|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
During her 2024 campaign for Palo Alto City Council, then-candidate Katie Causey knocked on 15,000 doors, raised $53,000 in contributions and woke up at 5 a.m. some days to pick up advertising materials from San Francisco before heading to work.
Her bid in the four-seat council race fell short in the end. She received the sixth-most votes out of nine candidates – 700 votes behind the fourth-place finisher Keith Reckdahl.
Local elected officials make decisions that shape schools, housing, taxes, public safety and more. While decisions made in local government chambers affect everyone, candidate demographics and access to money seem to shape who runs for office, and who is elected.
Money is a key factor, but it’s not the only one, said Brian Adams, a political scientist at San Diego State University who studies campaign finance in local elections.
“Money is a necessary but not sufficient condition for winning,” Adams said. “You need enough money to run a competitive campaign, but as long as you’ve got enough, you can be outspent and still win.”
The costs of running for local public office – including fixed costs like filing fees and candidate statement charges – depend on the race and the jurisdiction. Candidates in some Midpeninsula cities raise donations in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a viable run for office, and candidates for city council tend to raise more money than those for school board elections.
Causey said candidates should raise at least $40,000 for a viable run for council in Palo Alto. Indeed, the nine candidates for the 2024 council race raised a total of $340,000, for an average $38,000 per candidate; Causey herself raised the second-most amount of money in the field. Current Palo Alto council member Julie Lythcott-Haims, who was elected to council in 2022 and is not running for re-election this year, raised $105,000 when running and said they spent nearly all of it.
Total campaign contributions tend to be higher in the Palo Alto City Council race than in nearby cities. Some Midpeninsula cities have voluntary campaign contribution or expenditure limits – in which candidates agree to stay below a set cap – including a roughly $32,000 limit in Mountain View and $31,000 in Redwood City.
School board races tend to have lower campaign finance contributions. Causey, who ran unsuccessfully in 2020 for Palo Alto Unified School District, said $20,000 is what candidates should aim for in Palo Alto. Tonga Victoria, an East Palo Alto resident who fell short in a bid for Sequoia Union High School District Board of Trustees in 2024, said candidates needed around $10,000 for people with no prior history of running.
Candidates for county Board of Supervisors tend to require a bigger war chest. Maggie Cornejo, who ran for San Mateo County Board of Supervisors in 2024, said she raised close to $50,000, but was “scraping for pennies” toward the end of her campaign. Her bid was unsuccessful, and she noted that $100,000 would have helped her make a larger impact in her campaign – and some people say $400,000 is necessary to make a viable run for Board of Supervisors, where each of the county’s five districts is home to roughly 153,000 people.
“If you run (against) someone that maybe can raise $200,000, and their face is everywhere, the science is just obvious, right?” Cornejo said. “The more people interact with you, the higher probability that they’ll vote for you.”
The amount of money candidates need to raise also depends on their name recognition, with newcomers likely to require more money to get their name out.
“For some of my colleagues who have been on the ballot multiple times and maybe held office multiple times, they have name recognition, which is a huge asset,” Lythcott-Haims said. “It’s probably the greatest asset in a campaign.”
Candidates spend campaign contributions on a range of costs, but a website and printed advertising materials for mailings or yard signs are a significant expense, several candidates said.
“In Palo Alto… traditionally races are won and lost by who sends the most mail,” said Causey.
Some candidates may hire a paid campaign manager, a consultant for fundraising or interns. Others may rely on volunteers for equivalent positions.
There are additional costs of a campaign, such as fees for a candidate statement: a short statement from a person running for elected office that appears in the official information guide sent to voters. That cost is waived in some cities, including Palo Alto, but is $500 to $800 for candidates in Menlo Park and $500 for Mountain View candidates who abide by the voluntary campaign finance limit.
Other expenses include the professional attire needed for public forums and software like Political Data Intelligence, which can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars and is used for phone banking and door-to-door canvassing. Some candidates also cover the cost of food for meet-and-greets with community members.
Elise Lester is a Mountain View resident who serves as president of Silicon Valley Young Democrats – an organization that promotes young progressive candidates – and is vice chair of Mountain View’s Human Relations Commission. She said expenses add up.
