The race for the 13th Senate District seat

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Annie Oliva has served on the Millbrae City Council since 2013. Her father, the late Robert Marshall, was mayor of San Bruno. His real estate firm is now the family business with Oliva and her three brothers working there. She grew up in San Bruno and attended Crestmoor High School. She then attended the College of Notre Dame where she met her husband, a student from El Salvador. They have been married for 39 years and have three grown children. One of them almost became homeless because of drug addiction. As a result, Oliva has made homelessness her cause and has a seven-point plan for dealing with this. Most of her contributions are from Realtors. She says she has been in the business all of her life; these are her friends as well as colleagues.

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Since there are five Democrats in the race who will split the vote, the sole Republican, Alex Glew, may emerge as the second victor when it is the top two from either party who vie in November. Glew lives in Los Altos but grew up in Pacifica. He attended Lick Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, went to the University of California, Berkeley where he received a bachelor’s and master’s of science in mechanical engineering; then on to Stanford University where he received a master’s and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering. He started his own consulting company, Glew Engineering, 20 years ago after a decade at Applied Materials. He has served as a Design Review commissioner in Los Altos and is active in the Los Altos Rotary. He considers himself a California Republican on the moderate side. He ran for the Los Altos City Council in 2016 and lost and for the state Assembly in 2018 and lost.

John Webster, a Mountain View resident, was born in the Los Angeles area, attended high school in Redondo Park, served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, has a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the University of Washington and a master’s in computer science from Santa Clara. He has been active in the Libertarian Party since 1978 and has run for the state Senate three times without success. He works for a small tech company which is developing a golf training simulator.

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Since most of these candidates have not been elected to a districtwide office, few if any have name recognition outside of their home geographical area. That means it will take big bucks and important endorsements to persuade voters in the two counties which form the 13th. Oliva is relying on help from Realtors and the real estate PAC; Masur from the California Teachers Association and numerous endorsements; Brownrigg from TV ads and many local endorsements. Becker is advertising a recent endorsement from Jerry Hill which may mean a lot to the undecided voter and he’s also been endorsed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. He has sufficient funds to get the word out. Lieber is self-funded but well known in Santa Clara County. We won’t know the outcome until March 3.

Sue Lempert is the former mayor of San Mateo. Her column runs every Monday. She can be reached at sue@smdailyjournal.com.