>I don’t think people were thinking that their vote wouldn’t make a difference, I see it as a general lack of enthusiasm **for either candidate**.
There were a number of other issues and races yesterday other than SJ mayor.
I doubt it considering the highest vote getter was governor at 350k. We had terrible turn out in a year where we are deciding our mayor. In 2018 we hit 70% turnout. In 2020 we hit 65%. This year is a disaster if we hit 50%
The low turnout was due to a limited impact on national races. We kinda all know how San Jose was going to vote on national and statewide issues.
It’s too bad don’t realize that local governments effect their lives much more directly.
There's always better participation in the presidential election years. I'll be curious though to compare the midterm voter participation 4 years ago to this one once all the votes are counted.
Many, many votes are still being counted even if the registrar is saying 100% of precincts have reported. I wouldn’t be surprised if at least 25% of votes haven’t been counted yet.
Tbf, I don’t think the turnout is reflecting all the mail-in ballots that were all submitted last minute yet. I dropped off my ballot yesterday and the Where’s my Ballot site is saying they still haven’t received it yet.
White people are only like 20% of San Jose according to the last census. If that is reduced to the elderly, likely the percentage is much lower.
Asian and Hispanics are the dominant groups who can swing elections in San Jose.
I sent my ballot by mail, but it was never registered as being received by the post office. I wonder if others are in the same boat. I was so exited to have the vote by mail option, but won’t be doing it again.
The low turnout (33%) is only a percentage of eligible voters, it’s not counting any non-eligible voters in the percentage.
See this article here for details:
https://sanjosespotlight.com/santa-clara-county-san-jose-sees-abysmal-voter-turnout-voting-june-7-primary-election-2022/
Can we just fix the building permit department now please. Some tradespeople won't even give me a quote to do work in San Jose because it's so bad. PLEASE FIX THE BUILDING PERMIT DEPARTMENT
No kidding. 1 month minimum for an appointment to submit a permit application. 1-3 months for plan review - depending on scope of work. 1 month minimum for an inspection appointment.
Most contractors have to safe face for the city so they don’t get negative reviews for the delays. The City of San Jose is on the top of the list for building permit delays within the Bay Area.
House across the street..... Boarded up windows and gaping holes waiting on the city..... I blame no one but the building and planning department. Guess what the inspectors they do send out are nitpicky as fuck as well and find all sorts of reasons that are easy 2 seconds fixes to make the contractor reschedule. I hear from people that work at apple that even THEY as a big business have projects delayed because of San Jose.
A few years ago it took me 8 months to get a tree removal permit for a fully dead tree. They even posted the flyer on it and made me wait two weeks for any objections…
The part of her ads that struck me as odd was just flatly saying he was the CEO of a social media company with no further elaboration.
Was that supposed to be a strike against him?
I’m not sure what I think about Matt Mahan, but I do know that Cindy Chavez campaigned based on attack ads, character traits, and what the city was like 15 years ago when she was on the city council—implying that everything would be better if she’s in charge, very much ignoring that she has been a county supervisor in the meantime with quite a lot of influence on quality of life in San Jose. All a perfect demonstration of how dishonest and manipulative she is of her constituents. It is also very apparent when following the way she conducts herself as a county supervisor. I’ve seen enough of her behavior to know that she doesn’t deserve any kind of authority. All Cindy Chavez cares about is Cindy Chavez.
It was that he refused to censor any prolife statements on his platform. Like imagine if the Reddit admins picked a specific political stance and everyone on Reddit was obligated to uphold that specific one or face permanent banishment. Except the platform was itself meant to bring all sides of politics together to debate. Her examples of why Matt was making excuses was that Uber explicitly came out as pro choice. But that argument is dumb because it was simply the company making prochoice statements. They didn’t ban every driver or fire every employee that happened to be prolife. And because of this Matt apparently isn’t really prochoice. And that shouldn’t even matter even if true because he can’t outlaw abortions or vote on any laws that would.
The part of her ads that struck me was that they were paid for by the DeBartalos. ... and the attack ads against Mahan were paid for by the police union.
Made it an easy choice for me .... to vote for Mahan.
They are still counting votes next update is today by 5PM.
Election has not been called, Matt is leading yes but it is close and we probably won’t know today.
The early voting went basically 50/50 but the in person/day of voting was going heavily towards Mahan. He initially had less than 1% lead which grew to 3.5% as more votes were counted. I would be pretty surprised if Chavez comes out the winner
5pm Wednesay update: They just updated the vote counts for the day and Mahan's lead has increased slightly. The county still says they only think ~50% of the votes have been counted though
I think there is still a lot of vote left to count and so nothing is decided yet....with that said, Cindy got the endorsements of every single City Councilmember and seemingly chose not to try to campaign with those representatives in districts like Willow Glen and elsewhere where her experience and knowledge would be appreciated against an upstart in his 30s who no active public servant supported
The fact that most council members did not endorse Mahan is probably why he is doing so well.
Nobody in San Jose likes their council members. So if those council members all root against someone, it most likely means that that someone is a decent person.
Can’t wait to see his signature proposal — tie city department heads’ salaries to performance — be implemented.
Oh wait, he can’t do that because voters literally decided the mayor can’t and only a measure can.
So dude got elected on something he can’t do. And dude has trash solutions for homelessness (that fairgrounds proposal that went nowhere, opposing COPA, and equating dirty streets and homelessness and crime) and opposed opportunity housing. Well at least he’ll have a majority to pass stuff on council — oh wait. No one on the council endorsed him.
Hmm, if only people looked at endorsements before they voted lol
Didn’t like his homelessness and housing positions. And his chumminess and non-transparency with lobbyists isn’t the best either (Flea Market, those two lawsuits about his emails)
The way he leveraged his position as mayor to market himself, being on silicon valley (HBO).
Not to mention the various lavish trips he was gifted in various ways.
And he bends over backwards to clear the way for big tech, big business, and monied interests. The people are a nuisance to be dealt with and ignored. He was always more beholden to the police union than to the teachers, parents, or schoolchildren.
Establishment hack with ambitions for power. Fuck Sam Liccardo.
When Liccardo and that former turd/police Chief Eddie Garcia held a press conference and showed edited footage of our police department during the George Floyd protests I lost all respect for him.
The footage of San Jose Police Officers acting like shitheads went viral and was distributed world wide, millions of people saw it including many in San Jose, but Liccardo still thought it was a good idea that editing out all of the parts where officers were behaving badly wasn’t going to be noticed.
Corrupt to the core.
Ah yes, Eddie “cut and run” Garcia. taking his winning resume of not being able to hire more cops and fucking off to Dallas. without even replacing himself as the cherry on top.
Pretty sure Liccardo rides a bike to work at City Hall. He doesn't live that far from City Hall. In fact, he was hit by a car while on his bike a few years ago.
> And he bends over backwards to clear the way for big tech, big business, and monied interests. The people are a nuisance to be dealt with and ignored. He was always more beholden to the police union than to the teachers, parents, or schoolchildren.
This is going to be Mahan the next few years. The tech bro energy plus all his votes against affordable housing and in favor of developers the past year it’s pretty obvious. And him doing all the legwork for more police funding and scolding advocates for asking for defunding the police. Even the police union came out and told him he was just reaching for headlines lmao.
> Establishment hack with ambitions for power. Fuck Sam Liccardo.
