November Ballots for SJ City Council Emerge from Primary

This report was updated at 8pm, March 12.

While Primary Day was not a strong day for incumbent San Jose City Council members, unofficial results with more than half the ballots counted revealed one outright winner, plus the likely pairings for November in all but one district.

The margins were wide enough to guarantee an outright victory for David Cohen in District 4, plus the likely General Election opponents in three other council races: Michael Mulcahy v. Olivia Navarro in District 6, incumbent Domingo Candelas v. Tam Truong in District 8 and incumbent Arjun Batra v George Casey in District 10. In District 4, incumbent David Cohen and Kansen Chu were the only primary election candidates.

City Councilmember David Cohen. Candidate photo

In District 2, Joe Lopez held a comfortable position over four other candidates, but Pamela Campos and Babu Prasad  remained in a tight battle for the second ballot position, less than 250 votes apart, as of March 11.

As expected, Mayor Matt Mahan easily won re-election, avoiding a November runoff with more than 87% of the ballots.

Candelas, who was appointed to the post last year, led Truong by fewer than 600 votes in District 8. Another council appointee, Batra in District 10, trailed Casey by more than 360 votes at the vote-counting’s halfway mark.

Here are the details of the Primary Election vote, with more votes being counted through March 12:

Mayor

  • *Matt Mahan    134,986
  • Tyrone Wade      20,456

Council District 2

  • Joe Lopez     4,580
  • Pamela Campos  3,141
  • Babu Prasad    2,842
  • Vanessa Sandoval   2,514

Council District 4

  • *David Cohen  7,763
  • Kansen Chu    5,445

Council District 6

  • Michael Mulcahy   8,326
  • Olivia Navarro   6,464
  • Alex Shoor    3,577
  • Angelo Pasciuti 2,546

Council District 8

  • *Domingo Candelas  7,876
  • Tam Truong     6,549
  • Sukhdev Bainiwal   5,121
  • Surinder Dhaliwal    448

Council District 10

  • George Casey  8,242
  • *Arjun Batra     7,775
  • Lenka Wright   5,262

* Incumbent

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.

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