{"id":489510,"date":"2026-10-08T19:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T19:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/489510\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T19:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T19:04:09","slug":"election-2026-cupertino-council-race-defined-by-dueling-coalitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/489510\/","title":{"rendered":"Election 2026: Cupertino Council race defined by dueling coalitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Cupertino voters choose from a crowded field of city council candidates in November, they face a race that has come to be defined by competing political factions and a slate of three candidates who have opted to run together<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Three seats out of five are up for reelection, opening the possibility to remake the city council majority or solidify the current leanings on the dais.<\/p>\n

Currently, the City Council has been defined by two broad groups, with councilmembers Liang Chao, Ray Wang and Kitty Moore frequently voting in concert, while J.R. Fruen and Sheila Mohan more often vote in the minority.<\/p>\n

This year, Chao and Mohan will leave the City Council while Fruen seeks re-election.<\/p>\n

Those who take office will face a panoply of issues: from a murky financial forecast<\/a>\u00a0exacerbated by the loss of millions in tax revenue from Apple<\/a> and a multimillion hike in its contract with the County Sheriff<\/a>, to a city hall marred by two civil grand jury reports<\/a> and turnover in city staff<\/a>, to the perennial Bay Area issues of housing affordability and school closures.<\/p>\n

Seeking to confront these issues, eight candidates are vying for the three available seats. But in an unusual political move that has come to define the race, three have chosen to run as a slate. The slate, dubbed \u201cCupertino Together<\/a>,\u201d shares a central political platform, website, and funding and is asking those who would vote for one candidate to vote for all three in a political gambit meant to capture the majority of City Council seats. Meanwhile, three other candidates have joined in an alliance that would preserve the political leanings of the current majority, which leaves two outliers who have presented themselves as independent thinkers.<\/p>\n

Cupertino Together<\/p>\n

In the Cupertino Together slate are Fruen, 47, a current councilmember and\u00a0chief of staff for San Jose City Councilmember Rosemary Kamei; Seema Lindskog, 60, a planning commissioner and marketing executive; and John Tang, 56, a water utility engineer and former Cupertino Chamber president.<\/p>\n

The slate says they are offering a shared vision of economic development, well-planned housing and regional partnership and an alternative to the current majority they assert\u00a0has failed to move the city forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to have the courage to plan things differently,\u201d said Fruen. \u201cYou either change and adapt or you die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Key to that change is a 10-year economic growth plan focused on attracting businesses to the city and diversifying its revenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city \u2026 it\u2019s a fiscal mess \u2026 We\u2019re basically trying to stop the bleeding rather than grow,\u201d said Lindskog of the current economic planning for the city. \u201cI want to make it the innovative, thriving, optimistic, can-do city that it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of that vision, she touted her efforts to streamline permitting to help small businesses.<\/p>\n

Part of that economic plan is to negotiate a deal to complete a fraught development project at the site of the former Vallco shopping mall. The development has been over a decade in the making and was opposed and later bogged down in a lawsuit from Better Cupertino<\/a>, an organization founded by Chao. Before joining city council, Moore assisted with the lawsuit, maintaining that the project did not meet certain legal requirements. The slate argues that the delay has cost the city tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue, based on estimates from Cupertino city staff.<\/p>\n

The three candidates also highlighted a need to address issues of combative relationships between council and staff \u2014 which became the subject of a civil grand jury report<\/a>. \u201cWe need to trust staff \u2026 The way that staff was being treated was not in line with good governance,\u201d said Tang. They also maintain\u00a0that the city needs to rebuild partnerships with other jurisdictions throughout the region, arguing that previous city leaders had burned bridges.<\/p>\n

While other candidates questioned whether someone running on a slate could be truly independent, all three candidates noted that they had their individual stances but held a shared vision for the city.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Fruen painted the slate as a political necessity \u2013 the only way to secure the majority on the council was for all three to succeed in their campaign. \u201cI want to be able to keep my promise to voters \u2026 so having a majority really, really matters,\u201d he said. \u201cThe way that you get the things that you care about is if you vote for all three of us because we can\u2019t really guarantee it otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cResidents First\u201d<\/p>\n

