Some may have badges, elected roles or fancy titles with authority but they surely don’t automatically come with ethics. Ethics is not a “factory setting”. Councilmember Karen Hardy said it best, “you either have ethics or you don’t” and clearly there are those in this city and county that do not have any. More importantly they lack accountability, integrity and most importantly transparency. 

Ethics has been a very hot topic as of late because ethics seems to be in freefall in the City of Santa Clara and County of Santa Clara. Narratives cranked out by specific individuals and groups, specifically Mayor Lisa Gillmor in her quest to combat corruption. When the 2022 Grand Jury Report came out she conveniently had a plan, a crusade known as the “Anti-Corruption Reform Plan”. This reminds me of a similar situation to Juan Orlando Hernandez, the ex-Honduran leader convicted in a drug case. Hernandez, a two-faced politician hungry for power that masqueraded as an anti-drug crusader while partnering with drug traffickers. In this case, Mayor Gillmor acts like the champion of cracking down on corruption but in reality she is the root of all Santa Clara’s corruption. Corruption that I, this paper and many others have cataloged over the years through many articles and my own comments/letters to this paper. When the Mayor preaches ethics, she fails to practice what she preaches including those around her and those who enable her illegal behavior. 

Let’s start at the top with Mayor Gillmor and the ongoing, unanswered questions about her ethics and lack thereof. Where is the ethical integrity in the Morse Mansion issue and her vote in 2016—one that many residents view as an obvious, glaring conflict of interest? Why hasn’t that been addressed head-on? Where is the ethical transparency when the political mailers from both the POA and Gillmor’s own campaign are traced back to the same PO Box in the Merry Mart building—a building she personally owns? How is that acceptable in any situation involving public trust? And where is the ethical honesty when her mailers loudly cite the Civil Grand Jury’s statement that actions that her enemies “may have violated city and state election laws”? Why rely on the ambiguous “may”? People need to be given clarity—either there was a violation or there wasn’t? These aren’t minor details. These are serious ethical questions about Mayor Gillmor’s leadership, and Santa Clara deserves direct answers—not evasions, not spin, and not carefully worded narratives that raise more doubts than they resolve.

What about former Councilmember and current School Board Member Kathy Watanabe and her husband College Trustee, Karl Watanabe. Where are their ethics considering one leaked a report to the other and one lied to the authorities about it? 

Where Is the Civil Grand Jury’s Ethics?How can a body that is supposed to serve as a watchdog for good government become entangled in politics— even influence elections in 2016, 2022, and 2024? If the Civil Grand Jury exists to promote transparency and accountability, then where is its own accountability? Where is the grand jury’s commitment to ethics when it comes to getting the facts right? What safeguards are in place to prevent the violation of a subject’s due-process rights? And when reports are released to the public, where is the assurance that what is published reflects integrity, accuracy, and truth rather than misinformation or unsupported conclusions? A Civil Grand Jury’s power is significant—its reports can shape public opinion, damage reputations, and influence political outcomes. With that power, comes greater responsibility that should come with an equally strong obligation to fairness, and diligence. When that obligation is not met, the public is right to ask: Who watches the watchdog?

