BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Former Santa Clara County Supervisor and longtime Palo Alto leader Joe Simitian has been named a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Institute for Research in the Social Sciences.
Simitian said he’ll use the year-long position to research the polarization of politics in the United States — a longtime source of interest and concern for him.
“A lot of the forces that are at work that we see in the politics of our nation today are forces that have been at work for not just years, but decades,” Simitian said in an interview yesterday.
After President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Simitian traveled to three counties in North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania to talk to voters who flipped away from voting for President Barack Obama.
He presented his findings from his trips at an event in September 2017 hosted by the League of Women Voters of Palo Alto.
“I think understanding alone won’t get the job done, but I think without understanding, you’ve got no chance at all,” he said at the time.
Simitian said he’s continued to track the political behavior in the three counties that he visited, and he’s hoping to connect Stanford’s research to policy decisions at every level of government.
Simitian said he’s still determining how many hours per week he’ll spend on research at Stanford. He’ll get to audit classes and have his own office on campus through the end of the scholarship in August 2026.
“This is an opportunity for me to exercise the cerebral side of my personality a little bit more without the day-to-day responsibilities of public office,” he said.
Simitian, 72, was an unsuccessful candidate for the House seat vacated by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo last fall.
His 41 years of public service includes the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, the California State Senate and Assembly, mayor of Palo Alto and president of the Palo Alto school board.
Simitian graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1970 and received his bachelor’s degree from The Colorado College. He also holds a master’s in international policy studies from Stanford and both a law degree and a master’s in city planning from UC-Berkeley.
Simitian lives in the Duveneck-St. Francis neighborhood with his wife, Mary Hughes.
Over the years, Simitian has gone back and forth with Stanford over its general use permit application, or “GUP,” that would allow the university to expand.
Simitian pushed the university to fully mitigate the impacts of its expansion — on traffic, housing, child care, policing and more.
The county last issued a GUP to Stanford in 2000 that limits how much square footage the university can build.
Stanford applied for a new GUP in 2019 but withdrew it days before supervisors were scheduled to vote.
Supervisors updated the Stanford Community Plan in October 2023 to set rules in anticipation of another GUP application, but Stanford hasn’t said when it will apply for another GUP.