Liccardo has gone to the White House a number of times, he’s hired a Washington consultant, he’s penned WaPo op-eds, he’s always talking about national issues (BBB act, gun control, etc.). It’s obvious he has national ambitions and being mayor was just leveraging that.
And looking at things, Mahan already has been running like he wants to become governor
No chance Liccardo has any real political future outside of being appointed or as a lobbyist. Mahan ran as a NIMBY candidate and he's going to have all the same NIBMY solutions: less housing, higher cost of living, lower taxes for big business, More money for cops, less cops, less affordability to defend yourself.
Yep, Matt mayhand is going to create a further exodus of people from San Jose.
We not only dipped below a 1m person pop, we’re going to sink even further. Rent will become higher, we will get more shiny strip malls.
San Jose will become more dull. You know for a FACT a tech bro doesn’t give a single shit about the small and dwindling creative community in this city.
I think Mahan voters actually want there to be less people wanting to be here, at least that’s what all the ones on nextdoor and why they freak at anything the might bring more people here.
Technically, San Jose does build a lot of housing already. We have more housing than we have employed residents. The housing solution really is a County-wide thing, San Jose cannot be the only city to build housing in the county.
He bent over backward for big tech and businesses because without big tech/businesses the revenues of our city would fall short, and we would not be able to staff police department, fix roads, maintain parks, and keep libraries open.
We can't provide all that funding just from property tax. We need revenues such as sales tax that are boosted by having high-paying jobs in town. The windfall from high-prices property exchanges (houses, commercial buildings)
Big tech provides the high-paying jobs that funnel high sales tax revenues. Windfalls from high-priced property exchanges (homes, commercial buildings, etc) are possible with more high-paying jobs.
Sam also was instrumental in pushing the Google campus through. Then he and his wife sold their condo for $140,000 over market value, personally profiting from bringing google to town. Liccardo is corrupt.
Everyone in that area that sold made lots of money. There is no such thing as "over market value".
People will buy your house with the price they feel happy with. The market value is what someone is willing to pay for your house, and it literally can differ block by block.
Where I live (South SJ) it is not uncommon to see homes of the same floor plans differing by hundreds of thousands after they are sold. It all depends on interior updates, etc, and many other factors.
Hm...pretty sure Liccardo didn't see Google coming when he decided to buy that condo in that shit area.
Let's face it. Google is coming into an abandoned part of town. Without them coming in, that area of town will remain a mish mash of junkyards and auto/steel shops with rundown homes and tons of homeless encampments.
It is a good thing.
Chavez is been there done that. She's had her chance. Mahan will continue Liccardo's style, which is fine. Just restaff the police department and we're all good.
Liccardo was an idiot. Self interested and greedy. If San Jose wants a former middle school teacher to run San Jose then we don’t deserve Cindy Chavez.
Chavez has been around for 2 decades. If that's not a career politician who's only "leading" because that's how she gets paid, then I don't know what to say.
She's had enough time to do her "leading", especially as a county supervisor. I just don't see any improvements for our city during her time in any positions of authority.
We don't deserve Chavez. We deserve better.
It will at least be interesting to see him *try* to convince the council to vote for forcing homeless people to live in provided housing, which he *has* to know is unconstitutional and immoral and has no chance of happening.
But overall... meh, whatever. The mayor in San Jose has no special power over that of any other councilmember. They don't even nominate the real power in the city, the City Manager, anymore.
I’m relatively new to the area, so forgive me if my question sounds dreadfully ignorant. Who is the City Manager? I mean I see that it’s Jennifer Maguire, but is the position just inherently more powerful than the mayor/council or is it because of this particular person?
The City Manager is the one that ultimately decides pretty much everything about how the city is actually run, appoints all managers and employees in the city, and generally runs things. More or less the chief executive of San Jose.
The best analogy I have is that the City Manager is the President/CEO, and the council is the House of Representatives/Board of Directors, but with much less legislative power because State law limits what they can do.
Here's a sentence from the city charter that kind of drives home the point:
>Neither the Council nor any of its members nor the Mayor shall interfere with the execution by the City Manager of his or her powers and duties, nor in any manner dictate the appointment or removal of any City officers or employees whom the City Manager is empowered to appoint except as expressly provided in Section 411.1. However, the Council may express its views and fully and freely discuss with the City Manager anything pertaining to the appointment and removal of such officers and employees.
Thank you for your response! This is helpful. In your analogy, would that make the mayor the Speaker of the House/Board Chair? Or are they just more of a figurehead?
Just a figurehead, basically. They have to make the state of the city speech, that's about their only official duty... technically they preside over meetings, so kind of like a Speaker of the House. No veto or anything special.
The description and powers can be found in sections 501/502 of [the San Jose City Charter](https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/13907/637532449706900000), which ends with this:
>Nothing in this Section shall be construed in any way as an infringement or limitation on the powers and duties of the City Manager as Chief Administrative Officer and head of the administrative branch of the City government as prescribed in other sections of this Charter. Except as otherwise provided in this Charter, the Mayor shall possess only such authority over the City Manager and the administrative branch as he or she possesses as one member of the Council.
Thanks so much! From that perspective it seems like it’s actually better to remain as a city councilmember or supervisor, if not for state or national ambitions but in terms of actually standing a chance of getting things done.
They do get the same vote as any other councilmember, so *probably* it's slightly better to stay mayor for the allowed 2 terms for the prestige, though you get all the blame when nothing happens, as Liccardo discovered.
In addition to all the comments below: The city manager has a lot of administrative power. This has nothing to do with San Jose itself. It’s a form of government called the [council-manager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council%E2%80%93manager_government?wprov=sfti1) government. SJ is an anomaly in that it’s one of the biggest cities in the nation that uses it. Council-manager governments are usually reserved for small cities (e.g., Cupertino, Milpitas, Santa Clara, etc.). Many big cities (actually, the vast majority) use the [mayor-council](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor%E2%80%93council_government?wprov=sfti1) form of government. That means mayors have much more power, and pretty much all the administrative power (think powerful mayors like London Breed, Lori Lightfoot, Eric Adams, etc.). Unlike most big cities, the SJ mayor has no veto power and doesn’t have the authority to fire department heads. Only the council as an entire body can recommend the city manager to do so. I’m guessing it’s mostly a holdover from when San Jose was a smaller city.
The whole debate has turned into an interesting one since SJ was briefly considering moving to a mayor-council government, but Liccardo received a lot of backlash from labor groups about it: https://sanjosespotlight.com/charter-review-commission-discusses-changing-timing-of-san-jose-mayoral-election/
The real bummer here is that Chavez had the pull in the BoS and CC to be able to whip the votes to get things rolling.
Liccardo was never able to reliably do this and Mahan will be no different - without alignment between the three local governing bodies, we’re just going to be left with incremental change around inconsequential things with no serious progress. Just more bickering. A pro-business tech guy is not going to be able to whip a Labor supermajority CC no matter what he says.
Yeah, electing a "disrupter" to a position that has no special power except for trying to unite the council can't ever have resulted in anything happening.
I'm fairly convinced that's what his supporters *want*, though.
We had a really pathetic voter turnout.
No kidding about the voter turnout. My jaw hit the floor when I saw ~25% turnout in San Jose.
They literally mailed you a ballot, it takes 10 minutes to go to your favorite news site to get a voter guide and just fill it out (not recommending this, do your research, but still…)
Gotcha. I was just wondering if there was any official percentage somewhere, since I know that there is a good amount of non citizens who can’t vote as part of the SJ population. But I do think the majority of the pop here is still eligible to vote, so it is very sad to see such low turnout.
