Certified Crazy

It wasn’t your average Election Day in Santa Clara County. For starters, voters elected a San Jose City Council member who wasn’t a candidate. District 2 residents sent Jackie Adams to the runoff election in November, apparently not realizing that Adams had dropped out of the race in early March. The city said it was too late to remove her name from the ballot. Assuming those election results are certified and Adams is indeed the winner, voters will find her name on the November ballot, too. They might want to do what Adams herself plans on doing; in fact, what she did on June 3: vote for her opponent, Ash Kalra. Seems ridiculous, but there are no provisions in the California Elections Code that call for removing her name from the upcoming ballot, said Lee Price, San Jose city clerk. “Our City Charter specifically says that the names of the two candidates who receive the highest number of votes in the primary shall be the only names on the runoff ballot,” Price says. If Adams wins in November, she would have to resign her post. ... In another Election Day twist, San Jose voters in the ethnically diverse and heavily democratic District 8 chose Pat Waite, a conservative, Republican white guy who was endorsed by San Jose’s lone Republican on the council, Pete Constant. Waite, a fiscal hawk who is also a favorite of Christian conservative leader Larry Pegram, is headed to the November general election against business-friendly candidate Rose Herrera. Constant summed up the surprise result like this: “Look how much the Vietnamese love me, and I’m not Vietnamese.” Indeed, Constant became something of a hero in the Viet community when he supported the popular Little Saigon name for the business district. “I think people are looking for more conservatism in the fiscal areas,” says Constant. “You can’t deny we are in a financial crunch.”

The Fly is the valley’s longest running political column, written by Metro Silicon Valley staff, to provide a behind-the-scenes look at local politics. Fly accepts anonymous tips.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *