San Jose Spotlight logo. San Jose Spotlight is nonprofit newsroom covering San Jose, Calif. and cities and communities in Santa Clara County. (San Jose Spotlight via Bay City News)
San Jose Spotlight/San Jose Spotlight via Bay City News
It’s a delicate dance balancing work and motherhood, especially if you’re a politician.
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For Santa Clara County Supervisors Margaret Abe-Koga, Sylvia Arenas, Betty Duong and Susan Ellenberg, life as a super mom is both challenging and rewarding. All four women learned early on the sacrifices that come with public service. Late night meetings mean being absent from family dinners and their children’s after-school activities. But the women see purpose as they plow through the stress and uncontrollable hours to show their children they can succeed as moms and politicians.
They have the same goal — to make the future better for their children and the children and families they serve by fighting for more supportive services, championing mental health services for youth and taking a hard look at the inequalities and socioeconomic needs in one of the wealthiest counties in the nation.
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For Abe-Koga, 55, having a child was the final push to run for public office. As the daughter of immigrants who didn’t speak English, seeing the challenges of people who didn’t have a voice in their community motivated her to step up after her first daughter was born to help shape a brighter future for her child.
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The experience was eye opening.
Her daughter was 10 days old when Abe-Koga attended an orientation for prospective candidates. She entered the room with her daughter in a stroller.
“When I walked into the room, everyone just looked at me and gasped,” Abe-Koga told San Jose Spotlight. “That reinforced why I needed to do this, to change that perspective … because that is a segment of our community that needs to be represented.”
It would be years before she won her first race on the Mountain View City Council. By then, she had a second daughter and her children were ages 2 and 5. When her children were young, she often took them to City Hall if she had paperwork. But late night meetings keep her from tucking in her daughters at bedtime.
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“Part of why I ran for city council was being able to show my girls the importance of representation and making sure all voices are represented is something that I strive to do,” she said.
Although she tried to attend all of her children’s school and sports events, Abe-Koga couldn’t make them all. She and her husband traded off participating in their children’s activities.
“There’s this push and pull,” Abe-Koga said. “There have definitely been sacrifices by everyone. With my girls, not always being able to be there for them. I would take them to school Tuesday morning, and have a council meeting Tuesday night into the wee hours. So, I wouldn’t see them for a full day until Wednesday morning.”
Abe-Koga has served in office for more than two decades. She was a trustee on the Santa Clara County Board of Education, a councilmember, vice mayor and mayor in Mountain View and was elected in 2024 as the District 5 representative on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. But the early years were tough and having a support system made a difference.
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“It’s been a real juggling act to be honest,” Abe-Koga said. “My girls will tell me … if I’m out every night, they’ll say, ‘Oh, mom, not again.’ Then I’d know to cut back.”
Politically, being the only woman in the room can be daunting, she said, but also motivating. Today she is one of four women who sit on the board of supervisors. She wants her efforts to demonstrate it’s possible to be a mom and still hold down a tough job, and she encourages other women to take the leap into politics.
“It takes sacrifice,” she said. “You have to prioritize what’s most important in your life. For me, it’s been family. I just want to do some good for my girls. I hope that I’ve been able to show that even a mom can do this.”
Following federal cuts under H.R.1, the county had to make reductions to bridge a $270 million gap in the 2026-27 fiscal year budget. Staff recommended cutting the allcove program, which provides mental health services for youth in Palo Alto and Mountain View where youth suicides have escalated.
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The request hit home when Abe-Koga’s daughter revealed she had undergone a difficult time in middle school and entering high school. Abe-Koga, who serves as vice chair of the county Health & Hospitals Committee, moved to dedicate $1.75 million annually for the next three years to youth mental health services.
“We’re going to keep it,” she said. “It’s what the community wants and needs.”
Before being elected District 2 supervisor, Betty Duong served as chief of staff for former Supervisor Cindy Chavez. Duong spent more than a decade working in multiple capacities for the county, including serving as manager of the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement and the Vietnamese American Service Center. Like her colleagues, she too is no stranger to the life of a government official.
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Duong said working in politics is a window to teaching her children about democracy. She takes her daughter to debates and gubernatorial forums to teach her how to exercise her power.
“I’m banking on it,” she told San Jose Spotlight. “That’s why I ask my family to make sacrifices, why my team makes sacrifices. It’s to make sure accessibility continues to broaden for women.”
Duong, 45, has a 9-year-old daughter and 29-year-old stepson. She said it’s a daily challenge to keep up with everything as well as manage a household. But her goal every single night is to make it home for bedtime.
“I usually know in advance if there’s going to be a significant event or meeting that’s going to run late,” she said. “I make sure I communicate that to my daughter and my husband.”
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Duong said she couldn’t do the job without her family and staff stepping up.
When Duong worked as a program manager and faced gaps in child care, she brought her daughter to the office. She views her county staff as extensions of her family. As a supervisor, she often brings her child to work, as does her staff, especially during school breaks or early release days. Duong described her office as kid-friendly.
Yet she acknowledges that moms still have to meet a higher, if not impossible, standard.
