that some councilmembers have lied during public meetings. He said this independent ethics pledge is a way to distract voters from those existing problems and to attack people who raise those issues.
“This is another type of McCarthyism, (saying) these people are less ethical because they refuse to sign our personalized ethics pledge,” Park told San José Spotlight. “He’s basically trying to create an ethics quandary when there is none.”
Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at sakura@sanjosespotlight.com or @SakuCannestra on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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