Matt Mahan appears headed to victory in San Jose’s race for mayor after Cindy Chavez conceded to him Wednesday morning when more than a week of vote counting left her a few thousand votes short and with a dwindling number of ballots left uncounted.
As of Tuesday evening’s update in which Santa Clara County election officials said 90% of expected ballots had been counted, Chavez had fallen farther behind, down 6,351 votes to Mahan, who had 51.32% of the 240,521 votes counted so far to Chavez’s 48.68%, a lead of 2.64 percentage points.
Mahan, the current District 10 City Councilman, would serve until 2024 when he would have to run again due to Measure B, which San Jose voters approved in June, which reschedules the city’s mayoral elections to coincide with presidential election years.
“I have called Matt Mahan to wish him the best of luck in his two-year term as mayor,” said Chavez, a Santa Clara County supervisor. “San Jose faces numerous challenges in the months and years ahead, requiring that we all work collaboratively with the entire City Council to reach meaningful and equitable solutions.”
Mahan in response congratulated Chavez “on her strong campaign” and said he hopes “to work with her closely in the years ahead to address the challenges facing San Jose.”
“The count as of today now shows our campaign for common sense will win a majority of the votes,” Mahan said. “This has been a long and hard-fought campaign. But what unites us as a city is much more powerful than any divisions from a political contest.”
The winner will replace Mayor Sam Liccardo, who is termed out and has endorsed Mahan, along with business and real estate groups. Mahan’s fellow council members gave their nod to Chavez, who enjoyed labor and business support.
It would be Chavez’ second loss in a bid for San Jose mayor. She ran in 2006 when she was serving as vice mayor, losing overwhelmingly to Chuck Reed, a sharp critic of then-mayor Ron Gonzales, who was caught up in a scandal over a trash hauling contract at the time. Gonzales’ woes were widely seen as a drag on Chavez’ campaign that year.
This year’s race was much closer, and Chavez seemed to have the advantages in experience, name recognition and money. Though Mahan had the edge in personal campaign funds, for which donors are limited to $1,400 each per election, Chavez had more funding from independent political committees representing labor and business interests. Combined with her own campaign funds, she had $5 million behind her effort to Mahan’s $3 million.
Larry N. Gerston, political science professor emeritus at San Jose State University, said Chavez seemed favored to win heading into the election.
“At first blush, one would have expected her to do very well between her name recognition and experience and financial advantage,” Gerston said. “That’s a combination that usually proves to be successful.”
Mahan seems to have effectively cast his rival as the insider candidate responsible for rising homeless encampments and violent crime, even though, as Chavez would point out in frustration during the campaign, Mahan is the one who’s on the City Council now and backed by the outgoing mayor. Gerston said voters seemed to see Chavez as the “de facto incumbent.”
“People wanted the city to have a fresh start,” Gerston said.
Turnout also may have hurt Chavez’ campaign — countywide turnout was listed at 52% as of Wednesday’s count. Gerston said that typically means fewer liberal voters who would be expected align with labor candidates like Chavez. That was one reason behind the city push to align its mayoral races with presidential races. Chavez didn’t rule out Wednesday taking another shot at the mayor race.
But the official measure of turnout — the proportion of registered voters who voted — is misleading with today’s universal vote by mail in which every registered voter is mailed a ballot. Only 180,930 votes were cast in the hard-fought open mayoral race in 2014 in which Liccardo was elected, while more than 240,000 votes have been cast this year.
“While this has been the longest period of vote counting in recent memory, we need to remember that we have also just seen the highest number of votes cast for mayor in our city’s history,” Mahan said Wednesday.
The race turned on questions of who would best tackle rising violent crime and homelessness. Chavez, a former labor leader and San Jose councilwoman, ran on her experience in elected office.
Chavez said San Jose’s police force remains 200 officers short of the department’s staffing when she left City Hall after 2006. She pointed to her efforts to get a $950 million bond for affordable housing passed, and said county efforts helped house 20,000 people over the last five years.
Mahan, the District 10 City Council member since 2020 and former social media entrepreneur and schoolteacher, countered that homeless encampments have proliferated while Chavez focused on expensive and time-consuming long-term affordable housing projects.
He argued efforts to grow the city’s police force have been limited by the cost of generous benefit packages Chavez and other council members approved years ago, and that her bail reforms have put too many criminals back out on the streets following arrests. He urged more accountability in City Hall on progress toward solving those problems.
Check back for more on this developing story.
Source: www.mercurynews.com