“There’s still a narrative out there that if you are a working mom, you better make sure that you excel at both jobs or else you failed,” she said.
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Duong is a collaborator who reached out to San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan to find a way for the city and county to combine efforts to get homeless residents in need of mental health treatment and supportive services off the streets. She said that’s why having a voice at the table and a shared governance role is crucial. None of which would be possible if not for the women who laid the path and inspired others.
“So many women paved the way for me: My own mother, Blanca Alvarado, Zoe Lofgren, Cindy Chavez, the women of this county, the women of our communities, have made it possible for a kid from East Side to go from community college to the supervisor seat,” she said.
Arenas, 52, has an 11-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son. She went into politics to invest in her community. Arenas served on the Evergreen Elementary School District board of trustees and San Jose City Council before winning her District 1 supervisor race in 2022.
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Not long after her daughter was born, Arenas decided to run for the Evergreen school board when she saw her son was not receiving the additional help he needed.
“I wanted to step in for children just like my son,” she told San Jose Spotlight. “School districts overlook children of color and their needs and tell parents to wait until they grow out of it.”
Feeling the school board had a limited reach, she decided to run for city council to change outcomes for poor and struggling families.
“There comes a point where you are asking yourself about your legacy and how you impacted this world,” she said. “This is how we create systemic change and anti-racist policies.”
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Arenas had her 2-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son in tow when she knocked on doors while campaigning for the city council seat in District 8. After she won the race, she often took her daughter to the office. But when she asked a woman if it would be OK to take her daughter to a meeting she was told it would be unprofessional. During her city council reelection campaign, people discounted her, saying she was just a stay-at-home mom, she said. But her work to help uplift children and families, especially in the Latino community proved her worth and took her to the next level as a county supervisor.
“This field has given me a lot to be proud of, an opportunity to change systems. I certainly have had challenges, and my family and my children have been just very wonderful, although it is also a sacrifice for them,” she said.
One issue Arenas has worked on extensively during her time in office has been on the mental and physical health of Santa Clara County’s Latino community. The high rates of poverty, lower rates of high school graduation and more deaths from diabetes than other groups had the county declare a public health crisis for Latino residents following a yearslong county health assessment released last May.
“We are the safety net for all of our community,” Arenas, who led the effort, previously told San Jose Spotlight. “If the majority of our community is dying from suicide or isn’t graduating or isn’t reading by third grade, it is our responsibility to do something about it.”
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She continues to make the work a priority, but at the same time she hasn’t lost sight of the need for women to be supported and not be viewed negatively for having their children at work, a meeting or event.
“If what I’ve done allows for other women to be more free to incorporate their children into their careers and into their professional lives, then I’ve done something right,” Arenas said.
Ellenberg, 59, has three children ages 27, 30 and 32. Previously a lawyer, she started working in politics when her youngest was a freshman in high school.
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“When I started thinking about running for the school board in 2013, and learned how intense the campaigning would be, and how much of my time would be consumed, not being able to make dinner was my first huge source of stress,” Ellenberg told San Jose Spotlight. “My 15-year-old essentially rolled her eyes and said, ‘I will survive.’ It was such a release.”
When Ellenberg decided to run for the District 4 county supervisor seat in 2018, she did so after serving on the San Jose Unified School District board. This June she is running unopposed for her third full term as supervisor, where she has served two years as board president.
Like her colleagues, Ellenberg has missed family events and celebrations due to government commitments, which can be hard at times, and is grateful for her family’s understanding,
“It’s disappointing, but I fully understand what I signed up for,” she said. “As it’s a public office, I feel very committed to being present. But there have definitely been family things that I have missed because of this job.”
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Ellenberg said having her husband and children’s support and knowing they’re proud of what she does gives her the strength to keep doing the work.
“Without that, it would be too much to bear, because it really is all-consuming,” she said.
Ellenberg supports women who want to move into careers in public service, whatever stage they’re in — but for her, waiting until her children were older worked best. Ellenberg said some of the most powerful advice she ever received was from former San Jose Mayor Susan Hammer.
“She came to my house to meet my son, who was maybe a week old. She asked me how I was doing, and I started to say, ‘Fine,’ and then I entirely broke down. I was working as a lawyer,” Ellenberg said. “I really wanted to be home with my baby.”
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Ellenberg had barely started her career in law and achieving it had been an expensive endeavor, she told Hammer. She felt a sense of obligation and didn’t want to let others down.
“(Hammer) explained that perhaps this was my time to be with my baby. That I could do so many things over the course of my life, and I didn’t need to do them all at once,” Ellenberg said. “Having such an impressive woman … tell me that it was OK to stay home with my baby was as transformative as it was when my daughter said, ‘We’ll survive if you don’t make dinner.’ It’s other women that have to give us permission sometimes to not try to carry everything.”
Ellenberg has consistently pushed to expand child care while in office.
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“I intentionally moved from a school board to county government because I saw that so many of the challenges that keep children from succeeding in school are not academic, but really related to socioeconomics and structural inequities,” she said. “I wanted to be at the county to improve circumstances for young children and their families. Homelessness prevention, mental health services and criminal legal system reform — it’s always about what can we do to better support children.”
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