A Wednesday election results update shows Gabby Chavez-Lopez maintaining her lead in the special election for the District 3 seat on the San Jose City Council, but the second place vote getter has flipped.
As of 4:02 p.m. Wednesday, Chavez-Lopez still holds on to a solid 29% of the vote, but Anthony Tordillos has leaped ahead of Matthew Quevedo by one vote. Both Tordillos and Quevedo have slightly over 22% of the vote. Unless one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters will head to a June 24 runoff election.
Tordillos, who was in third place on Tuesday, is feeling reinvigorated.
“Throughout this three-month sprint, we’ve focused our campaign on real solutions to solve our housing crisis, improve public safety and get corrupt special interests out of San Jose politics,” Tordillos told San Jose Spotlight. “Despite being outspent 5:1 by special interests including Big Oil and PG&E, I’m glad that our substantive message resonated with District 3 voters. We must make sure every vote is counted.”
There are 31 total unprocessed ballots as of Wednesday, with about 20 being challenged. But Registrar of Voters spokesperson Michael Borjas said his team picked up additional mail ballots postmarked on Election Day and the final number is still uncertain.
Quevedo remains hopeful but acknowledges that the results are trending on a knife’s edge.
“It speaks to the fact that every ballot counts. That’s what I’ve been telling people at their doors,” Quevedo told San Jose Spotlight. “We’re going to keep watching. There are still ballots to be counted and I know more are coming in and we’ll be keeping a watchful eye.”
The leads weren’t this nail biting the night before when Quevedo was still in second place by 159 votes.
Election night
When the results went live Tuesday, a roomful of supporters at Chavez-Lopez’s election night party erupted in cheers and chanted her name. She jumped excitedly up and down.
“I loved seeing such a great lead, it really speaks to the community we’ve built through the campaign and our message of collaboration, bringing folks together and positivity,” Chavez-Lopez told San José Spotlight. “I’m really encouraged by these results.”
@sanjosespotlight Early election night results show Gabby Chavez-Lopez maintaining her lead in the special election for the District 3 seat on the San Jose City Council. As of 8:45 p.m. Tuesday, Chavez-Lopez has 29% of the vote, followed by Matthew Quevedo with 22% of the vote and Anthony Tordillos with 20% of the vote. Unless one candidate gets a majority of the vote, the top two vote-getters will head to a June 24 runoff election. Read more at SanJoseSpotlight.com.
Her supporters, including San Jose Councilmember Peter Ortiz and Santa Clara County Supervisor Betty Duong, gathered at her campaign headquarters in downtown San Jose Tuesday night.
“It’s an early lead, too early to tell, but I felt like everybody else in the room and we got loud,” Duong told San José Spotlight. “We were so joyful because it validates her work, it validates our messaging, it validates the campaign that Gabby has been running.”
A more muted reaction came from supporters of Quevedo at his party who, alongside his wife, watched the early results put him in second place.
“I’m feeling good,” Quevedo told San José Spotlight. “It looks like a good second place right now. We’re going to keep watching the numbers come in but should everything work in our favor, we’re looking forward to a runoff and connecting again with the voters and talking to them about the basics and making sure we’re focusing on street homelessness, filling our police department, building the housing we need in the community and supporting small businesses.”
The election results could tip the city council’s scales of power, reshaping Mayor Matt Mahan’s delicate six-vote majority and painting an early referendum on his controversial agenda to arrest homeless people and prioritize temporary shelter over permanent affordable housing. Total voter turnout so far is at just over 19% — roughly 9,056 of the district’s 47,307 registered voters.
The center-right mayor has put his political machine’s resources behind Quevedo, 37, who is Mahan’s deputy chief of staff. Meanwhile, the mayor’s critics in Democratic Party circles have either backed Chavez-Lopez, 37, the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley’s executive director, or Tordillos, 33, chair of the San Jose Planning Commission.
“Our campaign has already crushed the pundit’s and special interests’ expectations,” Kurt Frewing, Tordillos’ campaign manager, told San José Spotlight after the first round of results.
Mahan said Quevedo’s trailing position shows a contrast between his favored candidate and Chavez-Lopez, who he called the “establishment” candidate with special interest backing from oil and gas corporations such as Chevron and PG&E.
“I have never seen a council primary with such a wave of special interest money,” Mahan told San José Spotlight.
The mayor denied the notion the results embody a voter rejection of his recent — and controversial — policy proposals that include arresting homeless people and prioritizing temporary shelter over permanent affordable housing. He said he himself ran on the proposal that public camping should not be a choice.
“They’re not new,” Mahan said. “I ran on the idea we should reject solutions that cost $1 million in order to take six years to build and should instead invest in basic dignified shelter for every person on our streets. I ran on the notion that when shelter and treatment beds are available, we should require people to use them. And I ran on the idea that we as public officials should not get raises without results.”
Seven candidates are vying for the open seat in District 3, including Quevedo, Chavez-Lopez, Tordillos, pro tem judge Irene Smith, retired family counselor Tyrone Wade, retired sheriff Lt. Adam Duran and Philip Dolan, a knife sharpener salesman.
Susan Hayes, a former political science professor and District 3 resident of 28 years, was among Quevedo’s supporters waiting anxiously for the first round of results as wine flowed in the upscale District bar and restaurant in the heart of downtown.
“Obviously the two big concerns are the unhoused and the vibrancy of the city including trash and cleanup and businesses going out. For me — for everybody — all these candidates have the same issues,” Hayes told San José Spotlight. “But what matters is how you think about them. I liked Matt’s reasoning about the challenges of the unhoused and how to deal with them and his admission that we might not have all the answers.”
The special election is the result of a child sex abuse investigation into former District 3 Councilmember Omar Torres, which led to his arrest and resignation on Election Day last November. The scandal revealed Torres sent texts asking for sex with minors and admitted to molesting an underage relative in the 1990s.
The race has been replete with attack ads and dramatic mailers, either associating Quevedo with Elon Musk or accusing Chavez-Lopez of exploiting the housing crisis. And the campaign dollars are stacking up, with constituents and special interest groups putting thousands of dollars behind their chosen candidates.
Quevedo, deputy chief of staff for Mahan, continues to lead the pool of candidates in fundraising, with recent campaign finance filings showing more than $271,000 raised as of April 7. Tordillos has leaped ahead of Chavez-Lopez raising more than $163,000. Chavez-Lopez is now in third having raised nearly $152,000.
Political action committees (PACs) funding has heated up significantly as the race heads to the finish line. Along with the thousands of dollars spent by candidates, seven political action committees have spent more than $800,000 on the race either supporting or opposing Quevedo and Chavez-Lopez.
Updated April 9 at about 4:51 p.m. The next results will be released April 10 at about 5 p.m. Original story published April 8 at 8:07 p.m.
Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X. Contact Vicente Vera at [email protected] or follow @VicenteJVera on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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