TWO CANDIDATES ARE VYING to unseat Alameda County Board of Supervisors incumbent Elisa Marquez in the June 2 election.
Marquez, a former Hayward City Council member, has been on the board since 2023 when she was appointed to replace Richard Valle, who died while in office.
She is facing off against BART Board Director Liz Ames and businessman Rohan Marfatia for the right to represent District 2, which includes the cities of Newark and Union City, most of Hayward and parts of Fremont.
Marquez won an uncontested election for the seat in 2024 and says health care access, maintaining the county’s safety net programs and protecting immigrant and refugee communities are among her top priorities.
For example, she said she’s most proud of the role her office played in keeping Hayward’s long-struggling St. Rose Hospital open, having secured millions in funding locally and leveraging federal matching dollars to save the city’s only emergency room.
“I spent thousands of hours in meetings, rallies, presentations to do everything possible to prevent St. Rose Hospital from closing and I’m glad to say we were effective in that — in November of 2024 they formally affiliated with Alameda Health System,” Marquez said.
She has voiced support for greater transparency in the supervisors’ budget and spending decisions and specifically criticized the way in which the board seemed to hastily push through a nearly $270 million maintenance and repair proposal for Santa Rita Jail, which she ultimately voted to approve.
She has also been instrumental in the board’s decisions to pass greater protections for renters and to create a roughly $1 million “redress fund” for former residents of Russell City, an African American and Latino community on the Hayward shoreline that was razed by the county in the 1960s.
Marquez said one of her key initiatives is the push to create a county Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, particularly in light of the federal government’s mass deportation agenda and the fact that nearly 46% of District 2 residents are foreign-born.
She also points to her accomplishments as chair of the board’s Public Protection Committee, where she helped secure $1.3 million for the Public Defender’s Office to provide immigrant defense services.
Her endorsements include all of the current Alameda County supervisors, the mayors of Hayward, Union City and Fremont and the region’s state Assemblymember Liz Ortega, as well as the Alameda County Democratic Party and many of the county’s largest trade union groups.
The most current campaign finance filings show the “Elisa Marquez for County Supervisor 2026” committee has raised $91,379 in contributions this year and has $233,685 cash on hand.
Ames on fiscal oversight, public safety
One of her challengers on the June ballot is Ames, who was first elected to the BART Board of Directors in 2018 and won a reelection campaign in 2022.
Ames, a former Union City planning commissioner, is a civil engineer and worked for the Palo Alto Department of Public Works for more than 30 years.
She says her priorities include sound fiscal management, public safety and economic development.
“Alameda County revenues are not keeping up with expenses,” Ames wrote in her candidate statement. “Short-term, I will urge Alameda County to perform department audits, with a goal of reducing expenses, optimizing services and increasing revenues.”
She served as the chair of the Save Our Hills coalition in Union City, which won protection for 60 acres of open space and pushed for an equestrian/bike trail along Niles Canyon from Fremont to Sunol, according to her LinkedIn profile.
“If elected, I will focus on safe and clean streets to better serve people walking, bicycling, taking the bus and driving,” according to her statement.
Ames’ campaign website says she “will not support new infrastructure, like roads sprawling into the hills/open spaces that will increase maintenance liabilities,” which she says the county currently isn’t keeping up with.
She said the county should foster a better “jobs-housing balance” by working with cities to build more affordable and “missing-middle income housing.”
Ames says she wants to pause adding any new taxes, fees or regulations and says the county should encourage more office space near BART stations, more manufacturing operations in under-used warehouse spaces, and industrial projects near existing strip malls and shopping centers.
Ames’ supporters include former state senator Steven Glazer, former Pleasant Hill mayor Matt Rinn, former BART directors John McPartland and Tom Blalock and former Union City mayor Mark Green, among others. There are no campaign finance disclosure forms for her at the Alameda County Registrar of Voters Office for this race, although Ames said all forms were filed on time.
Marfatia on homelessness, behavioral health
Marquez’s other challenger is Marfatia, CEO of DataCRaiM Inc., an IT services and consulting firm with offices in Fremont, Newport Beach and Las Vegas, Nevada, according to the company website.
In 2024, he finished third in a four-candidate race for Fremont mayor.
“My priorities are rooted in one principle: county government should be judged by results,” Marfatia says on his campaign website.
His key issues include “safer neighborhoods, real solutions to homelessness, transparent government, and stronger support for working families.”
Marfatia supports implementing “faster county behavioral-health crisis response” and expanding “the focus on treatment, diversion, and reentry so fewer people cycle between the street, the emergency room, and jail.”
He says that while the county can’t solve all the region’s economic challenges, it can do more to support workers and small businesses.
For example, he says the county can improve the way it helps laid-off workers access benefits, job training and potential re-employment.
He said he supports, among other things, promoting “stronger partnerships between the county, community colleges, adult schools, labor, and employers,” according to his website.
Marfatia lists four endorsements on his website, including the former mayor of Los Altos Hills, two of the top executives at the California Science and Technology University, and a track-and-field coach.
Marfatia has reported $3,270 in campaign contributions so far this year for this race and has $1,009 cash on hand.
For more information on the three candidates, people can visit their websites at elisaforsupervisor.net, rohanmarfatia.org and ames4change.com.
This story was updated at 11:10 a.m. on Friday, May 8.
