Campos out! After two terms as District 9 Supervisor and a successful hand-off to his former aide Hillary Ronen who was elected to replace him in November, David Campos is looking south for his next gig, to sunny Santa Clara County. Bay City News had word that Campos was appointed by county executive Jeffrey Smith to the position of deputy county executive, effective Monday.
"I decided a long time ago that I loved public service, that I wanted to continue to work in government," Campos told SFist, adding that according to local conflict law, he's unable to work in San Francisco government for at least a year. As such, he cast a wider geographic net for his next role. After serving for San Francisco on the MTC, the nine-county regional transportation agency, "You learn to think not just about San Francisco the city, but about our region," Campos said. "That role made it easier for me to think about this one."
Before he was elected Supervisor in 2008 and reelected in 2012, Campos served from 2005 to 2008 on the San Francisco Police Commission, and from 2004 to 2007 he worked as general counsel for the SF Unified School district. He ran for state assembly in 2014, but lost that race to his Board of Supervisors colleague David Chiu.
A staunch progressive with a focus on housing and an adversarial approach to City Hall's power-wielding moderates, Campos proposed the creation of a Public Advocate oversight position modeled on the same roles in NYC and other municipal governments. A ballot measure to create the Public Advocate position, a role it was easy to imagine Campos hoped to occupy, was defeated in November.
Finally, Campos emphasizes he won't be decamping to Santa Clara: "I'm committed to San Francisco in that I'm going to continue to live here, but I think there's a lot to be learned from Santa Clara County. Especially in San Francisco City Hall, you think you know everything, and that no one does it better than you. [But] this is a county that's been really well run that can probably teach us a thing or two."
