27 Facts About Sam Liccardo

Sam Liccardo was one of five children of Salvador and Laura Liccardo.

Sam Liccardo grew up in Saratoga, California, and graduated from Bellarmine College Preparatory in 1987.

Sam Liccardo later earned his Juris Doctor and Master of Public Policy at Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School.

In 2006, Sam Liccardo ran for San Jose's District 3 Council seat.

In 2014, Sam Liccardo ran for Mayor of San Jose to succeed termed-out Mayor Chuck Reed.

Sam Liccardo was instrumental in forging a consensus among Bay Area regional leaders to support putting Measure RR on the ballot, the passage of which in November 2020 will help preserve and expand Caltrain transit service, connecting San Jose and Santa Clara County with San Francisco.

Sam Liccardo has been a strong advocate of bringing High Speed Rail to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, and has worked to secure regional dollars to pay for a share of that construction of that line, which has already commenced in the segment running through California's Central Valley.

Sam Liccardo has urged more innovative approaches to supplant the region's plodding, poorly performing light rail, such as autonomous, electric bus rapid-transit.

Since then, Sam Liccardo formed a partnership with Facebook to deploy the company's wireless, high-speed internet technology called "Terragraph" in downtown San Jose, and the City of San Jose launched a project to bring free wireless internet to two schools in San Jose's East Side Union High School District.

In 2022, Sam Liccardo appointed Clay Garner to lead the Mayor's Office of Technology and Innovation.

Sam Liccardo has pushed for more public resources for affordable housing, building on his work on inclusionary housing as a councilmember.

In late 2017, Sam Liccardo called for the construction of 25,000 new housing units in San Jose, including 10,000 affordable units.

In May 2017, Sam Liccardo urged, and the San Jose City Council unanimously agreed to launch a Community Choice Energy program, becoming the largest city in the country to do so.

For several years before the 2017 announcement, Sam Liccardo had repeatedly sought to encourage Google to consider a Downtown campus, and in late 2016, met with executives to discuss plans for an expansive project that would comprise twice the size of Apple's nearby global headquarters.

Sam Liccardo countered that no negotiation with Google over the public land purchase transpired until after the public announcement, and that dozens of public meetings transpired to ensure full scrutiny of the project before Council approval.

Sam Liccardo apologized for failing to sooner include his wife's property in his annual public financial disclosures, but the City Attorney concluded that there was no legal conflict of interest because the condo was not sufficiently proximate to the project.

Sam Liccardo owns his home Downtown, which has been publicly disclosed since 2008.

San Jose endured two mass shootings during Sam Liccardo's tenure, including one that captured national attention in May 2021 at a transit rail yard that left ten transit workers dead.

In 2019, Sam Liccardo announced a first-in-the-nation initiative to require that gun owners pay annual fees to fund violence-reduction efforts, and to retain liability insurance.

The lawsuit was brought by non-profit news outlet San Jose Spotlight and the First Amendment Coalition after Sam Liccardo denied the existence of and refused to find official communications on his personal email account in previous public records requests.

In December 2023, Sam Liccardo announced his intention to run for California's 16th congressional district, which was held by retiring incumbent Anna Eshoo.

Sam Liccardo was sworn in to the 119th United States Congress on January 3,2025.

Sam Liccardo was named for his paternal grandfather, who owned and operated a neighborhood grocery store in downtown San Jose, the Notre Dame Market.

Sam Liccardo is of Sicilian and Irish descent, and of Mexican and Californio ancestry, tracing his ancestors to the early Mexican settlers of the Bay Area and to more recent Mexican immigrants who worked in the Alamaden mines.

Sam Liccardo made an appearance in Episode 1 of Season 6 of the HBO series Silicon Valley.

In January 2019 Sam Liccardo was severely injured in a bicycle accident.

Sam Liccardo was admitted to Regional Medical Center with a broken sternum and vertebrae.