Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:58] Can you remind us why this special election is happening and why there is an open seat on San Jose City Council right now?
Guy Marzorati [00:01:07] Yeah, so this really goes back to last year when the District 3 council member Omar Torres resigned from his seat last November as he was arrested on charges of child sexual abuse.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:19] Guy Marzorati is a politics and government correspondent for KQED.
Guy Marzorati [00:01:24] After that, the council made the decision to appoint an interim council member for District 3, Carl Salas, who is a local engineering executive, but they also made the decision to hold a special election for the seat going forward. So basically to represent the district through the rest of this year and through the rest of 2026 until the next scheduled election. So that’s created this open seat that covers downtown, Northside neighborhood, Guadalupe – Washington, as well as the city’s Japantown.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:57] Okay, and so we’re talking about downtown San Jose. What is at stake in this election, especially for this specific district?
Guy Marzorati [00:02:08] Yeah, I think certainly for residents, homelessness is at top of mind. And I will say the last time San Jose took a full homeless count in 2023, District 3 had the second most people experiencing unsheltered homelessness of any district in the city. It certainly was for pretty much every voter that I talked with as I’ve been covering this race, including Ray and Dora McCasland.
Ray McCasland [00:02:33] We feel that a lot of the homeless issues are overlooked at our expense.
Guy Marzorati [00:02:40] They’ve lived in the Northside neighborhood for decades.
Ray McCasland [00:02:44] We can’t park a certain area, we can’t have a certain tree, we can’t have certain things on our porch. But the homeless can park anywhere they want, and they can throw trash anywhere. And there’s no consequences, and we just feel it’s totally unfair.
Guy Marzorati [00:03:00] They even said they don’t want to go out, they don’t want to go downtown, they see conditions on the streets. They feel like in the years that they’ve lived in this neighborhood, I think for them it’s been over 50 years, they feel like Northside, downtown is not kind of the neighborhood that it used to be. A few of the voters that I spoke with were really concerned about increasing trust between the community and City Hall. This issue was obviously amplified by the fact that Torres is facing these criminal charges, had to resign from his seat.
Dora McCasland [00:03:30] All we want from a council member for District 3 is to be honest with us, to care what the people in the district want.
Guy Marzorati [00:03:38] But when I talk with voters like Dora and Ray McCasland, I think there was a desire both to put someone in office in the seat with integrity to hold the seat, but also to improve the kind of communication and services that are delivered to District 3 residents.
Dora McCasland [00:03:53] Be honest with us and tell us, no, we can’t do that because of whatever reason. Or, yes, we’re going to do that and follow it up.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:03] And then what is at stake for the city more broadly in this particular race?
Guy Marzorati [00:04:10] This race has pretty high stakes. I wouldn’t say it’s like a normal special election for an open city council seat because San Jose definitely seems to be at an inflection point on policies like homelessness and the balance of power at City Hall is up for grabs in this election. What that means in practice is, will Mayor Matt Mahan have the six votes he needs on the council, a majority on the council, to pursue a really ambitious agenda that he’s laid out? That includes shifting money from paying for affordable apartments to building temporary housing and shelter. It includes a recent proposal that he’s rolled out that would basically make people experiencing homelessness subject to arrest if they refuse shelter three times. Mahan’s definitely pushing the city in a kind of a new direction when it comes to a lot of these issues. And so the balance of power at City Hall will determine whether or not he actually can get that done. And if he has an ally win this election, he will have those six votes going forward to pursue some of these proposals that he’s laid out.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:24] Well, let’s get into the candidates, Guy. How would you, I guess, characterize the range of folks running for this seat and who’s kind of rising to the top right now?
Guy Marzorati [00:05:35] I think as far as, you know, rising to the top, I kind of see four candidates in this out of the seven. You have Gabby Chavez-Lopez, who’s been the executive director of the Latino Coalition of Silicon Valley.
Gabby Chavez-Lopez [00:05:49] I’m running because I believe in the power of opportunity, the strength of our community, and the importance of real results-driven leadership.
Guy Marzorati [00:05:58] And then there’s Matthew Quevedo, who’s the mayor’s deputy chief of staff. He’s worked for Mahan’s campaigns in the past.
Matthew Quevedo [00:06:05] I have the experience, I’ve been at City Hall, I’ve been working there to push away from the status quo, which has largely got us into the situation we’re in today.
Guy Marzorati [00:06:14] You have Irene Smith, who’s a financial analyst and kind of a local neighborhood activist.
Irene Smith [00:06:19] My unique mix of social local activism and fiscal discipline is the right mix to confront D3’s most chronic problems.
Guy Marzorati [00:06:30] and then Anthony Tordillos, who’s the chair of the San Jose Planning Commission.
Anthony Tordillos [00:06:34] I’m running because I want to restore trust in local government and really deliver results for the people of District 3, and I believe I have the experience to do so.
