Embattled San Jose Business Group Names New Interim CEO, Blames Storefront Political Media

From San Jose Spotlight

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by Staff Reports December 9, 2020

A little more than a month after The Silicon Valley Organization posted a racist image on its website — leading to the ouster of its former CEO Matt Mahood — the business organization has a new leader at the top.

At least for now.

The SVO officials on Wednesday announced Robert Linscheid will serve as the interim president and CEO. Linscheid has more than 15 years of experience serving as CEO of various chambers, according to a news release, most recently the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

“Robert brings a wealth of advocacy, community engagement and strategic planning experience to the role,” a statement from The SVO said.

The SVO officials also released a new statement about an investigation into the racist campaign ad on its website — though they still did not hold anyone directly responsible. The group did, however, say that Storefront Political Media was “integral in creating the PAC campaign ads and imagery.”

“We are no longer engaged with the Storefront Political Media consultancy firm who was integral in creating the PAC campaign ads and imagery,” the statement said.

Storefront Political Media is the political consulting firm often used by San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo. One of his former employees, Katie Scally, told San José Spotlight in October that the group had no involvement in the campaign image.

“We neither saw nor posted the picture on The SVO website that has caused justifiable outrage this week,” Scally, now an account executive at Storefront Political Media, told San José Spotlight at the time. “Particularly as a woman of color I found the image deeply offensive.”

The image, posted on Oct. 27, showed Black people in the streets surrounded by tear gas with the words “Do you really want to sign on to this?” printed at the bottom. The ad was intended to be an attack on progressive San Jose City Council candidate Jake Tonkel’s stance on police reform.

Campaign finance reports show Storefront Political Media was paid more than $134,000 from Sept. 20 to Oct. 17 to design campaign mailers and digital ads opposing Tonkel and District 4 Councilmember-elect David Cohen.

The business group saw immediate and widespread fallout. Mahood was put on administrative leave and resigned two days later. Prominent board members and loyalists, including Joshua Howard and Jeanne Serpa, cut ties.

Influential businesses and nonprofits rescinded memberships. Lawmakers denounced The SVO and Councilmember Dev Davis — who was being challenged by Tonkel and was endorsed by The SVO — said she was “ashamed” by its support and donated campaign contributions from the organization to the NAACP. The group’s PAC, which was responsible for political activity, was dissolved.

The SVO officials quickly blamed a “web administrator” for the post, but declined to name the company or individual. Less than two weeks after the image was posted, a third party investigator declared the group had ‘no intent to do harm,’ but provided little to no details about how the image was posted.

Despite now pinpointing Storefront Political Media’s involvement, the group said the investigation “revealed that no single individual was responsible for the ads.”

“The PAC operated largely independently with little oversight and direction from the SVO Board and executive management,” a statement continued. “As such, their activities were operating outside of clearly defined SVO policies and procedures. Staff were not adequately trained on and did not adhere to SVO policies and procedures and were not provided effective project oversight.”

The statement said “there is no excuse for stoking fear and division in our community” and acknowledged the recent ads were not isolated incidents and “there has been a pattern of insensitivity in PAC ads.”

In February, the business group darkened the face of San Jose Councilmember Sylvia Arenas in a campaign ad that was called racist. It blamed a campaign consultant — Chariot Campaigns — for the ad, but continued to work with the consultant on future campaigns.

The group faced similar allegations in 2016 when it darkened an image of Councilmember Sergio Jimenez and doctored an image of council candidate Kalen Gallagher in 2018 to look like he’s flipping off the camera.

The SVO also announced it will hold listening sessions to “improve its sensitivity” and better engage to the community. In the last few weeks, it had established a diversity working group of ethnic leaders to help guide these changes, but had trouble recruiting people to serve on it.

Prior to his work in San Francisco, Linscheid was the managing director of Innovate North State, a regional innovation catalyst organization, according to his LinkedIn. He also serves as a senior advisor in the Office of the President at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and was the former chairman of the Board of Trustees at California State University.

This story will be updated.