Before Hiring an Election Ethics Advisor

The Conversation Santa Clara Hasn’t Had in 20 Years

Recognizing Ethics Issues in Real Time — Part 2 of 3

The Motion

During the July 14 City Council/Stadium Authority meeting, Council Member Kevin Park proposed scheduling a future discussion of what it would take to bring an election ethics advisor back to Santa Clara for the first time in ten years.

The motion also called for reviving the Candidate Forum, the First Word, and the Final Word — the programs that once helped voters size up the people running for local office the day mail ballots could be returned or to the night before the election.

Park’s motion was seconded and approved unanimously.

I was genuinely encouraged. For the first time in years, I thought Santa Clara might be ready for a broader conversation about election ethics, ethical leadership, and public trust — a conversation the City has not really had, on its own initiative, in more than twenty years.

Most of the recent ones were forced by a critical Civil Grand Jury report.

Because the item was not on the published agenda, Council Policy 030 limited the discussion to scheduling and logistics — whether to place it on a future agenda, and whether there was still enough time to find a consultant before the November election.

That may be an important question. But it is not the first question.

The first question — and the one the Council should take up first when it returns from summer recess on August 18 — is much larger:

What problem is Santa Clara trying to solve?

How Good Public Decisions Get Made

One of Public Trust Now’s goals is to help improve the ethics quality of Santa Clara’s important public decisions — by which we mean the degree to which a decision reflects the community’s shared values, applies the City’s Good Government Guiding Principles, serves the people’s best interests, and earns their trust.

Hiring an election ethics advisor is a solution to a problem no one has yet named. And you cannot know whether a solution is the right one until you know the problem it is meant to solve.

A high-quality decision would run the other way around: name the problem, ask the people whether they agree it is the problem, and only then look for the solution that best fits the City’s values and ethical standards, meets the needs of voters and candidates, aligns with the City’s duties, and strengthens public trust. That is simply how good policy gets built. It begins with understanding the need.

First, Name the Problem

There is no shortage of problems an election ethics program might try to solve, and they are not all the same problem.

Some belong to voters — that they don’t have enough solid information to choose candidates they trust, that they can’t always tell an honest campaign from a manipulative one, that they don’t know who has signed the state’s Code of Fair Campaign Practices or what signing it is supposed to mean, and, underneath all of it, a growing belief that candidates will do whatever it takes to win and that the election itself may not be fair.

Others belong to the candidates — confusion about what an ethical campaign even looks like and about what voters expect of them, alongside the plainer problems of candidates who lie about themselves or about their opponents.

A third set is about conduct: the declining civility of candidate forums, and candidates who stand by while third parties attack their opponents or while their own supporters steal signs and play other dirty tricks.

A fourth is about money: independent expenditures and campaign finance generally, PACs that lie about candidates, voters who often cannot tell who is actually paying for a mailer, and the plain reality that a candidate with no outside money behind them cannot be heard over an opponent backed by upwards of half a million dollars in independent spending.

And a last set is about the system itself: there is nowhere to lodge a complaint about an unfair practice or a piece of misinformation, and no shared expectation about how sitting Council members who are not on the ballot should behave when they support or oppose the people who are.

To that list, 2026 adds a problem the old program never had to face — anonymous and AI-generated attacks that can spread a lie faster than any candidate can answer it. And in this election the lie can even be in the candidate’s own voice.

Each of those is a different problem, and each calls for a different response. A program built to fix one of them may do little for the others. That is exactly why the Council has to decide which ones it is trying to solve before it decides what to build.

Then, Ask What People Actually Need

Naming the problem leads straight to the next question: what do voters and candidates actually need?

Voters need enough trustworthy information to elect people they can rely on — the candidates’ backgrounds and positions on the people’s issues, including where they stand on ethics and public trust; a plain understanding of the other issues at stake, and of how independent expenditures and “non-coordination” really work; unbiased forums where they can ask their own questions and watch candidates answer for questionable claims; help fact-checking the mailers, the ads and the unfamiliar groups sending them; and some honest way to judge whether a candidate’s values line up with their own.

