Campaign watch parties are fairly predictable. Easy finger foods, people in business attire, a generic brand named beer as one of the night’s offered selections. District 8’s incumbent San Jose Councilwoman Sylvia Arenas had all that.
But she also had a koi pond.
Hosted at community activist Daniel Reyes’ Evergreen home, Arenas gathered with supporters and volunteers to celebrate the end of her race against her business-backed opponent, Evergreen School District board member Jim Zito.
Early polls showed Arenas holding a double digit lead over Zito. But for her, the numbers didn’t matter. She said she cares about the community “galvanizing” over shared visions.
Source: Santa Clara County
By today, with 95 percent of precincts reporting, the D8 rep solidified her front-runner status and eschewed the need for a runoff with close to 58 percent of the vote.
Arenas said she’s excited to get back to work. Because she only ran against one other candidate during the primary, she’ll run unopposed in November.
“Unfortunately having a challenger, it takes away from the real work we have to do at City Hall. We kept our work up, but now we get to put in 100 percent on both sides. When we have a challenger, we can’t.”
My Mother told me many years ago that “bad grass never dies”, this is the case with Syvia. All was needed was a proper campaign to showcase her “core values” and she woud have been a “one-termer”.