Assembly District 1 — Chirag Kathrani outlines campaign priorities in Patch interview

California’s Assembly District 16 race got a little clearer this week. Patch published a Q&A with Chirag Kathrani, an independent candidate trying to break into a contest that already includes incumbent Democrat Rebecca Bauer-Kahan and Republican Joseph Rubay. The point of the interview was simple — let voters hear, in his own words, what he thinks is broken and what he’d try to fix. And his answer, basically, is that the district has a representation problem as much as a policy problem. ### Who is Chirag Kathrani? Kathrani describes himself as a tech entrepreneur, small-business owner, and East Bay resident who has spent more than 20 years building companies. In the Patch interview, he also points to two civic projects he started in 2021 — Lead For Earth and the Open Governance Initiative, also called OpGov.News — as proof that he is trying to build a politics centered on transparency and public participation, not just campaign messaging. (patch.com) ### What district is he running in? Assembly District 16 covers communities in the East Bay including Walnut Creek, Danville, San Ramon, and parts of Livermore, Pleasanton, and Dublin. Bauer-Kahan currently holds the seat and is running again. Ballotpedia lists three active candidates in the June 2, 2026 primary — Bauer-Kahan, Rubay, and Kathrani, who is running with no party preference. (patch.com) ### What is his core message? His message is less “here is one big bill I’ll pass” and more “the system is not listening.” He argues that local governments across the district are constrained by state mandates and insulated from community voices. That sounds abstract, but he keeps tying it back to one theme — voters feel shut out, and he wants to make government easier to see and harder to ignore. (patch.com) ### Why does he keep talking about openness? Because this is the lane he’s clearly chosen. Kathrani says his civic work grew out of local climate activism in San Ramon and later expanded into tools that summarize public meetings and surface what residents are saying. The idea is pretty straightforward — if city council and school board meetings are hard to follow, fewer people participate, and the same insiders keep dominating the process. OpGov.News is his attempt to fix that bottleneck. (patch.com) ### What personal example is he using? He leans hard on his 2024 San Ramon mayoral race and the city council appointment fight that followed. In the Patch interview, he says he won about 31% of the vote — roughly 11,000 votes — but was later denied even an interview for a council vacancy, while the eventual appointee had received zero votes. Whether voters agree with his interpretation or not, that episode is doing a lot of work in his campaign. It is the story he uses to argue that ordinary residents are being brushed aside. (patch.com) ### Is this a serious race or a protest run? It is both a real candidacy and, at least in tone, a challenge to the district’s normal political structure. Kathrani is not running inside the Democratic lane or the Republican lane. He is trying to make “independent representation” itself the product. That is unusual in a California legislative race, especially against an incumbent. But unusual is the whole pitch. (patch.com) ### What matters next? Timing. California’s primary is on June 2, 2026, and the top two vote-getters move on to November if no one wins a majority. So the immediate question is not whether Kathrani has a fully built-out platform on every issue. It is whether this transparency-and-representation message can pull enough voters away from the usual partisan camps to make the runoff. ### Bottom line This interview matters because it turns Kathrani from a name on the ballot into a defined candidate. (patch.com) His case is that District 16 does not just need different policies — it needs a different relationship between residents and government. With ballots already going out in early May, voters now have a clearer sense of what that argument actually looks like. (ballotpedia.org)