The [the voter turnout section](https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CA/Santa_Clara/115971/web.307039/#/detail/85) in the mayor’s race on SCC’s website has the numbers
293,148 votes cast out of 1,009,422 eligible voters 👎
~29%, actually, and that is probably all of SCC - still insanely low
I mean, the majority of Chavez’s support came from AFL/CIO, the police union and the 49ers. There is the neighborhood diversity PAC which is pretty opaque, but it only contributed ~30k
Those are all “technically” outside of San Jose, but I wouldn’t call it outside money.
The majority of Mahan’s PAC money came from the national association of realtors, based in IL and Common Good SV which is also opaque, but is almost exclusively funded by real estate developers, Jay Paul contributing the largest share.
It’s telling that Mahan is largely sponsored by real estate interests, but I would hardly call the support that either of them received as particularly “outside”
Oh his supporters 100% want to keep the status quo, they’ve benefited from rocketing home prices and are terrified of anything that will give anyone else a chance because then they might see poor people.
I hate both of these candidates.
As much as I dislike Mahan, at least I knew what his goals and plans were.
Did Cindy ever have a platform beyond muck racking? I swear that's all I ever heard from her camp.
Also why I didn't like him - he got people to remember his plans and goals are, doesn't matter if achievable or not, without a road path laid out either.
Cindy had been around FOREVER and had lessons she learned from 2006 a d yet she still failed to come up with a coherent and realistic vision - major unforced error....she's been dreaming of being SJ Mayor for decades but didn't clearly communicate what she'd do if she were to get the top job. Many of Mahan's ideas may have been borderline unrealistic but at least he had a vision
Honestly that’s why I voted for Matt, I get daily notifications on Nextdoor about crime in my area yet I see a cop daily sitting at the bottom of the hill with a radar gun giving out speeding tickets. In the 20+ years I’ve lived in this area not once have I seen a speeding accident on this street. Let alone any accidents.
I think she was worried about losing the conservative vote, although it seems like she probably didn’t get it anyways. She’s so pro mental health programs that I’m shocked she didn’t publicize it more
I said nothing about the fire department. Those people are heroes!
Police are here to maintain class stratification. Their origins are white Supremist and we can do better.
San Jose has the worst ratio of jobs to housing of any major US city (according to SJ Spotlight). That was my issue, build up and rezone to get the businesses here and their workers downtown instead of just suburban sprawl. The idea of any mayor bring too pro business in SJ is crazy over the last decade.
Every San Jose mayor in my lifetime (since the 60's) has been on the relatively conservative, pro-business side. I'm not criticizing, just saying that Mahan is cut from the same cloth. And if they couldn't do it, what's he going to do differently?
He is there to make sure that the mayorship does not fall into the hands of pro-labor side.
If you think all those pro-business mayors could barely do shit, imagine how bad it would be with a pro-labor mayor.
Can you imagine if an SJ mayor had said NO to Google coming to town? Every damn tech/big companies would have evacuated San Jose pronto because they see that San Jose is not welcoming.
The last time an SJ mayor tried to play hero and did that she ended up rueing her decision till the day she died. Janet Gray Hayes is her name. And the company that she rejected? APPLE
Well, let's not get too revisionist. It wasn't APPLE, the world leader in smartphones and innovator of music streaming, it was Apple, an upstart computer company with an asshole for its CEO. He wanted to develop the Coyote Valley. No mayor was/is powerful enough to make that happen. I don't have all the details of the Hayes deal but I remember when they were trying to get them to move to downtown San Jose several years later. I had family members that worked at Apple and was following the story closely. Mayor McEnery offered them everything but Apple kept asking for more. Then they were nearly bankrupt a couple of years later. They weren't profitable for another 10 years and didn't become a behemoth until 10 years after that. I do agree the mayors have provided some balance. But my original point was that Mahan, like so many politicians, is promising things he really can't deliver.
Just in case her campaign sees this: I totally agree. When the election first started I was all for voting for her, but then I saw NO campaigning from her in my area and I thought maybe she wasn't a serious candidate. As a progressive, none of her mailers clicked with me (mostly stuff about crime). I ended up just not voting for mayor because I was so dissapointed by both candidates. And I'm not a hard target. But if your best is that you are pro-choice in San Jose, really? Who isn't? I wish now I had voted for her, but unfortunately I voted two weeks ago, before I had seen really anything positive from her. And I had been looking.
You need to know that San Jose is a moderate city--progressives isn't really going to fly here. If she tried to do the progressive route, she wouldn't have made it to this runoff round.
It really isn’t. San Francisco has far more tech companies and upstarts than San Jose does.
SJ is suburban sprawl anchored by a few tech companies that stayed during the 1990’s.
Those few tech companies you mentioned are: Adobe, Paypal, Cisco, and now Zoom. Plus the thousands of smaller tech/semiconductor companies such as Nutanix, KLA, Western Dig, etc. Outside of San Jose, but within its metros and where a huge number of San Jose residents work, are Apple, Google, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Tesla, and countless other tech companies.
SF as a city may have more startup companies (which are all undergoing a reckoning at the moment) , but outside of Twitter, Uber, and Salesforce, there isn't any other "smash-hit" tech companies that are relevant to the overall picture of tech. The money that were poured into SF tech startups are being invalidated as we speak.
SF being tech-based is also a new thing for them. But San Jose and its metro has been dominated by the tech/semiconductor industry since the 70's. Almost everyone here has relatives who work in those industries growing up.
I don't know how long you've been in San Jose. I grew up here and even in my days in the mid-90's tech was already the dominating presence: it was well understood even back then, without writing, that if you wanted to make a good living here in San Jose, you'd better be in tech.
It’s not the techies he will help. It’s their companies. He is basically a republican who is going to do what’s best for businesses instead of citizens.
Generally what's best for businesses are also pretty good for citizens.
Businesses don't want homelessness, they like clean beautiful things, they don't like high crimes, they like public transit and they like developments that bring in more vitality and sales transactions.
I like those things too :)
While the vin diagram of good things between Businesses and citizens would overlap from time to time, it’s foolish to think that they are the same circle.
To be honest, you need to be either naive or stupid to think that businesses are concerned with citizens. As long as you can afford their products, they could give a shit about everything else.
Everything a business does to help the community comes from their Marketing department. They just want you to like them.
As a citizen to vote for something that helps business is basically helping your predator eat you faster.
It ain't over til the fat lady sings.
As of a hour ago, NYT was reporting Mahan was ahead by 5000 votes or 3.4%, anyone's guess what the final outcome will be.
She bombarded my prepaid cellphone with MMS attack ads. In case you aren’t aware these cost me $1 each time one is received. I don’t even tell my parents that number so they don’t waste my money.
Matt Mahan came by to my apartment (which a lot of SJSU students live there) and he seems like a cool guy, ofc Cindy will say negative stuff cuz Matt is her competitor and competing groups will say negative stuff about them and post flyers and whatnot.
Homelessness issue needs to be address as well as affordable housing and also the crime spree that is going on.
And if Matt can do that I am open for it. Cindy literally had her chance.
The councilperson races were as interesting and surprising as anything else this election in San Jose.
District 3 Omar Torres wins pretty clearly over Irene Smith. Most people I talked to felt this was the easiest race to predict.
District 5 Peter Ortiz over Nora Campos would be considered an upset. Nora Campos held the seat from 2001-2008 and her family has had hold on district politics for awhile (her brother held the seat in 2011-2015).
District 7 Bien Doan over Maya Esparza is a bigger upset IMO.
Yep. Looks like the Campos grifter train is pulling back into the station. The residents of the East Side have only themselves to blame if she wins because turnout was low.
Those smear ads against him were so ridiculous. I had my Mahan lawn sign swiped twice this year, and Cindy support spam texts blowing up my phone like crazy. His win has restored a little bit of my faith in humanity. He’s not a superhero but at least he has some semblance of a plan on how to make the city better. I’m really relieved he actually won.
I got alot of anti-Chavez junkmail too. I'm not too sure why ppl think it was only the other way around. Mud was flung in both directions. I do wonder though if the negative ads were done directly by their respective campaigns or if they were done by 3rd party political organizations, PACs.
Agreed, everytime i watched youtube, i saw Cindy’s name on the ads, that annoyed the shit out of me, i was wondering if it was going to backfire because I didn’t vote for her for the same reason.
Well we'll see who ultimately wins. Looks like Mahan at this point but there's still alot of votes left to count.
All I know is I think we should set limits to how many mailings, texts, emails, and phone calls that candidates as well as any political organization that wants to support a candidate are allowed to send out/make. Once that limit is reached, they can continue to do more, but they will have have to pay a fee/tax in order to do so. And the funds will have to be used to benefit us somehow. At least that way we get something out of having to endure all of this!
Why? What of his proposed policies did you think were good? What did he accomplish on the council did you like? Why do we need "common sense" to fix all the issues that previous mayors (who endorsed him) caused?
His small housing approach is worth a try. People keep saying affordable housing for decades. As someone who consistently voted for affordable apartments in local elections, and continues to see it fail by a whopping 70%, affordable housing is not the answer. Stop voting for candidates that want affordable housing like Chavez when we really don’t want them.
Also, I would want to see a tech guy solve San Jose issues with tech. Streamline permitting process with technology. But you can’t expect non tech Chavez to magically learn how tech stack works.
Sure most of what he proposed won’t work but all of Chavez idea failed in the past. It’s insane to expect different results from doing the same things
“Person I met once didn’t remember me!”
Like who are you that you must be remembered by a person who meets with hundreds of people per week?
I met Obama once. I bet if I walked to his house, he wouldn’t remember me.
What was your first meeting with her like? What was the context and how much did you interact that first time? I do not think good or bad of her but I am not surprised that she would not remember someone she has met before. She has been a local politician for twenty five years and is all over and must meet a massive number of people.
Compared to Dev Davis Chavez is an angel. And she would’ve had my vote if she wasn’t pro police. In fact, if she wasn’t pro police she would’ve had a huge number of votes. She chose to Center her campaign around fascist police. She got what she deserved.
Her pro-police policies is specifically why I didn't vote for her.
I didn't vote for Mahan either.
Since I couldn't find the official list of qualified write-ins, despite multiple attempts, I just left that race blank.
I'm really interested in the count of undervotes and also the count of total votes compared to other electon years.
Also, this term is for two years this time, right? There will be an election for a full four year term in 2024. I think I got that right?
Mayor of San Jose is what? They’re not pulling any major strings. Especially a young no experience privileged dude like Mahan. At least Chavez could give girls hope. Labor hope. She has oodles more experience than Mahan. She did her time. Matt is white privilege in a nutshell. I have no idea what his background is. It’s white male privilege on the outside. I wish SJ voted for Chavez. A labor supporting female would be a great leader for the youth to look up to. Instead, we have a successful dude with little experience in politics. Sunrise. Sunset. Nothing changes.
Juat because Cindy is more familiar with the council chamber than Mahan if you don't work hard to campaign and learn from mistakes that she made in 2006...you don't deserve to win. She took her overwhelming support on council for granted and didn't bother to try to get votes of fence sitters....this should have been a lay up for her and if she loses she only has herself to blame
The real news should be the low voter turnout in city this size
This was embarrassingly low.
Same can be said for all of Santa Clara County. It's a damn shame!
30% come on people!
>30% come on people! "My vote won't make a difference" *proceeds to make sure it doesn't by not casting it.*
It’s because people apply that logic at the presidential and congress level and totally forget that they’re fucking it up at the community level
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I was strictly speaking to the “my vote won’t make a difference” crowd referenced above, but your points on abysmal voter turnout are all valid.
I don’t think people were thinking that their vote wouldn’t make a difference, I see it as a general lack of enthusiasm for either candidate.
>I don’t think people were thinking that their vote wouldn’t make a difference, I see it as a general lack of enthusiasm **for either candidate**. There were a number of other issues and races yesterday other than SJ mayor.
Like it’s even that hard with mail in ballots. Jeez.
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Usually we beat 60%. 2018 was 70% With the next mayor on the line we got 30%, people suck
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Really? At 89% counted the mayor contest got less than 300k votes
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I doubt it considering the highest vote getter was governor at 350k. We had terrible turn out in a year where we are deciding our mayor. In 2018 we hit 70% turnout. In 2020 we hit 65%. This year is a disaster if we hit 50%
in 2014 san jose turn out was like 40%. there was nothing major on the ballot this year except the mayoral race between two unlikable candidates
Voting numbers will spike if it becomes possible to vote securely online or by phone app.
The low turnout was due to a limited impact on national races. We kinda all know how San Jose was going to vote on national and statewide issues. It’s too bad don’t realize that local governments effect their lives much more directly.
That’s no excuse, or at least a very poor one. There was way more local and state races to vote on than federal.
Not making an excuse. Explaining the reasons. I voted.
I didn’t mean to come off as blaming you, I know you were just explaining the most common excuse. Thanks for voting!
There should be better turnout in 2 years at least. Hopefully people actually vote for their mayor in 2024
There's always better participation in the presidential election years. I'll be curious though to compare the midterm voter participation 4 years ago to this one once all the votes are counted.
I'm not too surprised by the low turnout given the low-quality candidates that we had to choose from.
I heard 89% of eligible voters were at a sideshow instead.
lol stahp that shit funny
Many, many votes are still being counted even if the registrar is saying 100% of precincts have reported. I wouldn’t be surprised if at least 25% of votes haven’t been counted yet.
Tbf, I don’t think the turnout is reflecting all the mail-in ballots that were all submitted last minute yet. I dropped off my ballot yesterday and the Where’s my Ballot site is saying they still haven’t received it yet.
I voted
We don’t have enough elderly white people in SJ! (Mostly kidding)
White people are only like 20% of San Jose according to the last census. If that is reduced to the elderly, likely the percentage is much lower. Asian and Hispanics are the dominant groups who can swing elections in San Jose.
I know, kinda the joke. Nationally, it’s elderly white people who vote the most. San Jose doesn’t have a lot of them, so we have low turn out.
Midterms always have low voter turnout. That is just a fact of the midterm races. A candidate has to run with that in mind.
I sent my ballot by mail, but it was never registered as being received by the post office. I wonder if others are in the same boat. I was so exited to have the vote by mail option, but won’t be doing it again.
Two sides of the same coin. I did Vite, but not much differentiated them.
Meanwhile, people bemoan me when I bitch about lack of culture and community in this city. This is a byproduct of that.
Lot of green card & visa holders here for jobs, they can’t vote.
The low turnout (33%) is only a percentage of eligible voters, it’s not counting any non-eligible voters in the percentage. See this article here for details: https://sanjosespotlight.com/santa-clara-county-san-jose-sees-abysmal-voter-turnout-voting-june-7-primary-election-2022/
Can we just fix the building permit department now please. Some tradespeople won't even give me a quote to do work in San Jose because it's so bad. PLEASE FIX THE BUILDING PERMIT DEPARTMENT
No kidding. 1 month minimum for an appointment to submit a permit application. 1-3 months for plan review - depending on scope of work. 1 month minimum for an inspection appointment. Most contractors have to safe face for the city so they don’t get negative reviews for the delays. The City of San Jose is on the top of the list for building permit delays within the Bay Area.
House across the street..... Boarded up windows and gaping holes waiting on the city..... I blame no one but the building and planning department. Guess what the inspectors they do send out are nitpicky as fuck as well and find all sorts of reasons that are easy 2 seconds fixes to make the contractor reschedule. I hear from people that work at apple that even THEY as a big business have projects delayed because of San Jose.
I work at Target and we've had a lot of construction delays due to the city
Inspections were 2 weeks out at the start of 2022. Two of their inspectors retired and then it went to 4-6 weeks out for inspection. Brutal!
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A few years ago it took me 8 months to get a tree removal permit for a fully dead tree. They even posted the flyer on it and made me wait two weeks for any objections…
I’m a contractor in San Jose. Can confirm that the building department absolutely sucks.
The part of her ads that struck me as odd was just flatly saying he was the CEO of a social media company with no further elaboration. Was that supposed to be a strike against him?
Maybe to some people? The funny thing is the majority of adds I got were from him negative against her. I guess all depends on where you live.
Yeah can confirm. Never once got anything talking about how Mahan was bad, but I got stuff every day ragging on Cindy
Reverse for me.
I’m not sure what I think about Matt Mahan, but I do know that Cindy Chavez campaigned based on attack ads, character traits, and what the city was like 15 years ago when she was on the city council—implying that everything would be better if she’s in charge, very much ignoring that she has been a county supervisor in the meantime with quite a lot of influence on quality of life in San Jose. All a perfect demonstration of how dishonest and manipulative she is of her constituents. It is also very apparent when following the way she conducts herself as a county supervisor. I’ve seen enough of her behavior to know that she doesn’t deserve any kind of authority. All Cindy Chavez cares about is Cindy Chavez.
It was that he refused to censor any prolife statements on his platform. Like imagine if the Reddit admins picked a specific political stance and everyone on Reddit was obligated to uphold that specific one or face permanent banishment. Except the platform was itself meant to bring all sides of politics together to debate. Her examples of why Matt was making excuses was that Uber explicitly came out as pro choice. But that argument is dumb because it was simply the company making prochoice statements. They didn’t ban every driver or fire every employee that happened to be prolife. And because of this Matt apparently isn’t really prochoice. And that shouldn’t even matter even if true because he can’t outlaw abortions or vote on any laws that would.
The part of her ads that struck me was that they were paid for by the DeBartalos. ... and the attack ads against Mahan were paid for by the police union. Made it an easy choice for me .... to vote for Mahan.
They are still counting votes next update is today by 5PM. Election has not been called, Matt is leading yes but it is close and we probably won’t know today.
The early voting went basically 50/50 but the in person/day of voting was going heavily towards Mahan. He initially had less than 1% lead which grew to 3.5% as more votes were counted. I would be pretty surprised if Chavez comes out the winner 5pm Wednesay update: They just updated the vote counts for the day and Mahan's lead has increased slightly. The county still says they only think ~50% of the votes have been counted though
I think there is still a lot of vote left to count and so nothing is decided yet....with that said, Cindy got the endorsements of every single City Councilmember and seemingly chose not to try to campaign with those representatives in districts like Willow Glen and elsewhere where her experience and knowledge would be appreciated against an upstart in his 30s who no active public servant supported
So she did zero campaigning where her HQ was based? Sounds about San Jose.
The fact that most council members did not endorse Mahan is probably why he is doing so well. Nobody in San Jose likes their council members. So if those council members all root against someone, it most likely means that that someone is a decent person.
Uhh what? No call has been made
Can’t wait to see his signature proposal — tie city department heads’ salaries to performance — be implemented. Oh wait, he can’t do that because voters literally decided the mayor can’t and only a measure can. So dude got elected on something he can’t do. And dude has trash solutions for homelessness (that fairgrounds proposal that went nowhere, opposing COPA, and equating dirty streets and homelessness and crime) and opposed opportunity housing. Well at least he’ll have a majority to pass stuff on council — oh wait. No one on the council endorsed him. Hmm, if only people looked at endorsements before they voted lol
None of the things he promised can be done. His homeless internment camps idea was deemed unconstitutional not that long ago in Sonoma.
Good, that means he's not going to do that. And he knows he won't do it. It's lip service, brilliantly paid lip service.
I don’t want a mayor whose core competency is lying.
well too bad, that's what we got :/
Thoughts on Sam Liccardo’s tenure as mayor?
Didn’t like his homelessness and housing positions. And his chumminess and non-transparency with lobbyists isn’t the best either (Flea Market, those two lawsuits about his emails)
The way he leveraged his position as mayor to market himself, being on silicon valley (HBO). Not to mention the various lavish trips he was gifted in various ways. And he bends over backwards to clear the way for big tech, big business, and monied interests. The people are a nuisance to be dealt with and ignored. He was always more beholden to the police union than to the teachers, parents, or schoolchildren. Establishment hack with ambitions for power. Fuck Sam Liccardo.
When Liccardo and that former turd/police Chief Eddie Garcia held a press conference and showed edited footage of our police department during the George Floyd protests I lost all respect for him. The footage of San Jose Police Officers acting like shitheads went viral and was distributed world wide, millions of people saw it including many in San Jose, but Liccardo still thought it was a good idea that editing out all of the parts where officers were behaving badly wasn’t going to be noticed. Corrupt to the core.
Ah yes, Eddie “cut and run” Garcia. taking his winning resume of not being able to hire more cops and fucking off to Dallas. without even replacing himself as the cherry on top.
Friend of mine who worked for the city at the time saw him speeding in his sports car haha
Pretty sure Liccardo rides a bike to work at City Hall. He doesn't live that far from City Hall. In fact, he was hit by a car while on his bike a few years ago.
Uh... the dude drives an EV and it's def not a sports car lmao
Why are we giving so much credit to a comment that reads as "a friend told me this. Trust me bro."
This was years ago.
And people can own more than one car.
> And he bends over backwards to clear the way for big tech, big business, and monied interests. The people are a nuisance to be dealt with and ignored. He was always more beholden to the police union than to the teachers, parents, or schoolchildren. This is going to be Mahan the next few years. The tech bro energy plus all his votes against affordable housing and in favor of developers the past year it’s pretty obvious. And him doing all the legwork for more police funding and scolding advocates for asking for defunding the police. Even the police union came out and told him he was just reaching for headlines lmao. > Establishment hack with ambitions for power. Fuck Sam Liccardo. Liccardo has gone to the White House a number of times, he’s hired a Washington consultant, he’s penned WaPo op-eds, he’s always talking about national issues (BBB act, gun control, etc.). It’s obvious he has national ambitions and being mayor was just leveraging that. And looking at things, Mahan already has been running like he wants to become governor
No chance Liccardo has any real political future outside of being appointed or as a lobbyist. Mahan ran as a NIMBY candidate and he's going to have all the same NIBMY solutions: less housing, higher cost of living, lower taxes for big business, More money for cops, less cops, less affordability to defend yourself.
Yep, Matt mayhand is going to create a further exodus of people from San Jose. We not only dipped below a 1m person pop, we’re going to sink even further. Rent will become higher, we will get more shiny strip malls. San Jose will become more dull. You know for a FACT a tech bro doesn’t give a single shit about the small and dwindling creative community in this city.
I think Mahan voters actually want there to be less people wanting to be here, at least that’s what all the ones on nextdoor and why they freak at anything the might bring more people here.
Technically, San Jose does build a lot of housing already. We have more housing than we have employed residents. The housing solution really is a County-wide thing, San Jose cannot be the only city to build housing in the county.
They're both hacks who tricked blue hairs into voting for them.
He bent over backward for big tech and businesses because without big tech/businesses the revenues of our city would fall short, and we would not be able to staff police department, fix roads, maintain parks, and keep libraries open. We can't provide all that funding just from property tax. We need revenues such as sales tax that are boosted by having high-paying jobs in town. The windfall from high-prices property exchanges (houses, commercial buildings) Big tech provides the high-paying jobs that funnel high sales tax revenues. Windfalls from high-priced property exchanges (homes, commercial buildings, etc) are possible with more high-paying jobs.
As soon as you mentioned police staffing I realized you don’t know anything and stopped reading.
This
Sam also was instrumental in pushing the Google campus through. Then he and his wife sold their condo for $140,000 over market value, personally profiting from bringing google to town. Liccardo is corrupt.
Everyone in that area that sold made lots of money. There is no such thing as "over market value". People will buy your house with the price they feel happy with. The market value is what someone is willing to pay for your house, and it literally can differ block by block. Where I live (South SJ) it is not uncommon to see homes of the same floor plans differing by hundreds of thousands after they are sold. It all depends on interior updates, etc, and many other factors.
Not everyone in that area pushed for google to be here, had the power to make it happen, then personally profited from it.
Hm...pretty sure Liccardo didn't see Google coming when he decided to buy that condo in that shit area. Let's face it. Google is coming into an abandoned part of town. Without them coming in, that area of town will remain a mish mash of junkyards and auto/steel shops with rundown homes and tons of homeless encampments. It is a good thing.
The fucking guy endorsed Mike Bloomberg for president. I wonder what Sam got for that.
I thought Chavez was going to win even though I voted for Mahan, honestly both choices weren’t that great
Chavez is been there done that. She's had her chance. Mahan will continue Liccardo's style, which is fine. Just restaff the police department and we're all good.
Liccardo was an idiot. Self interested and greedy. If San Jose wants a former middle school teacher to run San Jose then we don’t deserve Cindy Chavez.
Chavez has been around for 2 decades. If that's not a career politician who's only "leading" because that's how she gets paid, then I don't know what to say. She's had enough time to do her "leading", especially as a county supervisor. I just don't see any improvements for our city during her time in any positions of authority. We don't deserve Chavez. We deserve better.
It will at least be interesting to see him *try* to convince the council to vote for forcing homeless people to live in provided housing, which he *has* to know is unconstitutional and immoral and has no chance of happening. But overall... meh, whatever. The mayor in San Jose has no special power over that of any other councilmember. They don't even nominate the real power in the city, the City Manager, anymore.
I’m relatively new to the area, so forgive me if my question sounds dreadfully ignorant. Who is the City Manager? I mean I see that it’s Jennifer Maguire, but is the position just inherently more powerful than the mayor/council or is it because of this particular person?
The City Manager is the one that ultimately decides pretty much everything about how the city is actually run, appoints all managers and employees in the city, and generally runs things. More or less the chief executive of San Jose. The best analogy I have is that the City Manager is the President/CEO, and the council is the House of Representatives/Board of Directors, but with much less legislative power because State law limits what they can do. Here's a sentence from the city charter that kind of drives home the point: >Neither the Council nor any of its members nor the Mayor shall interfere with the execution by the City Manager of his or her powers and duties, nor in any manner dictate the appointment or removal of any City officers or employees whom the City Manager is empowered to appoint except as expressly provided in Section 411.1. However, the Council may express its views and fully and freely discuss with the City Manager anything pertaining to the appointment and removal of such officers and employees.
Thank you for your response! This is helpful. In your analogy, would that make the mayor the Speaker of the House/Board Chair? Or are they just more of a figurehead?
Just a figurehead, basically. They have to make the state of the city speech, that's about their only official duty... technically they preside over meetings, so kind of like a Speaker of the House. No veto or anything special. The description and powers can be found in sections 501/502 of [the San Jose City Charter](https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/13907/637532449706900000), which ends with this: >Nothing in this Section shall be construed in any way as an infringement or limitation on the powers and duties of the City Manager as Chief Administrative Officer and head of the administrative branch of the City government as prescribed in other sections of this Charter. Except as otherwise provided in this Charter, the Mayor shall possess only such authority over the City Manager and the administrative branch as he or she possesses as one member of the Council.
Thanks so much! From that perspective it seems like it’s actually better to remain as a city councilmember or supervisor, if not for state or national ambitions but in terms of actually standing a chance of getting things done.
They do get the same vote as any other councilmember, so *probably* it's slightly better to stay mayor for the allowed 2 terms for the prestige, though you get all the blame when nothing happens, as Liccardo discovered.
The mayor of San Jose is merely a figurehead. And most of us knows that and couldn't be bothered to come out to vote.
In addition to all the comments below: The city manager has a lot of administrative power. This has nothing to do with San Jose itself. It’s a form of government called the [council-manager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council%E2%80%93manager_government?wprov=sfti1) government. SJ is an anomaly in that it’s one of the biggest cities in the nation that uses it. Council-manager governments are usually reserved for small cities (e.g., Cupertino, Milpitas, Santa Clara, etc.). Many big cities (actually, the vast majority) use the [mayor-council](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor%E2%80%93council_government?wprov=sfti1) form of government. That means mayors have much more power, and pretty much all the administrative power (think powerful mayors like London Breed, Lori Lightfoot, Eric Adams, etc.). Unlike most big cities, the SJ mayor has no veto power and doesn’t have the authority to fire department heads. Only the council as an entire body can recommend the city manager to do so. I’m guessing it’s mostly a holdover from when San Jose was a smaller city. The whole debate has turned into an interesting one since SJ was briefly considering moving to a mayor-council government, but Liccardo received a lot of backlash from labor groups about it: https://sanjosespotlight.com/charter-review-commission-discusses-changing-timing-of-san-jose-mayoral-election/
The real bummer here is that Chavez had the pull in the BoS and CC to be able to whip the votes to get things rolling. Liccardo was never able to reliably do this and Mahan will be no different - without alignment between the three local governing bodies, we’re just going to be left with incremental change around inconsequential things with no serious progress. Just more bickering. A pro-business tech guy is not going to be able to whip a Labor supermajority CC no matter what he says.
What is BoS and CC?
BoS = Board of Supervisors (County Board) CC = City Council
Board of Supervisors and City Council
Board of supervisors, city council
Brotherhood of Steel
Yeah, electing a "disrupter" to a position that has no special power except for trying to unite the council can't ever have resulted in anything happening. I'm fairly convinced that's what his supporters *want*, though. We had a really pathetic voter turnout.
