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The possible last stop on the political block is the biggest one yet for Dave Cortese, with the San Jose Democrat being elected in December 2020 to the California State Senate.
Among his areas of focus will be helping the state recover economically from the COVID-19 pandemic. “I don’t know if the public has fully realized yet, but our governments haven’t yet felt the financial impact of the pandemic,” Cortese told San Jose Spotlight. “The state is not going to be in a position to raise taxes, we’ll need to use capital investment.”
Background
The 64-year-old Cortese was elected to the state legislature for the first time after serving at both the city and county levels in Santa Clara County. First, Cortese served from 2001 to 2008 on the San Jose City Council, representing District 8. He followed this with 12 years on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. He also ran unsuccessfully for San Jose mayor in 2008 and 2014.
Aside from earning degrees from UC Davis and Lincoln Law, Cortese and his father, former California Assemblyman Dominic Cortese, were once involved with a former Continental Basketball Association franchise, the San Jose Jammers. “This is an open-ended deal,” Cortese, then 33, told the Sacramento Bee in 1990. “I could work 24 hours a day on this.”
Cortese and his wife, Pattie, have four children.
Select Legislation
SB 37: Silicon Valley has one of the highest numbers of Superfund environmental cleanup sites in America. Cortese introduced a bill, the Hazardous Waste Site Cleanup and Safety Act, updating a bill that his father had authored in 1986, according to Cortese’s legislative website.
SB 790: Cortese jointly authored a bill with Sen. Henry Stern, introduced in February 2021, that would strengthen advance environmental mitigation measures in regard to CalTrans and the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