The ordained “ethics expert” Tom Shanks, an ethics consultant to the city of Santa Clara going back the days of Mayor Judy Nadler and up till 2014 when he suddenly disappeared to never be heard from again until right before the 2022 City Council Elections. Only then did he emerge from the ethical cocoon to identify the “issues” facing Santa Clara, and the “collapse of ethics” according to Mayor Gillmor, former Councilmember Watanabe and the rest of the Gillmor mafia. Timely for “ethics expert” Shanks to return considering the Gillmor Grand Jury report was coming out within months and Shanks himself would cite and reference the same report as some sort of religious text which he would preach about on his barely viewed YouTube program with the Special Advisor to Mayor Gillmor, Kirk Vartan, called “Public Trust Review”.  This biased YouTube “series” documents everything Mayor Gillmor had issue with while denying they are not biased or associated with the Mayor. “Ethics Expert” Shanks and Special Advisor to Mayor Gillmor Kirk Vartan both had an “episode” calling Mayor Gillmor’s election mailers “fair campaigning”, referencing a mailer that literally has a Tom Shanks quote on it. After the 2022 elections, Tom Shanks would stick around to add “ethical” commentary through Gillmor’s blogger, Robert Haugh and other channels. By the 2024 elections, Tom Shanks would send out an ethics pledge to all candidates, however “the ethics pledge” was sent to the Gillmor candidates in advance before all other candidates. The Gillmor aligned candidates, David Kertes, Kelly Cox, Satish Chandra and Teresa O’Neill all signed this pledge and then was used on the fancy mailers from the POA. Coincidentally, in 2022 the Santa Clara POA sent out a pledge to potential candidates if they would protect the Police Chief being elected. Coincidence? I think not. All by design by the Gillmor mafia to bully candidates into something. Are these actions by Tom Shanks and the special advisor to the Mayor Kirk Vartan really ethical for their biased approach with the selective application of ethics, and failure to tell the truth? The curious question is: What does Tom Shanks know and why is it clear he has shown allegiance to a side? What does Tom Shanks have to hide? Is he ethical for hire? 

Where is the ethics and integrity for fake non-profit Stand Up for Santa Clara whose moral compass seems to be lost at sea because they won’t prove their non-profit status and are politically active which is a no, no for a non-profit. What does that say about an organization that parades around like a non profit but is ultimately a political tool created by Mayor Gillmor and Jude Barry? Where was Stand Up for Santa Clara’s ethics when they were asking people to write letters to the District Attorney to investigate five anti-Gillmor Councilmembers? 

Then there is District Attorney Jeff Rosen, a prosecutor that promotes his “reforms” , a similar saying that Mayor Gillmor herself quotes in her hashtags, #ReformsThatWork. It’s hard to talk about the recently passed Santa Clara County Measure A oversight without addressing the bigger issue in Santa Clara: accountability only seems to apply to people who aren’t politically connected. 

When the district attorney goes after some officials but gives his friends a free pass, that isn’t “public safety” — it’s politics. And it sends a clear message: some people in this county get protection, and others get prosecution.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen had spent months assuring voters in fancy election mailers for Measure A that “safer communities require holding criminals accountable,” insisting Measure A was essential for public safety. Yet the moment Measure A passed—a measure overwhelmingly sold as a lifeline for struggling hospitals—Rosen pivoted. Rather than defend the public’s clear intent, he raised the possibility of investigating the County because too much of the revenue may go to healthcare instead of his own office.

That is not accountability. It looks like political positioning.

If people are serious about transparency in Measure A spending, then we should be just as serious about transparency in how our leaders treat the law. No Mayor or anyone should be above it, and no District Attorney should get to decide who laws apply to based on personal alliances. Until that changes, voters have every right to question where their tax dollars — and their trust — are going. We’ve watched a Mayor send confidential documents to her private email and influence a civil grand jury with no real consequences, while others get dragged through the legal system for far less. Why? Because she’s politically aligned with the District Attorney. One can’t help but ponder how the District Attorney has treated Gillmor’s alignment with the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury, which only deepens the concern that political calculations—rather than public safety—too often guide decisions within the District Attorney’s office.

That’s not an oversight. That’s a protection racket. That isn’t accountability. It’s an entitlement.  And it reeks of political opportunism.

How are we supposed to trust anyone with millions in new tax dollars when the District Attorney can’t even pretend to apply the law evenly? If you’re on his good side, you get a shield. If you’re not, you get a subpoena. That’s the real story here — Measure A is just the latest stage for a District Attorney who picks targets based on loyalty, not justice.

Until the City of Santa Clara stops letting a Mayor act above the law and a District Attorney act like her political bodyguard, all this talk about “transparency” is a joke. Remember the District Attorney cleared Gillmor of her 700 form filings in which she was sued over. Many still don’t know all the assets and income that Gillmor is not reporting as required by law. 

