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Gabby Chavez-Lopez held a comfortable lead in the seven-person race for the District 3 San Jose City Council seat at the end of vote-counting Tuesday night.
In "unofficial semifinal" results as of 8:53pm, with 88% of the 25 precincts and all three vote centers reporting, county election officials called it a night. At day's end, Chavez-Lopez held nearly 30% of the vote. The next update will be announced at 5pm Wednesday.
Turnout was low, even by Special Election standards. The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters reported that the 7,081 counted ballots as of 8:53pm represented 15% of District 3 registered voters. The county had reported that 11% of vote-by-mail ballots were returned prior to Election Day.
The Election Day total left Chavez-Lopez, executive director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley, with a solid 7-percentage-point lead over her closest competitor, Matthew Quevedo, Mayor Matt Mahan's deputy chief of staff.
She led the voting in 18 of the district's 25 precincts, and tied Irene Smith, a judge pro tem, in another, according to the Registrar of Voters "semifinal" results. Quevedo led in five precincts and city Planning Commission chair Anthony Tordillos led in one, according to the election office report.
The race for second place is shaping up as a nail-biter. Quevedo led city Planning Commission chair Anthony Tordillos by 159 votes, 3 percentage points, after the last count on Tuesday. A total of 1,592 votes were counted for Quevedo, compared to 1,433 for Tordillos.
The early vote spread, from 17% to 30% among the top four vote-getters, increased the likelihood of a June runoff election.
Unless a candidate receives a majority of the votes, the two highest vote-getters from Tuesday’s election will move on to a runoff on June 24.
The final tally will not be known until April 15, the final date for mailed ballots to arrive at the county election office.
Here are the Election Day vote totals:
- Gabby Chavez-Lopez 2,087 30%
- Matthew Quevedo 1,592 23%
- Anthony Tordillos 1,433 20%
- Irene Smith 1,186 17%
- Adam Duran 566 8%
- Tyrone Wade 116 2%
- Philip Dolan 45 1%
Matthew Quevedo, deputy chief of staff for San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. Photo Courtesy of San Jose.
Anthony Tordillos, chair of San Jose Planning Commission. Photo from Tordillos council campaign.
The county Registrar of Voters reported that District 3 has 47,307 registered voters.
Carl Salas is representing the 3rd District on a temporary appointment and will continue to hold the seat until a final winner is declared.
Former San Jose City Councilman Omar Torres – not the Special Election – was the top local news story early Tuesday, when Torres appeared in Santa Clara Superior Court and pleaded no contest to three felony counts of molesting a child in 1999. He will be sentenced at a later date.
Torres appeared in court as voters were going to three downtown voting centers to elect a new council member for the District 3 seat from which Torres resigned last November just before his arrest on the sex charges.
Quevedo, deputy chief of staff for Mayor Matt Mahan, was considered the favorite of not only Mahan, but also moderate, pro-business voters, while Chavez-Lopez was supported by a wide range of labor unions and prominent Latino politicians.
Late spending by the leading District 3 candidates soared past $1.3 million on the eve of the Special Election.
Quevedo and Chavez-Lopez raised a total of nearly $424,000 for their brief campaigns, according to the latest reports filed with the San Jose City Clerk.
Political action committees – whose contributors are not bound by the $700 limit on direct individual contributions to candidates – collected and spent money on behalf of these two candidates spending $831,583.
Nearly two-thirds of this PAC money – more than $535,000, was spent on behalf of Chavez-Lopez.
Hundreds of individual donors lent their support to Quevedo’s campaign, which reported a total of $271,687 in contributions, and $245,485 in total spending through April 4.
The Chavez-Lopez campaign raised a total of $151,897 in direct contributions, and reported $117,308 in total spending through April 4.
Tordillos chose to finance his own campaign, putting up $130,000 of his own money for his $154,000 campaign.
Latina Grrl boss – perfect – does she have a tiktok dance too?
good move San Jose, just another mistake in a long list of mistakes
Do you know anything about her? She’s a pretty remarkable woman with a lot of accomplishments. Your comment is just rude and dismissive.
The amount of money spent by the candidates on the campaigns was tremendous. Given the level of money spent with the purpose to reach the voters, it is ironic that the voter turn out was only about 15%. I do hope that the voter turnout on this very important race increases for the runoff election.