Guy Marzorati [00:06:41] Those four are perhaps best positions going into this election. And then there’s three other candidates I should note, which is Adam Duran, who worked in the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. You have Philip Dolan, who’s a knife sharpener salesman. He’s been very critical of City Hall. And then Tyrone Wade, who’s a family counselor who previously ran for mayor.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:05] Well, let’s talk a little bit more about some of those top candidates, starting with Gabby Chavez Lopez. Tell me a little bit more about her and what some of her top issues are in this race.
Guy Marzorati [00:07:20] Yeah. So Gabby Chavez Lopez, like I said, she led this nonprofit Latina coalition of Silicon Valley. She’s been backed in this race by the South Bay Labor Council. That’s always a really important endorsement here in local politics to have that big union organization behind your campaign. And Chavez Lopez has come out pretty strongly against a lot of the policies that mayor Matt Mahan has laid out.
Gabby Chavez-Lopez [00:07:45] You can house, you know, 50 people, but if 400 people are becoming unhoused then you’re just kind of like not really addressing the root cause.
Guy Marzorati [00:07:54] She says permanent housing, building permanently affordable apartments should be the priority for city dollars, not focusing on interim housing and shelter.
Gabby Chavez-Lopez [00:08:04] We need to not always think about, you know, the cheaper and faster option, because I don’t know that many of us really make choices like that in our lives. Like, no, you ultimately want what’s best for people.
Guy Marzorati [00:08:20] She was really critical at recent candidate forums of Mahan’s plan to potentially arrest people who refuse shelter. And so, again, if Chavez-Lopez is able to win this seat, that really rearranges the deck chairs at City Hall. Mahan no longer has the solid six vote majority. Instead, he would likely have to work with maybe some of the more swing votes on the council make compromises in order to pursue his agenda.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:46] So it sounds like she’s sort of positioning herself as on the opposite sort of end of Matt Mahan’s platform. And I have to imagine that Matt Mahan’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Matthew Quevedo is sort of on the other end of that. He’s obviously the mayor’s top pick. Tell me a little bit more about him and some of his top priorities.
Guy Marzorati [00:09:06] Yeah, no, that’s absolutely right. And it’s been interesting to watch Quevedo really bill himself as Mahan’s pick in this race. He’s even at numerous candidate forums says, vote for me, I’ll be that sixth vote on the city council.
Matthew Quevedo [00:09:21] On solutions like interim housing and getting people off the streets more immediately, I would be a proud vote and a proud majority vote on making that happen faster.
Guy Marzorati [00:09:29] He’s the only candidate I heard who really came out strongly in support of Mahan’s plan to say, look, if someone’s experiencing homelessness, we offer them a shelter bed or a spot in interim housing and they refuse, we need to have a tougher approach. We need to have a stick and potentially send that person to jail in hopes that they’ll get diverted to some kind of service, but have that more stick approach to dealing with people who don’t wanna come inside. Quevedo has been the candidate most strongly in support of that approach.
Matthew Quevedo [00:09:57] If we try to champion everything, we’re going to fail at everything. By focusing on ending street homelessness, rebuilding our police department, supporting our small businesses and building the housing we need, that’s how San Jose needs to move forward and we need to do so in a much faster way.
Guy Marzorati [00:10:11] There will always be questions like, will he have independence from the mayor? I asked him about that. He laid out some issues where he has been on different sides of votes. There was a recent controversy around putting up digital signboards downtown that Mahan supported, Quevedo opposed. So he’s argued that he can still be an independent voice while also largely being this important vote in favor of the mayor’s agenda.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:35] And what have endorsements look like for Quevedo besides Mayor Matt Mahan?
Guy Marzorati [00:10:41] The endorsements that you’ve seen Quevedo get have largely been in line with the more moderate wing of San Jose politics. So yes, Mahan has endorsed him, but so has former mayor Sam Liccardo, who was a big backer of Mahan’s campaign. Former mayor Tom McEnery, who again used to represent this downtown district is a well-known political figure in the city. He’s also come out and supported Matthew Quevedo’s campaign.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:09] Well, moving on to the other top candidates guy, tell me a little bit about Anthony Tordillos and what his top issues are.
Guy Marzorati [00:11:20] Yeah, so Anthony Tordillos is the chair of San Jose’s Planning Commission, so he’s been intimately involved with the city’s planning for future housing. He has a lot of support, as you might expect, from YIMBY groups, groups that want to see more dense housing built, and that’s especially a big part of Tordillos’ platform downtown.
Anthony Tordillos [00:11:40] I would say that generally the city just needs to do more, they need to think bigger, and they need to act with more urgency. And also making sure that we’re looking towards a post-COVID future for downtown that is not just about business development, but also bringing in more housing density, close to resources, jobs, and transit, as well as supporting our local business community.
