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Hosterman named adjunct professor at Stanford
Also sets up campaign committee for Congress in 2014

by Jeb Bing

Mayor Jennifer Hosterman, who is winding down her last seven months in office after more than 10 years of public service in Pleasanton, has been named an adjunct professor at Stanford University where she will teach a course on local government.

At the same time, Hosterman announced that she has set up a federal elections committee as she prepares to run for Congress in 2014. Nancy L. Warren, who lives in Hamilton in Marin County, has been named treasurer of the Jennifer Hosterman for Congress in 2014 committee.

Hosterman, who was first elected to the Pleasanton City Council in 2002, was elected mayor in 2004, the first woman to ever hold the office here. She was re-elected in 2008. Term limits require that she step down from office after eight years.

She officially will hand over the reins as mayor at the City Council meeting on Dec. 4 to the candidate who wins the municipal race in the General Election Nov. 6. So far, council members Cheryl Cook-Kallio and Jerry Thorne are the only two seeking the mayor's post.

Hosterman said she has joined the Stanford faculty as a paid professor and will begin teaching a 10-week course at the end of September in the university's Continuing Studies Department. More courses will follow when the Monday night classes end in early December.

Hosterman, 56, graduated from the University of San Francisco with a bachelor's degree and from the John F. Kennedy School of Law with a Juris Doctorate. Her husband Michael is an attorney with offices in downtown Pleasanton, where he also is this year's president of the Pleasanton Downtown Association. The couple has three daughters.

"As mayor and with my involvement in many regional, state and federal organizations, I've had the greatest education anyone could get," Hosterman said. "I've worked hard to put Pleasanton on the map in a lot of different venues, both locally, in California and nationally."

"I also love to teach so I pitched Stanford about combining this experience in the classroom with a course on local government," she said. "I also approached USF, my alma mater, and they, too, were interested but Stanford made the first offer, which I couldn't refuse."

She has to provide Stanford with her syllabus for the course by April 28 but has already lined up as one of her first guest speakers her friend Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy and an East Coast attorney who specializes in environmental law. Like Hosterman, Kennedy is a licensed falconer.

"My course will focus on issues of importance to all of us at the local level, especially relationships with state and federal agencies and officials that can cause tension," she said. "These will include mandates, often unfunded for local governments, by the regional Air District and the Association of Bay Area Governments, as well as measures approved years ago, such as Proposition 13."

As for seeking election to Congress, Hosterman said she has talked with Congressman Pete Stark, who is seeking re-election in the newly formed 15th Congressional District that includes Pleasanton. Stark was first elected to Congress in 1973 and indicated at a recent meeting in Dublin that this may be his last term in office.