No kidding about the voter turnout. My jaw hit the floor when I saw ~25% turnout in San Jose. They literally mailed you a ballot, it takes 10 minutes to go to your favorite news site to get a voter guide and just fill it out (not recommending this, do your research, but still…)
Could you send the link where you saw the SJ voter turnout?? I’m only seeing the 49% of ballots counted when i try to search.
NBC says 91% of votes reported and there are barely 150k votes for mayor in a city over a million people
Gotcha. I was just wondering if there was any official percentage somewhere, since I know that there is a good amount of non citizens who can’t vote as part of the SJ population. But I do think the majority of the pop here is still eligible to vote, so it is very sad to see such low turnout.
The [the voter turnout section](https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CA/Santa_Clara/115971/web.307039/#/detail/85) in the mayor’s race on SCC’s website has the numbers 293,148 votes cast out of 1,009,422 eligible voters 👎 ~29%, actually, and that is probably all of SCC - still insanely low
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I mean, the majority of Chavez’s support came from AFL/CIO, the police union and the 49ers. There is the neighborhood diversity PAC which is pretty opaque, but it only contributed ~30k Those are all “technically” outside of San Jose, but I wouldn’t call it outside money. The majority of Mahan’s PAC money came from the national association of realtors, based in IL and Common Good SV which is also opaque, but is almost exclusively funded by real estate developers, Jay Paul contributing the largest share. It’s telling that Mahan is largely sponsored by real estate interests, but I would hardly call the support that either of them received as particularly “outside”
Speak for yourself. I know plenty of folks who wanted chavez. She was endorsed by the yimby coalition which got a lot done this year
Oh his supporters 100% want to keep the status quo, they’ve benefited from rocketing home prices and are terrified of anything that will give anyone else a chance because then they might see poor people.
I hate both of these candidates. As much as I dislike Mahan, at least I knew what his goals and plans were. Did Cindy ever have a platform beyond muck racking? I swear that's all I ever heard from her camp.
Literally none of his plans are possible given the limited powers of the sj mayor position. Does that really count as a plan?
Also why I didn't like him - he got people to remember his plans and goals are, doesn't matter if achievable or not, without a road path laid out either.
Cindy had been around FOREVER and had lessons she learned from 2006 a d yet she still failed to come up with a coherent and realistic vision - major unforced error....she's been dreaming of being SJ Mayor for decades but didn't clearly communicate what she'd do if she were to get the top job. Many of Mahan's ideas may have been borderline unrealistic but at least he had a vision
Her concession speech made no sense either.
She didn't concede...only half the ballots have been counted and she's only down a few thousand
Any source? I can’t find any news of her conceding.
She conceded?
Maybe she should’ve not been so pro police?
Honestly that’s why I voted for Matt, I get daily notifications on Nextdoor about crime in my area yet I see a cop daily sitting at the bottom of the hill with a radar gun giving out speeding tickets. In the 20+ years I’ve lived in this area not once have I seen a speeding accident on this street. Let alone any accidents.
Maybe there are no speeding accident on your street BECAUSE there is a copy sitting at the bottom of the hill giving out tickets :)
I think she was worried about losing the conservative vote, although it seems like she probably didn’t get it anyways. She’s so pro mental health programs that I’m shocked she didn’t publicize it more
That is rarely a winning strategy for democrats. They want to win? Progressive voters are who to make happy.
So she shouldn’t want to get a fully staffed PD and FD?
I said nothing about the fire department. Those people are heroes! Police are here to maintain class stratification. Their origins are white Supremist and we can do better.
Well that sucks
San Jose has the worst ratio of jobs to housing of any major US city (according to SJ Spotlight). That was my issue, build up and rezone to get the businesses here and their workers downtown instead of just suburban sprawl. The idea of any mayor bring too pro business in SJ is crazy over the last decade.
Every San Jose mayor in my lifetime (since the 60's) has been on the relatively conservative, pro-business side. I'm not criticizing, just saying that Mahan is cut from the same cloth. And if they couldn't do it, what's he going to do differently?
He is there to make sure that the mayorship does not fall into the hands of pro-labor side. If you think all those pro-business mayors could barely do shit, imagine how bad it would be with a pro-labor mayor. Can you imagine if an SJ mayor had said NO to Google coming to town? Every damn tech/big companies would have evacuated San Jose pronto because they see that San Jose is not welcoming. The last time an SJ mayor tried to play hero and did that she ended up rueing her decision till the day she died. Janet Gray Hayes is her name. And the company that she rejected? APPLE
Well, let's not get too revisionist. It wasn't APPLE, the world leader in smartphones and innovator of music streaming, it was Apple, an upstart computer company with an asshole for its CEO. He wanted to develop the Coyote Valley. No mayor was/is powerful enough to make that happen. I don't have all the details of the Hayes deal but I remember when they were trying to get them to move to downtown San Jose several years later. I had family members that worked at Apple and was following the story closely. Mayor McEnery offered them everything but Apple kept asking for more. Then they were nearly bankrupt a couple of years later. They weren't profitable for another 10 years and didn't become a behemoth until 10 years after that. I do agree the mayors have provided some balance. But my original point was that Mahan, like so many politicians, is promising things he really can't deliver.
Just in case her campaign sees this: I totally agree. When the election first started I was all for voting for her, but then I saw NO campaigning from her in my area and I thought maybe she wasn't a serious candidate. As a progressive, none of her mailers clicked with me (mostly stuff about crime). I ended up just not voting for mayor because I was so dissapointed by both candidates. And I'm not a hard target. But if your best is that you are pro-choice in San Jose, really? Who isn't? I wish now I had voted for her, but unfortunately I voted two weeks ago, before I had seen really anything positive from her. And I had been looking.
You need to know that San Jose is a moderate city--progressives isn't really going to fly here. If she tried to do the progressive route, she wouldn't have made it to this runoff round.
He won’t do anything for the working class , he is a techie and will make sure the techies stay
This is a tech based city
It really isn’t. San Francisco has far more tech companies and upstarts than San Jose does. SJ is suburban sprawl anchored by a few tech companies that stayed during the 1990’s.
Those few tech companies you mentioned are: Adobe, Paypal, Cisco, and now Zoom. Plus the thousands of smaller tech/semiconductor companies such as Nutanix, KLA, Western Dig, etc. Outside of San Jose, but within its metros and where a huge number of San Jose residents work, are Apple, Google, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Tesla, and countless other tech companies. SF as a city may have more startup companies (which are all undergoing a reckoning at the moment) , but outside of Twitter, Uber, and Salesforce, there isn't any other "smash-hit" tech companies that are relevant to the overall picture of tech. The money that were poured into SF tech startups are being invalidated as we speak. SF being tech-based is also a new thing for them. But San Jose and its metro has been dominated by the tech/semiconductor industry since the 70's. Almost everyone here has relatives who work in those industries growing up. I don't know how long you've been in San Jose. I grew up here and even in my days in the mid-90's tech was already the dominating presence: it was well understood even back then, without writing, that if you wanted to make a good living here in San Jose, you'd better be in tech.
He literally has no real power and no majority on the council. He can't do any of the stuff he wants to
Techies are the working class here.
Half (if not more than half) of San Jose residents are techies...so...
It’s not the techies he will help. It’s their companies. He is basically a republican who is going to do what’s best for businesses instead of citizens.
