Elizabeth Brierly

Elizabeth C. Brierly is a director and past president of Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association; a life member of the Libertarian Party, where she has worked at national, state, local, and presidential campaign levels; partner in a digital communications firm; the editor and designer of “The Haiku Economist” (Advocates for Self-Government, 2012); and a contributing author of “Libertarianism: John Hospers, the Libertarian Party’s 50th Anniversary, and Beyond” (Jameson Books, Inc., 2021). Before jumping full-time into the individual-freedom movement, Brierly earned an MBA at Santa Clara University and spent 15 years in semicon QA, marketing, and operations.

Lance Christensen

Lance Christensen is the vice president of education policy and government affairs at the California Policy Center, where he works for the prosperity of all Californians by reducing public sector barriers to freedom. He spent two decades working in the state legislature and was a candidate for state superintendent of public instruction in 2022.

Pete Constant

Pete Constant is a retired San Jose police officer, former San Jose councilmember, school board president, and professor of public policy and criminal justice.

Jon Coupal

President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and formerly a tax and political law attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, Jon Coupal is a recognized expert in California fiscal affairs and has argued numerous tax cases before the courts. He writes a weekly column for the Southern California News Group and is a frequent guest on both television and radio programs discussing fiscal policy and political issues.

Rich Crowley

Rich Crowley has been actively working to make San Jose a better place to live since the 1970s through his local involvement in service clubs, the Salvation Army, schools, his church, neighborhood associations, and city and county commissions and advisory boards. He regularly speaks to local government about efficiently and effectively spending our tax dollars, and he has served on several Transportation Citizen Advisory Committees and the Santa Clara County Transportation Commission.

Joel Fox

With over 40 years of involvement in state and local politics, Joel Fox has served as co-publisher and editor-in-chief of news website Fox and Hounds Daily, been president of both the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the Small Business Action Committee, and took a key role in many statewide and local ballot proposition campaigns. He has been an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University's Graduate School of Public Policy since 2006.

Tony Francois

Tony Francois is a lawyer, formerly senior attorney, with the Pacific Legal Foundation.

Tobin Gilman

Tobin Gilman is a retired Silicon Valley technology industry executive, longtime San Jose resident, community leader, and author of two books about Santa Clara County history. His community activities include serving as a board member for Families & Homes SJ, and past service on the San Jose City Charter Review Commission, the District 10 Leadership Coalition board, and as a volunteer docent at the New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum from 2012–2022.

Steve Heimoff

Steve Heimoff is the president of the Coalition for a Better Oakland, a nonprofit organization dedicated to public safety.

Brian Holtz

Brian Holtz is the longest-tenured elected Libertarian in Northern California (serving since 2008 on the board of Purissima Hills Water District), as well as the primary drafter of the current (2008) generation of the Libertarian Party platform. He has worked since 1990 as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, where he and his wife have raised three daughters.

Dean Hotop

Dean Hotop is a real estate investor and free market/limited government advocate.

Mark Hinkle

Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association's president for 10 years and counting, Mark Hinkle was also chair of the Libertarian Party of California (1997–2001) and Libertarian National Committee (2010–2012), the National Libertarian Party's Thomas Jefferson Leadership award winner (2022), and 8-time candidate for local office (twice winning the Sons of Liberty's most principled campaign award). He has written over 130 ballot arguments against tax increases in four Bay Area counties, thus saving taxpayers billions.

John Inks

John Inks was formerly a councilmember (2009–2016), mayor (2013), and parks and recreation and planning commissioner for Mountain View. He is currently a Mountain View Chamber of Commerce member, Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association board member, and regularly addresses the MV City Council on critical ballot initiatives such as the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability initiative on the November 2024 ballot.

Marc Joffe

Marc Joffe is a federalism and state policy analyst at Cato Institute, with an MBA from New York University and an MPA from San Francisco State University. His financial research has been published by the California State Treasurer’s Office, UC Berkeley, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, California Policy Center, The Center for Municipal Finance, and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, among others; and his op‐eds have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Orange County Register, The Fiscal Times, Governing, National Review, The Hill, and The San Jose Mercury News.

Sheridan Karras

is the research manager and parent union coordinator for the nonprofit California Policy Center. She resides in San Diego, where she advocates for transparent governance and quality education.

Johnny Khamis

Johnny Khamis is a former San Jose councilmember and small business owner.

Mark Lisheron

Mark Lisheron is the managing editor of the Badger Institute’s magazine, Diggings. He is one of the founders of The Texas Monitor, a small government, free-market news website based in Austin; and he previously served as the managing editor for Reason magazine’s website. Over a more than 40-year career in journalism, 30 of them in newspapers, Lisheron was nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize.

Roberta Moore

Roberta Moore is a broker associate with Compass and a housing provider who has lived and worked in San Jose for more than 30 years. During this time, Roberta has actively volunteered to improve San Jose, including as a commissioner on the Housing and Community Development Committee and the General Plan Task Force; as a result, she is aware of what is needed and what is being considered by the City.

Pierluigi Oliverio

Pierluigi Oliverio was elected to three consecutive terms as the District 6 San Jose councilmember and continues serving as the San Jose District 6 planning commissioner.

Randal O'Toole

Randal O'Toole is a land-use and transportation policy analyst for the Oregon-based Thoreau Institute. He has written hundreds of policy papers, scores of op-eds, and six books, the most recent of which is “Romance of the Rails: Why the Passenger Trains We Love Are Not the Transportation We Need”; he has also been a research fellow or visiting professor at Yale University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Utah State University.

Alan Perlman

An English and linguistics professor for 13 years, Alan Perlman (PhD in linguistics) has 25 years' experience as an executive speechwriter and professional ghost writer and editor and 30 years as a forensic linguistic consultant. His politics are contrarian/libertarian, and he often comments on the political abuse of language.

Jackson Reese

Jackson Reese is the vice president of development at California Policy Center. Before joining CPC's executive team, he consulted on dozens of political campaigns and helped launch CPC’s Janus project, which has helped tens of thousands of public employees ditch their unions.

Edward Ring

Edward Ring is a contributing editor and senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for American Greatness, author of “Fixing California – Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism” (2021) and “The Abundance Choice – Our Fight for More Water in California” (2022), and writes a weekly column for the California Globe. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, National Review, and other media outlets.

Tim Rosenberger

Tim Rosenberger is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. An entrepreneur, attorney, and pastor, he works at the intersection of business, law, policy, and faith to help people build lives of dignity and purpose.

Tom Rubin

Tom Rubin is an accountant and auditor by education and early career, but has specialized in government surface transportation, primarily transit and roads, for going on a half-century. Besides serving as CFO of two of the largest transit agencies in the U.S., he has been an auditor and consultant to well over 100 agencies all over North America and frequently publishes and speaks on transportation and government finance and operations matters.

Larry Sand

Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the nonprofit California Teachers Empowerment Network—a nonpartisan, nonpolitical group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. His articles regularly appear in City Journal, Frontpage Magazine, American Greatness, and elsewhere.

Susan Shelley

Susan Shelley is an opinion columnist and editorial writer for the Southern California News Group, eleven daily papers including the Orange County Register, the Los Angeles Daily News, and the Riverside Press-Enterprise. She's also Vice President of Communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Irene Smith

Lifelong and fiercely independent, Irene Smith, JD, PhD founded BAHN-SJ (Business and Housing Network San Jose) and currently leads the Independent Leadership Group and the United Housing Alliance; in addition, she ran in the general election for downtown San Jose District 3 as the first independent candidate to advance to the finals. She has over 10 years of experience in each of the following fields: accounting, finance, small business, adjudication, housing, and psychology.

Greg Tanaka

Palo Alto City Councilmember Greg Tanaka is running for U.S. Congressional District 16 to have a fiscally responsible government that supports economic vitality. He is a technology entrepreneur and founder of several venture backed startups and alumnus of Caltech and UC Berkeley.

Pat Waite

Pat Waite is a retired high-tech finance executive living in San Jose. He currently serves on the boards of a variety of nonprofit organizations and as president of Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, a group focused on the efficient and effective use of taxpayer dollars by San Jose's city government.

Peter Coe Verbica

Peter Coe Verbica, JD, CFP® is a co-owner and managing director of Silicon Private Wealth, a Registered Investment Advisor which puts its clients’ interests first; he also serves as the finance chair of the San Jose Symphony Foundation, a party county chair, and a state delegate. A graduate of Bellarmine College Preparatory, Santa Clara University (BA, JD), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MS), Mr. Verbica’s literary works are featured in anthologies throughout the world.

Elizabeth Weiss

Elizabeth Weiss is a professor emeritus of anthropology at San José State University. She is on the board of the National Association of Scholars, is a faculty fellow at Heterodox Academy, and is coauthor (with James W. Springer) of “Repatriation and Erasing the Past.”