By Khalida Sarwari
Two incumbents and four challengers who portray themselves as tenant rights advocates will compete for three seats on the Sunnyvale City Council this November, according to filed nomination papers.
Henry Alexander III will face off against incumbent Gustav Larsson for Seat 1, Joshua Grossman will take on Mayor Glenn Hendricks for Seat 2, and John Cordes will match up against Mason Fong for Seat 3, which will be vacated by termed-out Councilman Jim Griffith.
Although he doesn’t have big plans for the immediate future, Griffith said he is considering a run for Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese’s seat in 2020.
Seat 1
Alexander, 47, is a regional marketing operations manager for Crystal Equation and an adjunct professor at San Jose’s Cogswell Polytechnical College. His priorities are reducing traffic congestion and managing growth.
“Sunnyvale needs a representative that will represent its citizens and not hyper-growth, which affects our quality of life and our safety,” he said.
He was reared in San Jose and says he knew he was cut out for politics in the eighth grade when he was crowned president of Old Orchard School in Campbell. He lives in the Raynor Park neighborhood with his wife Michelle, a jewelry designer. They have three children.
Larsson, the incumbent, is a software engineer for a cybersecurity startup. The 51-year-old Cincinnati native moved to the Bay Area to attend college and ended up buying a house in Sunnyvale.
He became politically active 10 years ago when he fought an office development project in his neighborhood.
“Now it’s a real joy for me to see other residents become more involved and learn to navigate city government,” he said. “I like local government because it’s the residents themselves who shape the future of our own city.”
Larsson says he is seeking a second term to continue overseeing progress in downtown development, clean energy initiatives, open space expansion and public safety. He said his priorities include affordable housing, traffic and climate change.
Seat 2
Grossman chairs Sunnyvale’s housing and human services commission as well as the building code appeals board. The 50-year-old tech exec and attorney aims to be “a voice for the people of Sunnyvale.”
He said he caught the public service bug when he served on the board of his daughters’ school district. In Sunnyvale, he sees an opportunity to protect public spaces, put the interests of residents before developers and businesses, and advocate for balanced growth and affordable housing. Grossman has championed the rights of mobile home park owners and come out in favor of rent control.
“When I’m elected I’ll make decisions based on the best interests of Sunnyvale, not those of big developers and the business establishment,” he said.
He lives in the Heritage District with his wife Maichen Liu-Grossman, an English teacher at Santa Clara High School.
Hendricks, 57, is the sole Republican on the ticket, although the council is nonpartisan. He is nearing his fifth year on the council, third as Sunnyvale’s mayor. He is running again to maintain the city’s quality of life and make sure residents are heard, Hendricks said.
The city’s long-term financial stability, public safety and the continuing development of downtown are among his priorities.
“I believe people should re-elect me because I have been working very hard on their behalf as a council member,” he said. “I have listened to them and made the best policy decisions for Sunnyvale.”
It was a desire to be heard by public officials and effect change that led Hendricks to serve on a city board and committee before putting in a 3 ½-year stint on the planning commission.
Hendricks lives less than a mile from where he grew up. He is married to Cindy, who works for a local tech company, and has three children. He is newly retired after spending 35 years in high-tech, mainly in the financial sector.
Seat 3
Cordes, 60, is a retired engineering manager who first ran for council in 2016. He’s a longtime volunteer who currently serves on three city commissions and two nonprofit boards. His goals are to help reduce traffic congestion, create more affordable housing and be responsive to residents.
“I think Sunnyvale is a wonderful city, but it is facing many challenges,” he said. “I want to improve the quality of life for Sunnyvale residents and employees. I am retired and have the demonstrated decades of steady leadership, time, passion and dedication.”
Cordes hails from Buffalo Grove, Illinois, a once suburban community that has become developed much like Sunnyvale, he said. But it’s the latter that’s been home for Cordes the last 20 years, specifically the Sunnyvale Neighbors of Arbor Including LaLinda neighborhood, or SNAIL, where Cordes lives with his wife Diane Gleason, a math teacher at Gunn High School.
At 26, Fong is the youngest of the candidates but has political stock: his mother worked in Jerry Brown’s first administration as governor and his father was a staffer for the late Gordon Lau, the first Asian-American county supervisor in San Francisco.
Fong became civically engaged at De Anza College and UC San Diego and later worked as a senior aide for Congressmen Mike Honda and Ro Khanna. He now serves as an aide for San Jose Councilman Chappie Jones and specializes in housing and transportation policies.
His priorities are reducing traffic, addressing housing issues and protecting the environment.
“I am running for Sunnyvale City Council to create a livable Sunnyvale,” he said. “I want all Sunnyvale residents to be able to achieve the dream of raising a family in the heart of Silicon Valley with the highest quality of life possible.”
A fourth generation Bay Area resident, Fong grew up in San Mateo and lives in the Raynor Park neighborhood.