Candidates have told us they need something different: clear expectations, confidential advice, education, help recognizing an ethical dilemma before it becomes a crisis, and support in handling a hard moment — including a complaint filed against them, or one they are weighing whether to file.

Almost everything on both lists is educational, not punitive. Voters and candidates mostly need to understand — the standards, the stakes, each other. That will matter a great deal when the City finally gets to the question of what kind of program to build.

The Questions That Follow

From there the questions keep building, and each one deserves a public answer before the City reaches for a tool.

What standards does Santa Clara expect? It has stated some, at least once. Its 2010 candidate guide told candidates that “an honorable campaign does not have to be ‘nice'” — that campaigns can be hard-fought, passionately argued, and competitive, so long as the fight is about issues, the argument is about the best way to meet public needs, and the competition stays “between generous and talented neighbors in a race to provide public service.” That is a real standard. But saying it once or three times in guides is not the same as teaching it, expecting it, experiencing it, and standing behind it — and the state’s Code of Fair Campaign Practices means little if the City never explains why it matters, nobody follows it, and no one holds anyone to it.

What are the predictable ethical stumbling blocks — winning versus fairness, negative campaigning, misleading claims, pressure from supporters, the pull of social media and fundraising, the temptation to retaliate, the growing feeling that you are going to lose — and what help should the City offer candidates who face them? What role should the City actually play — education, advice, public discussion, complaint resolution, or should the City bar all ethics complaints during election season to prevent ethics being weaponized. Or maybe the City should only recognize exemplary conduct. Policy first; program second.

And finally, what kind of organizational commitment will this take? That is the question Santa Clara has the hardest time with, and it is not really about ethics — it is about priorities. The City knows how to make a serious commitment when it decides something matters: it planned for years, marshaled resources, and brought in expert help to host World Cup matches. Ethical leadership and public trust deserve that same seriousness, if the City believes they are essential to good government.

What is striking is that Santa Clara has been handed opportunity after opportunity to strengthen its ethics — Grand Jury reports, public controversies, and now this motion — and still has not sat down for one comprehensive, forward-looking conversation with the people about public ethics and public trust in more than twenty years. What kind of City does Santa Clara want to become — and what does that look like in practice during an election campaign.

Only Now, the Question the Motion Asked

Only after all that should Santa Clara ask the question the July 14 motion started with: should the City hire an election ethics advisor?

Maybe. Maybe not. An advisor may turn out to be exactly the right first step. But until the City answers the earlier questions, it cannot know what kind of advisor it needs — or whether an advisor is the best answer at all.

The proposal is genuinely welcome because it opens a door Santa Clara has not walked through in more than twenty years: the chance to ask what kind of election culture it wants to build.

That conversation will not answer every question. It doesn’t need to. If it begins well, it will naturally lead to the next conversation, and then the next—about the ethical standards the City wants to encourage, the support its candidates and voters need, the role City government should play, and the long-term commitment and policies required to sustain all three.

Good ethics programs are built—one conversation, one policy, one practice, and one institution at a time. An election ethics initiative could be the first step in the development of Santa Clara’s next generation ethics program.

Previously: Part 1 — The Shelter the Public Rebuilt. Next: Part 3 — The Charter: Close to Ethics, Behind Closed Doors. Quotations are from the video record of the July 14, 2026 City Council meeting. The opinions and analyses here are the author’s own and do not represent the views of the City of Santa Clara, the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, or Santa Clara University. Public Trust Now welcomes corrections; if we’ve misstated anything, tell us and we’ll fix it and say so.

About Public Trust Now

Public Trust Now examines Santa Clara city government through an ethics and public trust lens, so residents can follow the reasoning, test it, disagree with it, and use the same tools themselves. Learn more about how we analyze a decision.

Public Trust Now operates independently of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and Santa Clara University. The Framework for Ethical Decision Making is used here for educational analysis; the conclusions we draw are our own, and should not be attributed to the Center, the University, or the City of Santa Clara.