DA Jeff Rosen Fends Off Challengers, Nears Victory without a Runoff

Election results have been updated, as of 5pm June 9.

The Election Division of the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters continued to count ballots today, and reported that as of 5pm Thursday, June 9, 71% of the approximately 310,000 ballots had been counted.

Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen turned away two challengers – his first since he defeated his own boss in 2010 – in Tuesday's Primary Election and appeared headed to an easy election victory, avoiding a November runoff.

With 71% of the vote counted, Rosen held 58.6% of the 194,904 votes counted in unofficial, preliminary returns, while opponents Daniel Chung had 24.3% and Sajid Khan had 17%.

If Rosen’s totals hold above 50%, as is likely, he will be declared the winner of a third four-year term. He was unopposed in his previous two re-election bids.

In his primary campaign, Rosen fended off criticism from an office insider, Chung, and a courtroom opponent, Khan.

Chung said Rosen was too progressive. Khan criticized Rosen for not being progressive enough.

In February, 2021, Chung, then an assistant district attorney, wrote an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News criticizing "progressive" prosecutors for criminal justice reforms that would change classifications for some robberies and reduce jail time.

Although he didn't directly criticize his boss, Chung was demoted two days after his public outspokenness. When he reportedly refused a severance package to resign, he was terminated. In September, Chung file a federal lawsuit against Rosen, claiming he and the county violated his constitutional right to free speech. The lawsuit is pending.

Khan is a deputy Santa Clara public defender who announced his candidacy in July 2021, and since then has consistently and aggressively pressed progressive attacks on Rosen’s prosecutor methods, his alleged coverups of police violence and disregard for suspects’ rights.

The criticism didn’t appear to phase the district attorney, who reportedly had been on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s short list to be appointed attorney general, which eventually went to Rob Bonta.

For real-time updates, visit the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters election results website.

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.

8 Comments

  1. While Rosen is still pushing a too progressive style in the AG office at least we won’t have to worry about having to recall the DA for not doing his job,
    and spiking crime rates more than current soft-on-crime policies have.
    Good Luck to voters in San Fran and LA to get the Failed DAs out of office.

    The way that the SJ Spotlight was all in, with article after article gaslighting in favor of Sajid Khan,
    you would have thought that SJS was part of Khan’s paid campaign staff.

  2. This is the clown who wants to persecute law enforcement officers while being passing when rapists like Brock Turner only serve 3 months in jail. Let’s not forget Cain Velasquez shot the perpetrator that sexually abused his child because the justice system allowed him to be on house arrest. It’s sickening how this County allows gang bangers and sex offenders to run amuck

  3. Sajid Khan had 16.8%

    yet got 80% of the free press well free fawning

    what a clown show you people run

  4. In spite of all the free press and the astroturf support of a couple of unions, the people understood that Kahn was a raging progressive who was going to use all the privileges afforded to him that made it possible to get were he is to tear down the system that afforded him those opportunities.

    The man reeks of class envy, bitterness and an outward goal to punish the people he doesn’t like by unleashing a social experiment of D. I. E. criminality on the good people of the county.

  5. SanFrancisco for the Major Win, kicking out the Pro-Crime (so-called DA) Chesa Boudin with a size 12 boot to the rear –
    should have been over 60% rejection, but the rich white liberals with their gated communities and crime buffer zones still supported the bum.

    Looking to November the Soft-on-Crime CA Attorney General, Rob Bonta also needs to get gone.

    CA AG Bonta is another one of those Pro-Prop47 DAs that supports Soft-On-Crime policies
    like ending cash bail, revolving door jails, felon releases and limiting jail and prison terms.

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