In court, we learned that Santa Clara POA President Jeremy Schmidt was described as the primary decision-maker for the POA’s political operations, coordinating with consultants—including Gillmor ally Jude Barry—along with PR firms, mail houses, and web developers. It was discovered that he greenlit sending mailers and running “public interest” messaging that blurred directly into campaign activity. Perhaps most revealing was the rapid creation of grandjuryreport.com on the very morning news broke that a Civil Grand Jury report was coming. In my prior letter to the editor, I described Jude Barry texts with Jeremy Schmidt that the report had been “leaked by the bad guys,” prompting the question “Does this change the plan?” The San Francisco Chronicle had published their article—at 8:58 a.m., though it was discovered the Chronicle briefly posted material around midnight before removing it. Yet, the website domain was purchased by the POA at 8:40 a.m., and a developer was immediately hired and began building a site using excerpts from the leaked report—well before the official release. Days later, the POA mailed campaign pieces built from those same excerpts; one version even displayed a Grand Jury logo before being replaced with a “page intentionally left blank,” raising questions about whether they changed it after being caught. It also came out in court that POA President Schmidt deleted messages with Jude Barry related to the leak—a peace officer destroying evidence raises eyebrows. All of this shows the POA, its consultants, and its media operation were acting in real-time coordination, turning the report into a political weapon that directly benefited the candidates they endorsed including Gillmor. Where is POA President Jeremy Schmidt and Jude Barry’s ethics? Where is their transparency? It seems they benefited from the report. 

Let’s be clear about what this means: While Rosen was gearing up to prosecute a political opponent for allegedly leaking the same report, his own political allies were actively using the leaked report, distributing it, building a website around it, and turning it into campaign ammunition.

And Rosen has never lifted a finger to further investigate them. Leaving stones unturned like who leaked the report to the San Francisco Chronicle? 

This selective pattern is not new. In August 2024, Rosen quietly sought to reduce the death sentence of the man who murdered seven people in the infamous 1988 ESL mass shooting—an abrupt contradiction of his tough-on-crime rhetoric, and one noted by observers as part of his attempt to reposition himself for higher office. Meanwhile, Jenny Higgins Bradanini—during her 2020 San Jose City Council campaign was driving while on prescription drugs and killed a father who was putting up Christmas decorations. Higgins-Brandanini received leniency through a private-judge arrangement after already having her sentence reduced. Her political connections, including ties to Rosen’s circle, understandably raise public concern about whether justice applies differently to the well-connected.

Taken together, these episodes paint a troubling picture: an office where legal power appears to shift based on political usefulness rather than equal justice.

So residents are left with serious questions Rosen has not addressed: Why does one mayor’s mishandling of confidential materials trigger no further investigation, while another official is aggressively prosecuted? Why was a notorious mass murderer granted leniency while Rosen campaigns on being “tough on crime”? Why did scrutiny of Measure A’s spending emerge only after Rosen’s own office sought more funding?
And why did the DA’s political allies, their families and their consultants face no inquiry regarding their rapid use of leaked Grand Jury materials during an election—materials whose possession was treated as criminal when held by others?

Where is District Attorney Jeff Rosen’s ethics? 

Santa Clara County deserves a justice system that does not bend toward political alliances, ambitions, or coordinated campaign machinery. It deserves leadership grounded in even-handed integrity, not selective outrage and strategic silence. Santa Clara County does not need a District Attorney who uses prosecutions as political weapons and looks the other way when friends or aligned operatives play fast and loose with leaked government documents. We don’t need a District Attorney who treats a Grand Jury report as a criminal matter only when it harms his political enemies. And we absolutely do not need a District Attorney who uses the moral authority of his office as a stepping stone to statewide office while ignoring misconduct in his own political ecosystem. Meanwhile, Rosen contorts his positions to fit the moment: tough on crime one month, soft on a mass murderer the next; guardian of accountability today, threatening investigations for budget leverage tomorrow.

Until these contradictions are confronted, residents are right to consider whether it is time for new leadership—leadership committed to equal justice, not political advantage.

Enough is enough. 

Why do you need ethics when you can control the game and the outcomes? The reality is, they don’t need no stinking ethics, transparency, or to follow the rules. However, you do and like from the song “For What it’s Worth”, “Step out of line, the man come and take you away”. So everybody look at what’s going down. See what is happening in your city and your county.