As the battle for San Jose’s coveted District 3 City Council seat enters its final week of voting, campaigns for Gabby Chavez-Lopez and Anthony Tordillos are in a final sprint.

A look at the candidates’ campaign spending since the April 6 special election shows the momentum in the District 3 election clearly tilting in Tordillos’ direction.

Documents filed as recently as Tuesday with the San Jose City Clerk reveal several stunning reversals from the funding patterns of the initial four-month million-dollar campaign.

The April 6 vote for seven candidates left Chavez-Lopez and Tordillos headed towards the June 24 runoff with Chavez-Lopez in a solid lead. Since snaring a surprise runoff spot with a six-vote victory over mayoral aide Matthew Quevedo, Tordillos’ personal funds were no longer the primary source of his campaign funds.

In the past two months, he has raised more money, spent more money and even gained some of the PAC independent spending that had gone to Quevedo.

In contrast, since emerging as the top vote-getter by a wide margin on April 6, Chavez-Lopez has spent less money and has seen her labor-based PAC support plummet.

Total spending by and for Tordillos doubled in the past two months, to $331,729.

Total spending by and for Chavez-Lopez from April 6 to June 7 was less than half her total in the initial four-month campaign, dropping to $284,715 from $625,096.

It remains to be seen whether the money that produces more text messages, phone calls, print flyers and neighborhood meetings will translate into more votes in a low turnout election. Besides the ominous uncertainties of a low turnout, the experience of the Quevedo campaign shows that campaign spending may not mean much unless the candidate connects with voters.

The 3rd District’s 48,128 registered voters began sending in ballots in late May, but as of June 16 fewer than 10% of the mailed ballots had been returned, according to the county Registrar of Voters.

Many of the April 6 voters didn’t pick the two newcomers who vie for the seat next week. In the first election, 30% of voters supported Chavez-Lopez, while Tordillos garnered 22%.

Here are some highlights of the most recent filings:

• In December-to-April, Tordillos spent $154,458, with $130,000 of his own money. He also loaned his campaign $70,000.
• In April 6-June 7, Tordillos spent $228,766, while raising $395,493 (including $73,710 of his own money) and also loaned himself $20,000.
• In that first period, just 162 people donated $14,568 to the Tordillos campaign. Since April, 400 people gave $173,096.
• Before the runoff campaign, no PAC spent money on the Tordillos candidacy. Since April 6, four PACs have spent $102,963 in support of Tordillos.
• The Chavez-Lopez campaign spent $136,699 in the campaign before the first vote. Since April, it reported spending $91,482.
• In December-to-April, 1,185 donors contributed $78,935 to Chavez-Lopez. Her number of donors dropped by more than 50% in the next two months, with 578 contributing $92,629.
• In the primary, her two pro-labor PACs, led by the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, spent $488,397 on the Chavez-Lopez candidacy. In the runoff battle, the labor council, which collects contributions from dozens of local labor unions, had spent $193,233 on the Chavez-Lopez candidacy by June 7, about half what it spent in the first four-month campaign.

For Mahan, who first endorsed Quevedo, then Tordillos, the stakes are high.

The 3rd District seat is the key to Mahan retaining a moderate, pro-business majority as he charts a course for downtown revitalization and solutions to homelessness and public transportation problems.

Chavez-Lopez represents a progressive, pro-labor constituency, and her campaign is supported by leaders of dozens of labor unions, including city police, fire and clerical workers. She is executive director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley.

But this labor support and business-vs.-labor labels are not clear-cut indicators of voting patterns.

Tordillos may be a Silicon Valley engineer and Yale graduate, but he has strong blue-collar and downtown neighborhood roots. He is openly gay, while emphasizing urban planning and redevelopment issues, not identity politics.

While the pro-Mahan PAC, Common Good for Silicon Valley sponsored by Solutions Silicon Valley, is spending money – $15,000 as of June 7 – for Tordillos after spending nearly $80,000 on the unsuccessful Quevedo campaign, regional laborers and operating engineers unions assembled a PAC that spent $42,000 on the Tordillos campaign.

At the same time, the California Real Estate PAC donation of $20,000 to the Silicon Valley Biz PAC funded anti-Chavez-Lopez efforts early this month.

City voting centers are open from 7am to 8pm on June 24, and mail ballots must be postmarked by Tuesday to be counted.

 

Three decades of journalism experience, as a writer and editor with Gannett, Knight-Ridder and Lee newspapers, as a business journal editor and publisher and as a weekly newspaper editor in Scotts Valley and Gilroy; with the Weeklys group since 2017. Recipient of several first-place writing and editing awards, California News Publishers Association.