While San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan may have won a clear victory in last Tuesday’s election, the results for the City Council races weren’t so immediately clear.
A week later, the dust is settled.
Now, with the votes in and unofficial results set, it appears that four of the five races are headed to a runoff in November. That election will determine whether the mayor earns more moderate allies who could help him achieve his goals of combatting street homelessness and reining in city spending, or if the city’s Labor-backed progressives will gain a stronger hold on the council.
San Jose City Council races are nonpartisan — meaning that all candidates run against each other, and if no candidate earns more than 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters head to a runoff in November.
The March election saw low turnout — just 37% of Santa Clara County registered voters turned out to this election, meaning that sometimes just a few hundred votes separated the candidates.
District 2
In South San Jose, young progressive Pamela Campos and the more conservative Joe Lopez, a retired Santa Clara County deputy sheriff, will vie to replace termed-out Councilmember Sergio Jimenez.
Lopez led Tuesday’s election, bringing in 35% of the vote, while Campos got 24.3%. Babu Prasad and Vanessa Sandoval trailed behind with 21.5% and 19.2%, respectively.
District 4
In North San Jose, incumbent City Councilmember David Cohen squarely beat out his challenger Kansen Chu, earning 58.6% of the votes to Chu’s 41.4%.
Chu, a state assemblymember from 2014 to 2020, had hoped to make a return to politics after he ran for state Assembly again in 2022 but failed to advance past the primaries.
Cohen earned an array of endorsements, including from Mahan, the Sierra Club and the San Jose police union.
District 6
Real estate investor Michael Mulcahy, with 39% of the vote, and labor union political advisor Olivia Navarro, with 31%, will advance to the November runoff to determine who will replace termed-out Councilmember Dev Davis.
The district, which sits just west of downtown, was heavily divided — with business-friendly Mulcahy winning in the Willow Glen and Cherry precincts, while Navarro won in the Rose Glen, Del Mar and West San Carlos neighborhoods.
Candidates Alex Shoor and Angelo “AJ” Pasciuti lagged behind, garnering just 17% and 12% of the vote, respectively.
District 8
In East San Jose, incumbent progressive Domingo Candelas, with 49% of the vote, and challenger Tam Truong, a San Jose Police Department sergeant with 33% of the vote, will face off in the runoff.
Trailing them were engineer Sukdev Bainiwal, with 25% of the vote, and Surinder Dhaliwal, with 2%.
District 10
The runoff will pit two business-backed candidates in District 10 against each other, after the Labor candidate fell behind: they are incumbent Arjun Batra, who was appointed to the seat in January, and attorney and planning commissioner George Casey, who the mayor had backed for the appointment. Casey pulled in 38.6% of the vote, with Batra close behind, with 36.6%. Lenka Wright, a former journalist turned communications professional, got just 25% of the vote.