49er-funded PACs have spent over $10 million in the last three elections helping elect five of their preferred candidates to a 7-seat Council and Stadium Authority majority. PACs can put unlimited money into campaigns as long as they don’t coordinate with candidates directly.

The 2022 Civil Grand Jury found that these five members “can—and do—vote in a manner favorable to the Team” rather than the public—without ever publicly addressing the conflict the campaign spending creates, or the public perception that the answer from this majority is always “yes.”

Trust requires independence. What we see instead: week after week, Council members—and even senior staff—behave as if they are 49ers employees, supporting everything the Team wants—with no recusals, no City Attorney advisories, no City Manager directives about Stadium Authority ethics.

Almost all candidates in Santa Clara agree to spend no more than about $25,000 on their campaigns. It sounds like a level playing field. It isn’t.

Independent expenditures don’t count toward the cap. That’s how 49er PACs can spend millions while their preferred candidates say they didn’t take any special interest money and didn’t exceed the spending limit. Both statements are technically true and completely misleading.

The cap only hurts candidates who run against 49er-backed incumbents. Accept the limit and get outspent twenty to one. Reject it and get attacked for breaking your word.

Trust requires honesty in how elections are conducted. What we see instead misleads voters while calling itself reform.

Self-government means residents—not a single powerful corporation—decide who governs, what information voters receive, and whose interests City Hall serves. For three consecutive elections, 49er-funded PACs have spent over $10 million to secure five of seven Council and Stadium Authority seats.

The 2026 election raises the stakes considerably. Three seats are open—Mayor, and the seats held by Councilmembers Hardy and Chahal—because all three incumbents are termed out. Mayor Gillmor and Councilmember Cox are the only members of this Council who have publicly questioned 49er deals and contracts. The 49ers will almost certainly want that mayor’s seat—and they will want to hold Districts 2 and 3 to keep their 5-2 majority intact.

Here is what their money can do. In 2018, before the PAC spending began, Gillmor beat Becker 74% to 26%—a landslide by any measure. In 2022, the 49ers spent $2.4 million on the same candidate, in the same race, against the same incumbent—aided by endorsements and favorable coverage from the three newspapers that consistently align with 49er interests: the Mercury News, the Silicon Valley Voice, and the Spotlight. They lost by 776 votes. A 48-point margin nearly erased. With a candidate later convicted of felony perjury.

Now there is no incumbent to overcome. The Levi’s Stadium lease runs through 2074. Between now and then there are 25 elections. This is the second one. There is no plan.

Trust requires protecting the integrity of elections before the damage is done, not after. What we see instead is silence—no public discussion, no resident input, no response.

City Attorney Brian Doyle had been asking hard questions about the 49ers when he was fired. City Manager Deanna Santana was fired two days after she raised a conflict of interest before the Council: Al Guido had signed the FIFA World Cup contract simultaneously as the Stadium Authority’s representative and as president of the Bay Area Host Committee—a committee created and funded by the 49ers.

No permanent city attorney for 17 months. No permanent city manager for 14 months. The executives who eventually filled those roles signed nondisclosure agreements giving the team and the Host Committee control over information released to the public—and delivered no ethics directives to staff, no open processes, and a predetermined outcome on the ethics code.

In a Council-Manager city, if the Council says yes to everything, the City Manager and City Attorney are the residents’ last line of defense.

Trust requires executives who can say no. What we see instead is a City Hall that fired the two people who did.

In October 2022, Councilmember Anthony Becker leaked a confidential Civil Grand Jury report—sharply critical of the Council majority’s relationship with the 49ers—to the team’s top lobbyist. That gave the 49ers’ crisis team four days to mount a campaign to discredit the report before it was publicly released.

Becker was indicted in April 2023 on felony perjury and failure to perform his duty. His colleagues made him Vice Mayor and let him vote on every 49ers issue for twenty months, citing “innocent until proven guilty.” That’s a legal standard. Public trust asks a different question: can this Council member act independently? The answer was obvious. No one asked it out loud.

He was convicted in December 2024. The jury deliberated less than three hours. Two colleagues spoke at his sentencing asking for no jail time. He was sentenced to 40 days in a county work program. The 49ers had spent over $3 million supporting his campaigns.

Trust requires that officials protect the public from even the appearance of conflict. What we see instead was a Council that protected its own.

During state-required ethics training, the City Attorney’s office told Council members: if you don’t feel like you’re being influenced by personal interests, there’s no need to recuse yourself. This directly contradicts the appearance of impropriety standard cited on the same training slide.

The actual training slide used by the City Attorney’s office.

The appearance standard exists because the public cannot see inside officials’ minds. We can only see their actions. When officials who received millions in PAC support vote repeatedly on 49ers matters without recusal, it looks like a conflict—regardless of how they feel inside. Every ethicist will tell you: conflicted people are the last to know they’re conflicted.

Trust requires teaching the actual standard. What we see instead is training that gives officials permission to vote however they like and call it ethics.

In July 2023, the Council approved hiring an independent ethics consultant through the city’s normal RFQ process. Staff waited eight months before doing anything—then skipped the public process entirely. They sent an informal inquiry to eight law firms. No ethics consultants were contacted. They hired an employer-defense lawyer whose firm had worked with the city for forty years and had her work in secret for a year.

In March 2025 she presented her work not at a public hearing but at a 10 a.m. weekday meeting typically attended by one or two members of the public. What she delivered was not a review but a replacement. The new code covers only the City Council, drops from eight values to six, eliminates all behavioral standards, requires only that members obey the law, and does not apply to the Stadium Authority. The same lawyer is now conducting the ethics commission study.

A public records request for the contract and communications showing how “review” became “replace” was delayed six times over three months, then closed without providing the documents.

Trust requires an open process and an honest product. What we see instead is a closed-door rewrite that abandons 25 years of progress—and the same person deciding what comes next.

The Stadium Authority manages Levi’s Stadium—a $1.3 billion public asset generating hundreds of millions in annual revenue. It has never adopted an ethics code. Three Civil Grand Jury reports have recommended ethics reforms for stadium governance. None have been implemented.

The same five Council members who vote as a bloc for 49ers interests on City Council also control the Stadium Authority. The same conflicts. The same closed-door decisions. The same 5-2 votes—just more money at stake.

Trust requires the same ethical standards wherever public assets are involved. What we see instead is a decade of operating a billion-dollar institution with zero ethical guardrails.

The City is conducting its first comprehensive Charter Review in years. The Stadium Authority—which manages a $1.3 billion public asset and has been the subject of three Civil Grand Jury reports—has been excluded from the scope of the review entirely.

Voters are being asked to approve changes to how the City operates while the entity at the center of the City’s biggest governance failures gets a pass. A Charter Review that ignores the Stadium Authority is like a home inspection that skips the foundation.

Trust requires giving voters a complete picture before asking for their approval. What we see instead is a review designed around the problem, not through it.

Over 14 years, successive councils have quietly dismantled Santa Clara’s nationally recognized ethics program—without a single public hearing, without resident input, and without ever officially announcing what they were doing. Resident confidence collapsed from 91% to roughly 40%.

The ethics code, the training program, the core values, the independent ethics consultant, the campaign ethics program—all either eliminated, weakened, or ignored. None required a public vote to cancel. That’s the problem. Charter-level protection means voters—not a Council majority—decide whether ethics infrastructure stays or goes. Without it, the next council can finish what this one started.

Trust requires that residents, not elected officials, decide what kind of City Hall they want. What we see instead is no plan to include any of this in the Charter—and the same approach that produced 14 years of decline.