Mayor of San Jose; California

 Samuel T. "Sam" Liccardo (born April 16, 1970) is an American politician from California, currently serving as Mayor of San Jose, California. Before his election to the city council in 2006 he served as a criminal prosecutor in the District Attorney’s office. Liccardo was elected mayor in November 2014.

One of five children to Salvador and Laura Liccardo, Sam Liccardo grew up in Saratoga, California and graduated from Bellarmine College Prep. In 1991, he graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University, and subsequently enrolled in graduate studies at Harvard University. In 1996, Sam graduated from Harvard Law School with honors, and also earned a master's degree in public policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, before returning to the Bay Area.

Mayor Sam Liccardo took office in January 2015, and at the age of 44 became one of the youngest mayors in San Jose’s modern history.

During his brief tenure, San Jose has truly surged. Sam has forged a historic pension reform agreement that will save $3 billion over the next three decades, launched innovative programs to reduce homelessness, expanded educational and job opportunities for thousands of low-income youth, announced four new international flights at Mineta San Jose International Airport, and helped usher in a major expansion of tech companies, including titans like Apple and Google.

Prior to being elected Mayor, Sam served two terms on the City Council, where he led efforts to revitalize Downtown, preserve San Jose’s hillsides and open space, boost funding for affordable housing, and open a world-class soccer stadium for the San Jose Earthquakes.

Sam began his public service as a Santa Clara County District Attorney and is a proud graduate of San Jose’s Bellarmine College Prep, Georgetown University, Harvard Law School, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

After working in a private law firm, Liccardo became a federal criminal prosecutor at the United States Attorney’s Office, and then handled dozens of felony trials in the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. There, he primarily prosecuted sexual assault and child exploitation crimes.

Taking office at the age of 44, Liccardo became one of the youngest mayors in the city’s modern history. In the early months of his term, he worked to forge a tentative agreement for pension and retiree healthcare reform with public safety unions; launch a summer jobs program for hundreds of teens living in gang-impacted neighborhoods; expand innovative after-school programs for children from in low-income communities, announce new international flights to Beijing and London, secure an expanded presence of major tech companies in San Jose, and successfully conclude lengthy negotiations to keep the National Hockey League’s Sharks franchise in San Jose.




San Jose

San Jose, is the third-largest city by population in California, the tenth-largest by population in the United States, and the county seat of Santa Clara County. San Jose is the largest city within the Bay Area and the largest city in Northern California.

Before the arrival of the Spanish, the area around San José was inhabited by the Ohlone people. San Jose was founded on November 29, 1777, as San José de Guadalupe, the first civilian town in the Spanish colony of Alta California. The city served as a farming community to support Spanish military installations at San Francisco and Monterey. When California gained statehood in 1850, San Jose served as its first capital.

After more than 150 years as a small farming community, the San Jose area in the mid-20th century contained some of the last undeveloped land near San Francisco Bay. It then began to experience rapid population growth, much of it coming from veterans returning from World War II. San Jose then continued its aggressive expansion during the 1950s and 1960s by annexing more land area. The rapid growth of the high-technology and electronics industries further accelerated the transition from an agricultural center to an urbanized metropolitan area.

By the 1990s, San Jose's location within the booming local high tech industry earned the city the nickname "Capital of Silicon Valley". San Jose is now considered to be a global city, and notable for its affluence and high cost of living. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the population of the city to be 1,015,785 as of July 1, 2014.