Guy Marzorati [00:11:58] He feels like if we are able to bring more housing development to downtown San Jose, that will bring in more tax dollars, more business activity, more vibrancy downtown. And he also has support from groups that support LGBTQ candidates statewide who’ve gotten behind his campaign for city council. And I would say Tordillos has a slightly different perspective than Chavez-Lopez on Mahan’s plans. Ultimately, he says he believes that the city should be investing in supportive housing. But Tordio says in the short term he understands if the city wants to make the shift that Mahan is proposing and use more of the dedicated money they have towards interim housing and shelter.
Anthony Tordillos [00:12:38] Yeah, I would say, you know, I’m a realist here, you know, the city has some real difficult times ahead in terms of our budget, and that means that we need to be flexible in the short term to immediate needs.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:47] And then there’s Irene Smith who actually ran against Omar Torres for this District Three seat before, right? Tell me a little bit more about her and what her top issues are.
Guy Marzorati [00:12:59] Yes, that’s right. Good memory. So Smith was, you know, she finished second to Torres in that 2022 election. And that’s why I’d say, you know, Smith doesn’t have the financial resources of the other three candidates we’ve already talked about. But I think, you know, she has somewhat, you know, name identification in this area based on the fact that she’s been a longtime neighborhood activist. I would say she’s on the other end of the spectrum of Tordillos when it comes to housing. Smith homing. She wants to see, you know, kind of more layers of approval on housing, more neighborhood input, community input on housing projects.
Irene Smith [00:13:34] San Jose and D3 is in the dark ages when it comes to community input.
Guy Marzorati [00:13:40] She largely agrees with Mahan’s, you know, moves to shift around this housing money. She would actually want to see more of it spent on big congregate shelters.
Irene Smith [00:13:51] We haven’t been able to build big enough or fast enough. So we have to have interim solutions for folks who are living on the streets and living in tents. We can’t play whack-a-mole with misery all the time and expect to have a different result. It’s not working.
Guy Marzorati [00:14:11] Mahan and Quevedo have really tried to invest in these kind of tiny homes that offer some level of privacy, private bathrooms, in some cases, private kitchens. Smith says no, we need to go back to the really big large congregate shelters. That’s her preference for how to reduce unsheltered homelessness.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:14:38] So, Guy, you just talked about four of some of the top candidates in this pretty crowded race, and they all sort of represent a range of politics, I guess, especially in relationship to Mayor Matt Mahan. Any one of these four in particular rising to the top?
Guy Marzorati [00:15:00] Conventional wisdom might be that Quevedo and Chavez-Lopez, you know, potentially have the best shots to end up in a runoff just based on the fact that, you know, the mayor’s gotten behind Quevedo, the South Bay Labor Council has gotten behind Chavez-Lopez. Those are the two big kind of forces in local politics. Anthony Tordillos has been raising money. He has a real well of support locally in the community. I think with these kind of special elections with low turnout, it’s really hard to tell. I kind of see these four as, you know, perhaps the most competitive in this special election.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:40] People have, in fact, started voting, right? Where are we at in, I guess, the timeline of things?
Guy Marzorati [00:15:47] Yeah, that’s right. So voting is underway. It’ll run through April 8th. And then if none of these candidates gets a majority of the vote in that April 8th special election, there’s actually a runoff between the top two candidates in June. So June 24th, the runoff would take place. So then you’d expect that new council member to take office, probably, you know, sometime early July. That’s notable because this year’s budget process will end in June. So the current interim council member, Carl Salas will represent the district through the budget process, which is really in San Jose city government. That’s the most important time is during the city budget. So whoever wins this, unless someone is able to get 50% in the April 8th election, it’s a real possibility that Carl Salas, the interim council member will make decisions for this district in the budget process.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:16:41] And I imagine some of these candidates are itching to get in on that part of the process as soon as possible. Do we have a sense right now of, I guess, the mood in District 3? I mean, are people following this election closely? Are they sending in their ballots?
Guy Marzorati [00:17:00] Yeah, I, you know, I would expect a pretty low turnout election for this. The fact that this is an off year, um, you know, special election, I would expect probably low turnout. This election is being really closely watched at city hall. Like I mentioned, kind of the balance of power there is at stake. And then also by a lot of business interests and others in downtown, because this is actually a pretty big year coming up for the neighborhood. You have in 2026, the Superbowl and the World Cup coming to Levi’s medium. And I think a lot of downtown boosters see that as like the opportunity to market downtown. So I think there’s a lot of interest in getting someone in place in this seat and really having them be a leader in kind of organizing the city’s efforts around branding itself and visitors for those big marquee events.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:17:50] Wow, so much at stake here, Guy. Thank you so much for breaking it all down. Appreciate it.
Guy Marzorati [00:17:56] Thanks so much for having me.
