Congressman Sam Liccardo, who represents parts of San Jose and West Valley and Peninsula cities in Silicon Valley, won a second term in Congress on Nov. 3, with 77% of the vote.
The former San Jose mayor returned on Saturday to a Washington D.C. very different from the one he left, and as part of the new majority Democratic Party, he sees opportunities for progres.s.
He believes it will take bipartisanship, however, and says he spends time on the other side of the aisle, talking to Republicans.
The congressman took on Sunday to speak by phone, in between his DC meetings. He says centrist Democrats have a majority in the House and that victories by the party’s socialist and progressive candidates were disproportionately covered by the media.
Liccardo says Rep. Hakeem Jeffries has the votes to become Speaker of the House. He believes that addressing affordability issues is more important to voters than another round of corruption investigations and presidential impeachment actions, though he expected a vote to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to proceed.
Tuesday evening, the House narrowly defeated a motion to advance that impeachmnent resolution to a committee vote.
Liccardo thinks that the new Congress might be better positioned to tackle social media safety. “Calls for legislation on this have been coming for about a quarter century. And we’ve seen no significant progress,” he said.
With “the change in leadership in both houses, (there’s) greater commitment to getting something done early. We have to get this done in 2027, because by 2028, we’ll be in the middle of a presidential election.”
Liccardo addressed the impact of large election campaign expenditures and the effect it’s having on elections. “If you look at the polling, there’s a bipartisan supermajority of Americans who say, ‘there’s too damn much money in politics.’”
The Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that equated campaign spending with First Amendment free speech protections was a turning point that ended spending limits. “We may have that opportunity, with enough Republicans feeling the populist heat, to actually move forward on a constitutional amendment. … It’s an idea that I’m conjuring around with two colleagues.”
As a member of the Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology and Artificial Intelligence, Liccardo has a front row seat to the discussions surrounding Silicon Valley’s transformative technologies. Asked about the recent multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency heist attributed to state actors, Liccardo discussed proposed legislative actions to protect the financial system.
“There’s a number of different bills. The largest on the House side is called the Frontier Act, and that’s led by Lori Trahan and Jay Obernolte. And I’ve been talking to them for a while about it,” he said.
“Cyberhacking alone from AI is going to have hugely disruptive impacts in our financial system and our economy. And as that drumbeat gets louder, I pray that we’ll be able to get Congress and the President to move – before it becomes catastrophic,” Liccardo said.
With elections in the United States, Brazil and Israel showing movement away from authoritarianism and the right, Liccardo sees some hope but stresses the need to remain vigilant. “We all pray that the fever is breaking, but I’m deeply concerned that more savvy charlatans than Trump have a playbook and the technological tools to manipulate democratic regimes into despotism,” he warned.
“We all need to fight this battle for many years to come, I fear.”
