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Supervisor, District 5 (North County) Sorry Neighbor [March 3, 2000, 11:45am]    Cowper Avenue resident and Palo Alto Mayor Liz Kniss, a candidate for supervisor, can boast she lives in the same frou-frou neighborhood with celebrities like Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Niners quarterback Steve Young. And once upon a time, she used to be a neighbor of not-so-famous state Sen. Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto). Sher has been less than neighborly, though, by not supporting Kniss in her current quest to become the north county supervisor (Sher is staying neutral in the three-way race which also features attorney Terry Trumbull and teacher Dolly Sandoval). Kniss, however, didn't take offense at the senator's snub (she has endorsed Sher in his re-election bid). Or did she? Campaign reports show that on Feb. 18, Kniss cut a $327.02 check from her city council campaign account to Gloria Hom's state senate campaign. Hom, of course, is the Republican who will be going head to head with Sher in the November general election. Could this be a case of passive-aggressive campaign dissing by Kniss to her fence-sitting ex-neighbor? No, no, insists Tony Winnicker, Kniss' campaign spokesman. Winnicker acknowledges that Kniss and Hom are friends who have worked together in the past. He says Kniss initially thought that donating money to Hom might be a friendly way to empty the remnants of her city council campaign account--thus the weird figure of $327.02--which has been running on near-empty since Kniss decided to run for supervisor last year. In the end, though, Winnicker says that Kniss, a Democrat, thought the better of it "out of respect for Byron." The end result: The check was cut, but the Kniss campaign didn't ever actually send it to Hom, something Hom-hacks confirm. So how did Kniss realize her political transgression? Eye suspects that the credit for that epiphany might belong to Kniss' political consultant, Mary Hughes. Hughes also happens to be the consultant for, you guessed it, Byron Sher. When Eye contacted Sher, he refused to criticize his former neighbor. "I'm a happy-go-lucky, easy-going guy," Sher says. "As far as I know, Liz is still supporting me for the senate seat, and that's what is important." [ San Jose | MetroActive Central | Archives ]