‘YIMBY neo-liberal fascists’ comment, perceived threats spark backlash against Cupertino planning commissioner

CUPERTINO — Local pro-development activists are accusing the head of the Cupertino Planning Commission of trying to quash their free speech by threatening their jobs — the latest housing fracas to rock the small city that often finds itself at the epicenter of Bay Area housing policy controversy.

In recent posts on neighborhood social media site Nextdoor, R “Ray” Wang, the planning commission chair, called pro-housing activists “YIMBY neo-liberal fascists” and suggested fighting back against what he calls YIMBY harassment by sending complaints to their employers.

Now Wang, a tech industry analyst who the City Council appointed to fill a vacancy on the Planning Commission in January, is facing a backlash from angry housing activists who say his behavior is unbecoming of a city official. Wang, who denies it was his intent to threaten anyone or chill free speech, says he’s actually the one being harassed by “extreme YIMBYs.”

The dust-up again shines a light on the housing controversy simmering in Cupertino, where a slow-growth group has been fighting for years against a new mixed-used development proposed for the old Vallco Mall site, where the former mayor faced a backlash last year for downplaying the region’s housing crisis and where the current mayor recently received pushback over his joke that Cupertino would build a wall around the city.

For its part, Cupertino is distancing itself from Wang’s posts.

“The City is aware of the incident,” spokesman Brian Babcock wrote in an emailed statement. “Any social media posts by Mr. Wang are solely his personal statements. He does not, and cannot, speak on behalf of the Planning Commission or the City in his personal posts.”

The controversy started Sunday on Nextdoor with a thread about an upcoming event sponsored by a local YIMBY group — a pro-housing acronym that stands for “yes in my backyard.” Wang posted a message encouraging Cupertino residents to attend the event and fight back against developer Sand Hill Property Company, which is redeveloping Vallco Mall as a mixed-use housing, office and retail development. “Save the suburbs from an onslaught of anarchists and YIMBY Neo Liberal fascists,” Wang wrote.

A YIMBY activist took a screenshot of that Nextdoor post and published it on Twitter, where it racked up more than a dozen comments. Sunnyvale resident and pro-housing activist Richard Mehlinger, who works as a software engineer at Dropbox, tweeted that Wang’s message amounted to an “unhinged rant.”

When alerted to Mehlinger’s barb, Wang responded on Nextdoor with: “well that’s fun =) we’ll have to talk to Richard’s employer, DropBox. =)”

Later, Wang posted: “Next time you get harassed by a YIMBY track down their employer and send their HR, Legal, and CEO a letter outlining their YIMBY stance, and all their tweets, their digital and social comms to show their lack of civility. It goes a long way to getting them reprimanded and in some cases a dose of reality.”

The posts, which were again shared on Twitter, disturbed Mehlinger — especially the one that mentioned him by name.

“I interpret that as a public official threatening to go to my employer and to go after my job for criticizing him,” Mehlinger said in an interview.

Though Mehlinger said that as far as he knows no one has followed through by sending a complaint to his employer, the post prompted him to proactively reach out to his boss as well as Dropbox’s human resources and legal departments.

Wang said he was not posting in his capacity as a city official and took issue with his comments on the semi-private forum of his Nextdoor neighborhood being shared publicly — something Nextdoor’s terms of service frown upon.

“This was a private comment as a private individual and citizen on Nextdoor … and someone illegally took that comment and posted it on Twitter and wasn’t supposed to do that,” he said.

Wang added that his intention was not to threaten Mehlinger — he merely wanted to point out that Mehlinger is a tech worker, because tech companies contribute to the jobs-housing imbalance. And he said he suggested getting housing activists in trouble at work as a way to stop harassment by those activists — not as punishment for their political views. Wang said he regularly is a victim of threatening phone calls and other harassment from housing activists.

Mehlinger emailed a complaint about Wang’s posts to several city officials and received a response back from City Manager Deborah Feng reiterating the city’s official statement — that Wang was not posting on behalf of the city.

In an email to this news organization, Cupertino Mayor Steven Scharf wrote that while he doesn’t agree with “the idea of contacting someone’s employer regarding social media posts that you may disagree with,” he saw that Wang included a disclaimer in his posts making it clear he was speaking only for himself.

“If Mr. Wang had been representing the City of Cupertino in those Nextdoor posts then the City Council would consider taking some action,” Scharf wrote. “But in any case I will contact him and suggest that even when stating that he is not speaking in an official capacity that his statements still reflect on the City.”

To Mehlinger, Wang’s posts represent a broader problem.

“I think it is really shocking for a public official to engage in this way, to act in this way,” he said. “I’m not particularly concerned about my job. I’ve got a good employer … But I am pretty appalled to see a public official thinking it’s OK to squelch dissent and criticism by threatening people’s livelihoods.”