Nearly 100 committees are sitting on $35 million in leftover campaign funds for California legislative seats and statewide offices, including one for 29th District Assembly member Mark Stone, who did not seek re-election this year. 

Despite passionate and eloquent pleas from the City Hall audience, the Dec. 5 San Jose City Council decision wasn’t about taxpayers’ money, or voters’ rights. Cash, political power and private conversations not streamed on Zoom won the night.

The vacancies were created by the November election, when District 8 Councilmember Sylvia Arenas was elected as the District 1 representative on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and District 10 Councilmember Matt Mahan was elected mayor.

Nearly one-third of lawmakers — at least 37 of 120 — will be new to Sacramento, paving the way for new political dynamics and new legislative priorities.

Jonsen's 7,163-vote margin, with approximately 19,000 ballots outstanding, meant that Jensen would need nearly 70% of the remaining ballots to edge past Jonsen. As of 1pm today, Jensen had not conceded the race.

With solid re-election victories by Becker allies Raj Chahal and Karen Hardy, the 2022 election in the City of Santa Clara will result in no change in the 5-2 split in the city council.

Mahan said he appreciated Chavez' 'most gracious concession in the true spirit of our robust democracy,' and congratulated her on a strong campaign.

On the eighth day of ballot counting, Arenas cemented her victory, roaring to a more than 9,000-vote lead over former council member Johnny Khamis, with just 11,000 votes remaining to be counted.

After eight days of counting, Jonsen led by 1.44 percentage points. That’s less than half the margin Jonsen had on Election Day, when 49% of votes had been counted. 

Matt Mahan today widened his lead over Cindy Chavez with an estimated 90% of mayoral ballots counted. In order to win, Chavez would need to get more than 60% of the remaining ballots. Her vote totals haven’t come close to that percentage in the eight days of counting since Election Day.

Bob Jonsen leads the sheriff's race and incumbent Mayor Lisa Gillmor hangs on in Santa Clara, while the contest between two Democrats for California's District 10 Senate seat flipped, as Aisha Wahab pulled ahead of initial front runner Lily Mei.

Chavez would have to increase her winning percentage of the approximately 57,000 uncounted ballots to 55%, in order to wipe out Mahan's lead.

The Sunday ballot count in the San Jose mayoral election showed Mahan with 103,241 votes,  or 50.89%. Chavez had 98,610 votes, or 49.11%.

The list of Election Day front runners in Santa Clara County remained unchanged after Friday's count.

After manuevering for months, Anthony Rendon and Robert Rivas make a deal on who will be Assembly speaker in the next Legislature. Rendon will stay on, but Rivas will take over at the end of June 2023.

The pace of the ballot counting is testing the patience of candidates and their supporters in several tight races, including the mayoral contests in Santa Clara and San Jose and the elections for District 1 supervisor and county sheriff.