Pleasanton mayor candidate bows out of campaign

One candidate for mayor of Pleasanton on the Nov. 3 ballot told the Weekly she is bowing out of the campaign.

Druthi Ghanta, a 2010 Foothill High School graduate who works as a health engineer and scientist, said a new opportunity to work on a national campaign compelled her to make the difficult choice to step away the mayor’s race — a decision that came after she filed candidacy paperwork ahead of the Aug. 7 deadline and qualified for the ballot.

“I’ve had to make the decision to withdraw my candidacy at the city level in order to take on an opportunity to help on a national campaign until November, where I believe I can have more impact,” Ghanta told the Weekly on Monday.

“I wish the local candidates here the best of luck and will be following their campaigns. I hope to see new leadership that won’t shy away from having the difficult conversations that the city is already engaged in,” she added.

Ghanta’s name will still appear on the ballot because the time-frame to keep her name off the list has passed, according to city clerk Karen Diaz

The decision leaves four candidates actively campaigning for the open mayor’s post: current City Council members Jerry Pentin and Karla Brown, tech product manager Monith Ilavarasan and digital marketing manager Tom Turpel.

The mayor’s chair will be fully up for grabs this fall as incumbent Mayor Jerry Thorne is termed out this year after serving his fourth two-year term.

Ghanta said she had been looking forward this summer to leading her own campaign for mayor to focus on local issues in her hometown as a first-time candidate for city office.

“I wanted my candidacy at such a local level, especially as an immigrant woman of color who grew up in Pleasanton, to focus on engaging communities in the city that were largely underrepresented in city governance,” she said.

“The decision to run wasn’t easy: I had never seen a person with my identity actually be represented as a political figure in this city, and that very fact brings a set of challenges to my candidacy which are unique and which I had to prepare for when I chose to run,” Ghanta added.

Ghanta, a Stanford University alumnus, said she had begun making connections in key folks in Pleasanton and starting to build a campaign platform when the unspecified national opportunity arose last month.

“I’ve come to the decision that I can offer more for these communities with my work on the national campaign this year than in the local one,” Ghanta said. “Unfortunately, working on both isn’t a viable option and that largely drove my decision to focus on where I would have the larger impact on the same issues that I would be concerned with locally — our ongoing response to the pandemic, conversations on race, gender, health care, policing.”

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