Anita Martinez

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Anita Martinez

Nonpartisan

San Francisco Community College Board

Tenure

2022 - Present

Term ends

2027

Years in position

2

Report an officeholder change

Elections and appointments

Last elected

November 8, 2022

Personal

Birthplace

Bakersfield, Calif.

Profession

Higher Education

Anita Martinez is a member of the San Francisco Community College Board in California. She assumed office on December 9, 2022. Her current term ends on January 8, 2027.

Martinez ran for election to the San Francisco Community College Board in California. She won in the general election on November 8, 2022.

Biography

Anita Martinez was born in Bakersfield, California. She received a master's degree after attending San Joaquin Delta College, San Francisco State University, and the University of California - Berkeley. Her professional experience includes working in higher education.

Elections

2022

See also: City elections in San Francisco, California (2022)

General election

General election for San Francisco Community College Board (3 seats)

The following candidates ran in the general election for San Francisco Community College Board on November 8, 2022.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Anita Martinez (Nonpartisan)	14.8	90,612
✔	Submit photo	Vick Chung (Nonpartisan)	13.8	84,646
✔		Susan Solomon (Nonpartisan)	13.8	84,266
	Submit photo	John Rizzo (Nonpartisan)	11.2	68,444
	Submit photo	Brigitte Davila (Nonpartisan)	10.6	64,652
		Thea Selby (Nonpartisan)	10.1	62,010
		Jill Yee (Nonpartisan)	9.1	55,437
		Marie Hurabiell (Nonpartisan)	6.6	40,225
		William Walker (Nonpartisan)	5.8	35,604
		Jason Zeng (Nonpartisan)	4.3	26,103

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 611,999
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
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2020

See also: City elections in San Francisco, California (2020)

General election

General election for San Francisco Community College Board (4 seats)

The following candidates ran in the general election for San Francisco Community College Board on November 3, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Shanell Williams (Nonpartisan)	18.0	195,356
✔		Tom Temprano (Nonpartisan)	17.2	186,583
✔		Aliya Chisti (Nonpartisan)	11.7	126,904
✔		Alan Wong (Nonpartisan)	11.4	123,437
		Anita Martinez (Nonpartisan)	10.8	117,629
		Marie Hurabiell (Nonpartisan)	8.0	86,726
	Submit photo	Han Zou (Nonpartisan)	6.9	74,975
		Victor Olivieri (Nonpartisan)	6.7	72,840
		Jeanette Quick (Nonpartisan)	5.3	57,925
		Geramye Teeter (Nonpartisan)	2.4	25,580
	Submit photo	Dominic Ashe (Nonpartisan)	1.7	18,556

---

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 1,086,511
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Endorsements

To view Martinez's endorsements in the 2020 election, please click here.

Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Anita Martinez did not complete Ballotpedia's 2022 Candidate Connection survey.

2020

Anita Martinez completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Martinez's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I come from a family poor in money but rich in family history, including pride in our indigenous roots in New Mexico; at four months, my father was adopted by an Hispanic family but embraced his Comanche and Navajo heritage. I am the first in my family to go to college, enabled to do so when we moved into California when the community colleges were free. That led to three more degrees and a forty year career in higher education. I transferred to San Francisco State to earn a bachelor's degree, learning about systemic racism as a student marcher during the 1968-69 student strike that established the School of Ethnic Studies. My career has focused on expanding access and success in higher education as a pathway out of poverty and one of the strongest means of overcoming the structural barriers of racism.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

• I bring 28 years of work experience at City College as a teacher, Dean of Students, and Vice Chancellor of Instruction. I will share my knowledge about how budget and policy decisions are and should be made to improve student learning outcomes and academic success.
• City College is faced with three significant challenges: repairing a budget with a structural deficit and a overspent budget for the past three years; selecting a permanent chancellor with the right experience and characteristics to face challenges and create a positive teaching, learning and work environment; and keeping the college a community college as it has been and as San Franciscans want it to remain. I want to be part of the elected body (the Board) that will lead City College in overcoming the challenges.
• In addition to the challenges, City College has an opportunity to focus part of its instruction to educate, train, or retrain workers who lost jobs or want to change jobs due to the pandemic. It also has the opportunity to lead the discussion on addressing and overcoming systemic racism. I am excited about being on the Board that can provide leadership in both regards.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I am personally passionate about ensuring access to higher education without students acquiring huge student debt. Better educated people have improved access to all the other basic human rights: quality healthcare, comfortable and affordable housing, adequate nourishment, a happy family life, and a life well-lived.

What qualities does this office possess that makes it a unique and important part of the state government and legal system?

This office is the elected governing body of the the local community college district. Each community college district reflects the population and environment in which it is placed. City College of San Francisco offers both credit and noncredit instruction. The credit portion of the college was established in the mid 1930s and officially separated from the K-14 district in 1970. The noncredit portion has roots that extend back to the 1850s when adult education was offered to immigrants from other countries and migrants from other parts of the US: ESL, basic skills, and vocational and pre-vocational training. It also has a history of providing life-long learning both to workers seeking to upgrade skills or workers wanting to change careers. In noncredit, for years the College offered a rich and diverse set of offerings to older adults, a growing segment of the population in San Francisco.
It is a single comprehensive community college district with a design that could serve as a model for other community colleges.

Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?

I look up to many leaders, but my most recent favorite is Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She modeled hard work, careful thinking, persistence, compassion, graciousness, and dignity. The quality I would most like to emulate is, according to her clerks, being a life-long teacher.

What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?

My capacity for hard work and ability to get my homework done before every meeting; my knowledge and experience as a teacher and administrator at City College and an administrator at two other California community colleges; my integrity and capacity to work respectfully with anyone; my proven leadership abilities (I was elected union president three terms as well as Academic Senate president locally and an officer of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges); my ability to listen and think critically and to speak logically, including the ability to summarize discussion as a consensus builder; my desire to share what I have learned from my forty year career in higher education (I am a life-long teacher); my focus on improving access and success for all students, but especially for Black and Brown students.

What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?

The core responsibilities are defined in law; one should review them before running for office. Three of the most critical are approving the budget, which also means monitoring the budget for fiscal integrity; approving policy, which means developing policy but also considering for approval policy recommendations that come before the Board; and hiring and supervising the chancellor, the chief executive officer who sets the tone for the College and creates the campus climate.

What is your favorite book? Why?

The Hummingbird's Daughter, a novel by Luis Alberto Urrea, a contemporary writer. I understand the author based the novel on his great-aunt Teresita; it captures life along the US Mexico border from the perspective of a mestiza. It is the kind of book one first reads quickly to see what happens next, and then reads again and again to savor the writing and the story.

Are there any little-known powers or responsibilities held by this office that you believe more people should be aware of?

The regulations with the which the College must comply are complex; a Board member needs to already be aware of and know something about them or be willing to acquire the necessary knowledge very quickly. Meeting agendas are packed by necessity so one needs to research items on the agenda to be prepared for discussion; one also must be prepared to spend the required time not just on research but also in attending and engaging in thoughtful discussion at meetings and committee meetings.

Do you believe that it's beneficial for holders of this office to have previous experience in government or politics?

I believe it is beneficial if one has acquired the leadership skills needed for service in any public office. However, if one intends to serve on the Board as a first step in a political career, one must be ready to put the well-being of the College ahead of political career advancement.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

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