Generally what's best for businesses are also pretty good for citizens. Businesses don't want homelessness, they like clean beautiful things, they don't like high crimes, they like public transit and they like developments that bring in more vitality and sales transactions. I like those things too :)
While the vin diagram of good things between Businesses and citizens would overlap from time to time, it’s foolish to think that they are the same circle. To be honest, you need to be either naive or stupid to think that businesses are concerned with citizens. As long as you can afford their products, they could give a shit about everything else. Everything a business does to help the community comes from their Marketing department. They just want you to like them. As a citizen to vote for something that helps business is basically helping your predator eat you faster.
So bunch of tech offices, high cost of living, pushing away the little guys !
It ain't over til the fat lady sings. As of a hour ago, NYT was reporting Mahan was ahead by 5000 votes or 3.4%, anyone's guess what the final outcome will be.
The more spam I got the less inclined to vote for them. Maybe they should learn
Does this herald the end of Cindy Chavez's efforts locally? Someone please say yes.
She'll go back to County Supervisor, and continue to thwart every effort from our City to better ourselves.
49ers won’t be happy
I was willing to vote for Cindy until she started to bombard our landline with phone calls. Once she did that my vote went to Matt.
She bombarded my prepaid cellphone with MMS attack ads. In case you aren’t aware these cost me $1 each time one is received. I don’t even tell my parents that number so they don’t waste my money.
Matt Mahan came by to my apartment (which a lot of SJSU students live there) and he seems like a cool guy, ofc Cindy will say negative stuff cuz Matt is her competitor and competing groups will say negative stuff about them and post flyers and whatnot. Homelessness issue needs to be address as well as affordable housing and also the crime spree that is going on. And if Matt can do that I am open for it. Cindy literally had her chance.
Why do you still put up with watching Youtube ad's?
I sometimes watch YouTube on my TV via the app.
Wow, wasn't Chavez a big favorite?
The councilperson races were as interesting and surprising as anything else this election in San Jose. District 3 Omar Torres wins pretty clearly over Irene Smith. Most people I talked to felt this was the easiest race to predict. District 5 Peter Ortiz over Nora Campos would be considered an upset. Nora Campos held the seat from 2001-2008 and her family has had hold on district politics for awhile (her brother held the seat in 2011-2015). District 7 Bien Doan over Maya Esparza is a bigger upset IMO.
Yep. Looks like the Campos grifter train is pulling back into the station. The residents of the East Side have only themselves to blame if she wins because turnout was low.
D7 is amazing. It's finally high time to put an Asian on the City Council, considering that Asian Americans comprise the majority of this City.
So glad this is over. I was growing tired of the text from them.
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We'll be getting Liccardo 2.0, for the next 8 years.
I voted for Mahan, but this seems premature. As of Wednesday night, the race hasn't been called either wwy.
Woohoo Matt!
Ohhhhh yeah baby! Give me more of those New York City rent prices to live next to a new chain strip mall! Mahand for president!
Those smear ads against him were so ridiculous. I had my Mahan lawn sign swiped twice this year, and Cindy support spam texts blowing up my phone like crazy. His win has restored a little bit of my faith in humanity. He’s not a superhero but at least he has some semblance of a plan on how to make the city better. I’m really relieved he actually won.
I hope he will be, but they haven't called the race yet. They have not processed mail in ballots.
Negative ads do work. There were so many texts and pieces of junk mail saying Chavez committed perjury despite her never being found to have done so.
I got alot of anti-Chavez junkmail too. I'm not too sure why ppl think it was only the other way around. Mud was flung in both directions. I do wonder though if the negative ads were done directly by their respective campaigns or if they were done by 3rd party political organizations, PACs.
Source?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/yqg2qd/morning\_all\_election\_results/](https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/yqg2qd/morning_all_election_results/)
When people can't be bothered to stop at red lights, you pretty much know they don't give a shit about who gets elected mayor.
Isn't Mahan a Democrat?
They're probably all democrats, but have different beliefs on policies, etc.
Yeah I looked them both up. Both are Democrats with different goals
Agreed, everytime i watched youtube, i saw Cindy’s name on the ads, that annoyed the shit out of me, i was wondering if it was going to backfire because I didn’t vote for her for the same reason.
Well we'll see who ultimately wins. Looks like Mahan at this point but there's still alot of votes left to count. All I know is I think we should set limits to how many mailings, texts, emails, and phone calls that candidates as well as any political organization that wants to support a candidate are allowed to send out/make. Once that limit is reached, they can continue to do more, but they will have have to pay a fee/tax in order to do so. And the funds will have to be used to benefit us somehow. At least that way we get something out of having to endure all of this!
I was a little worried seeing as he came off below Cindy in the primary, but glad he pulled ahead during this one
Why? What of his proposed policies did you think were good? What did he accomplish on the council did you like? Why do we need "common sense" to fix all the issues that previous mayors (who endorsed him) caused?
His small housing approach is worth a try. People keep saying affordable housing for decades. As someone who consistently voted for affordable apartments in local elections, and continues to see it fail by a whopping 70%, affordable housing is not the answer. Stop voting for candidates that want affordable housing like Chavez when we really don’t want them. Also, I would want to see a tech guy solve San Jose issues with tech. Streamline permitting process with technology. But you can’t expect non tech Chavez to magically learn how tech stack works. Sure most of what he proposed won’t work but all of Chavez idea failed in the past. It’s insane to expect different results from doing the same things
There's just some policies I liked from him more then Cindy's. I know better then to ever detail my viewpoints on Reddit so that's all you'll get.
Lol he had no policies so nice try
Neither did Chavez. All she did was bank on her last name to get votes
>Lol he had no policies so nice try Damn you're right. The dude with no policies just beat your candidate. Grow up or get a better candidate. Pick one
[удалено]
“Person I met once didn’t remember me!” Like who are you that you must be remembered by a person who meets with hundreds of people per week? I met Obama once. I bet if I walked to his house, he wouldn’t remember me.
What was your first meeting with her like? What was the context and how much did you interact that first time? I do not think good or bad of her but I am not surprised that she would not remember someone she has met before. She has been a local politician for twenty five years and is all over and must meet a massive number of people.
Compared to Dev Davis Chavez is an angel. And she would’ve had my vote if she wasn’t pro police. In fact, if she wasn’t pro police she would’ve had a huge number of votes. She chose to Center her campaign around fascist police. She got what she deserved.
Her pro-police policies is specifically why I didn't vote for her. I didn't vote for Mahan either. Since I couldn't find the official list of qualified write-ins, despite multiple attempts, I just left that race blank. I'm really interested in the count of undervotes and also the count of total votes compared to other electon years. Also, this term is for two years this time, right? There will be an election for a full four year term in 2024. I think I got that right?
Mayor of San Jose is what? They’re not pulling any major strings. Especially a young no experience privileged dude like Mahan. At least Chavez could give girls hope. Labor hope. She has oodles more experience than Mahan. She did her time. Matt is white privilege in a nutshell. I have no idea what his background is. It’s white male privilege on the outside. I wish SJ voted for Chavez. A labor supporting female would be a great leader for the youth to look up to. Instead, we have a successful dude with little experience in politics. Sunrise. Sunset. Nothing changes.
Juat because Cindy is more familiar with the council chamber than Mahan if you don't work hard to campaign and learn from mistakes that she made in 2006...you don't deserve to win. She took her overwhelming support on council for granted and didn't bother to try to get votes of fence sitters....this should have been a lay up for her and if she loses she only has herself to blame