“There’s all kinds of little things that, when you budget it out, definitely could pose a barrier to folks that are looking to run for local office,” Lester said.
Adams, the political scientist, agreed.
“Even on a local level, most people can’t afford to spend $30,000 on a campaign,” Adams said. “Most people don’t know enough wealthy people to be able to raise $30,000 from other people. So, even if it’s a small amount, it’s still a barrier.”
‘Sweat equity’: non-financial costs for candidates
Beyond the monetary costs, several former candidates for public office said their campaign posed an extensive time commitment.
“It is a full-time job,” Cornejo, the former candidate for San Mateo Board of Supervisors, said. “You’re fundraising at night, making calls at night. You have to door-knock and you have to connect with your voters.”
“There’s a lot of your own sweat equity,” Lythcott-Haims said. “It’s about your own time availability.”
Causey said she planned her runs for city council and school board several years in advance to work out the logistics, and organized a meal train with friends and family because she had so little time to make food herself after her 9-to-5 job.
“Do you have a job that is flexible enough to run for office?” Causey said. “Do you have somebody who can cook for you? Can you order food? Do you have transportation for getting around to knock on doors or attend forums?”
Lester, the president of Silicon Valley Young Democrats, noted that some people cannot afford to take time off of work, and certain demographics may be at a disadvantage.
“The expectation is that you hit as many doors and get as many voter contacts as you possibly can, which is extremely difficult if you’re working full time, especially if you’re commuting or if you are a working parent, or a student, or a young person,” she said.
Victoria said she suffered burnout during her campaign for the Sequoia Board of Trustees. She also found out she was pregnant with her second child during the campaign.
“I definitely was not ready for the time commitment to canvas properly,” she said, adding that she prioritized community events over door-knocking, despite the tradeoffs of this approach. “I’m a mom, I’m a wife. I have all my other duties plus a job, and so that was definitely something that I had to consider.”
Who wins the race?
Former candidates said that demographic factors including age, race and gender, influence the public’s reception to certain candidates.
“When you’re going door to door, there’s going to be a lot of people who see a young woman, and just automatically assume that she’s not qualified,” Causey said. She added that young candidates need the “extra leverage” of more ads, mailers and time directed to audiences that she might otherwise not reach. Lester agreed that public-facing young people are held to a higher standard.
Lythcott-Haims said that voters received them differently as a biracial person.
“As a brown-skinned person in the city, you get a different response when you knock on doors than a white person does,” they said, noting that this fact, plus a bad knee made them reluctant to go door-to-door. “I decided that’s not the best strategy for me.”
Victoria, who was born in East Palo Alto and whose parents are from the Polynesian nation of Tonga, said race was also a factor in her school board election in District E, which represents East Palo Alto, Belle Haven and North Fair Oaks and has a majority Hispanic population.
“We live in an area… where we are predominantly Hispanic, and I don’t have that name on my ballot,” she said. “I think that plays a big role when people decide who to vote for.”
The candidate’s income and network also affect their viability, Cornejo said.
“Network is crucial,” she said. “If your current network can’t really help you raise money or open doors or make connections or volunteer then it is going to be really difficult to get to that finish line.”
Despite the concerns and outcomes in Causey and Cornejo’s campaign, both former candidates said they enjoyed the experience of running and getting to know their communities. Lythcott-Haims said grassroots campaigns are possible, particularly with social media as a lower-cost advertising alternative, but cautioned that the hours are long and the stipend in Palo Alto is not a living wage – a factor that influenced their decision not to re-run.
Lester said that “systemic barriers” remain, but it’s possible for younger candidates, women, and people of color to run successful campaigns, and organizations like Silicon Valley Young Democrats help connect first-time candidates with additional resources. Victoria said that established East Palo Alto leaders have made themselves available to newer ones, but more work remains.
“There’s more to be done in getting more organizers and classroom folks to be included in the race in a meaningful way,” she said.
Most Popular
Mountain View seeks community input for new pickleball courts near SunnyvaleOctober 14, 2026 11:34 am