Running against the slate are three candidates associated with the current City Council majority, each endorsed by current council members Wang and Chao. The three candidates share volunteers and their signs appear together in clusters around the city, but they rejected the formal designation of a \u201cslate\u201d and argued that they hold distinct policy positions. Even so, their platforms\u00a0share common threads.<\/p>\n

The alliance is made up of Santosh Rao<\/a>, 52, a planning commissioner and technology executive; Tracy Kosolcharoen<\/a>, 40, a planning commissioner with a career in finance and marketing; and Gopal Kumarappan<\/a>, 58, a member of the parks and rec and library commission with a career in technology.<\/p>\n

The group says they are united in putting \u201cresidents first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually have a need for representation, for resident-focused leaders that are going to take the time to listen to the community and represent what they need \u2026 to bring them in earlier on decisions,\u201d said Kosolcharoen. \u201cWe don\u2019t have any other outside interests, and our agenda is based on what residents locally want.\u201d<\/p>\n

While each of the candidates expressed the desire to bring business to Cupertino, compared to the Cupertino Together slate, they were more focused on scrutinizing the current budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that we are in an unsustainable situation\u2026 We need to bring fiscal discipline to the city,\u201d said Rao, arguing that the city needed to reduce its contracts with outside consultants and contractors and \u201cstop penalizing our residents\u201d with additional fees and tax proposals.<\/p>\n

Kumarappan suggested taking that scrutiny further with a quarterly budget dashboard to let residents \u201csee where each dollar goes\u201d and an analysis of projects involving the city\u2019s major facilities. He added that he wanted to streamline permitting using technology such as AI.<\/p>\n

Rao added that he ran on a \u201cpro-business\u201d platform that was distinct from his opponents, arguing that \u201cmy opponents have no understanding of free-market enterprise.\u201d In particular, he argued that the delay in the development at the former Vallco mall site had more to do with post-COVID markets than the City Council.<\/p>\n

All three maintained that being an alliance rather than a formal slate afforded them greater independence. \u201cOur residents have shown that they want independent leaders,\u201d said Kosolcharoen. \u201cI really believe that the role of a council member is to be a neutral arbiter of issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Outliers<\/p>\n

Finally, two candidates have placed themselves outside of the dueling factions. In some ways, both outliers have defined themselves by their independence from the existing political coalitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrimarily you have these two different groups. I\u2019m offering sort of a bridge,\u201d said Mark Fantozzi<\/a>, 75, who added that there was a need to \u201cmitigate and eliminate\u201d the divisions in the city. \u201cI look at things from a more practical, problem-solving point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fantozzi, an engineer and former member of the bicycle pedestrian commission, argued that one of his main roles on the City Council would be to lobby against \u201cstate mandates and over-regulation,\u201d in particular those pushed by housing groups seeking to \u201cusurp local control.\u201d He noted that he wanted to reduce the\u00a0impacts of development and diversify revenue sources.<\/p>\n

He also argued that his experience with development and infrastructure as an engineer and his perspective as a relative outsider could serve as a boon for the city. \u201cDoesn\u2019t it make sense to have a different set of eyes on these issues? A new set of eyes can see things that other folks have missed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Candidate JZ Wang, who declined to share her age, said she could play a similar role in the council as an independent thinker. \u201cIt\u2019s divided,\u201d said Wang of the City Council. \u201cI\u2019m running on common ground and common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is perhaps best known in Cupertino public life for a history of suing the city of Cupertino. Wang said she was not concerned that the litigation would get in the way of her role at the council, but was instead proof that \u201cI stand up for things.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information on the candidates and where they stand on issues affecting Cupertino, see their websites, linked online when available, their candidate statements on the city\u2019s website<\/a> under \u201cCupertino Elections Info.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Cupertino voters choose from a crowded field of city council candidates in November, they face a race…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1400,1610,186,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-489510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-2026-elections","tag-city-council","tag-cupertino","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}