Big money worked for one San Jose City Council District 3 candidate, Gabby Chavez-Lopez, and came up short for another, Matthew Quevedo, who was knocked out of a runoff by Anthony Tordillos in a big upset, confirmed on Monday by the official tally.
The final official ballot count certified by the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters showed Tordillos, a Google engineer who is chair of the San Jose Planning Commission, six votes ahead of Quevedo, Mayor Matt Mahan’s deputy chief of staff – enough to secure the second spot in a June 24 runoff election.
The mandatory recount completed last week did not change the unofficial totals of the April 8 special election announced earlier this month, setting up a Chavez-Lopez and Tordillos contest in June. Chavez-Lopez had just shy of 30% of the vote, compared to 22% for Tordillo.
Total spending for the Chavez-Lopez campaign was five times greater than the spending for the Tordillos campaign.
The morning after the special election results were certified, Mahan – who led a long list of prominent moderates in endorsing Quevedo – said he had met with the final two candidates in District 3 race, but held off on any endorsement.
He said that the candidate “who has the best ideas for making District 3 safer and ending our era of encampments” will get his nod.
The mayor said he “will continue listening to debates and forums” to determine his support, which could be crucial in a low-turnout special election.
“The people have told us again and again — the status quo on homelessness is failing,” he said. “I am looking forward to hearing the remaining candidates respond and offer concrete solutions for change.”
Tordillos trailed Chavez-Lopez by 706 votes in the special election, but Chavez-Lopez, executive director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley, with just 30% of the special election vote, has her work cut out for her over the next two months.
The major financial supporters of her campaign – and accompanying endorsements and volunteers – were the same powerful city labor unions and the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council that supported Cindy Chavez in her unsuccessful $7.9 million campaign against Mahan in 2022.
The District 3 seat is considered crucial for Mahan, whose support of Quevedo marked an attempt to maintain a majority of allies on the City Council for his policies to move the city’s homeless from the streets into temporary housing.
For these reasons, City Hall watchers think it is unlikely that Quevedo supporters – including the mayor – will shift to support Chavez-Lopez.
Tordillos also faces new challenges.
In the April 8 vote, Tordillos managed slim margins in just two of the city’s 23 precincts, while Chavez-Lopez won 17 and Quevedo won four.
Both Chavez-Lopez and Tordillos also face financial challenges.
The hard-fought special election campaign exhausted their campaign coffers – Chavez-Lopez reported an April 7 balance of $34,589, and Tordillos reported an April 7 balance of just $6,734.
Total spending by or for Chavez-Lopez was the equivalent of $250 per vote in the first part of the campaign – five times the per-vote spending of the record $12 million Mahan/Chavez mayoral campaign.
Tordillos contributed $160,000 of his own money, in contributions and cash, to his campaign.
In the three-month campaign leading up to April 8, a combined total of more than $1.1 million was spent by or for the Chavez-Lopez and Quevedo campaigns. Chavez-Lopez raised about $250,000 and two independent political action committees spent another $535,000 on her campaign. Quevedo also raised about $250,000 and also benefited from nearly $80,000 in PAC spending.
This contrasts sharply with Tordillos, who reported less than $15,000 in contributions, instead funding his campaign with $130,000 in personal funds, plus $30,000 in personal loans.
The city clerk reported no independent committee spending for Tordillos.
In an interview today, Tordillos told San Jose Inside that he is “fortunate to have had a very successful career.”
“I grew up in a working class family, [and] was the first person in my family to go to college,” he said. “I had the opportunity to go to Yale, where I met my husband, and I've been very blessed since then to have had a very successful career that has enabled me to invest in my campaign.”
Turnout could also be a key in the June runoff.
Fewer than 20% of registered voters cast ballots in District 3 earlier this month. An early summer election date is unlikely to boost those numbers significantly.
In the last City Council runoff in June 2015, turnout was 27%. In other single special elections, a Santa Clara County supervisor runoff in July 2013 drew 21%, and city council special elections in Campbell and Sunnyvale drew turnouts of 30% and 23% respectively.
