San Jose District 3 City Council special election will undergo recount

It’s official — San Jose’s District 3 special election will undergo a recount as Anthony Tordillos continues to hold onto a five-vote lead over Matthew Quevedo for a spot in the June runoff with frontrunner Gabby Chavez-Lopez.

Since election day, the race for second place has been nip and tuck, with Tordillos and Quevedo flip-flopping positions multiple times throughout the last week-and-a-half.

With very few votes left to process, the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters set the recount for next week as San Jose moves closer to selecting a representative for its downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods.

“We appreciate the diligent work from everyone working to ensure a fast and accurate count,” Quevedo said Friday. “We appreciate everyone who voted and made their voice heard in this election, whether it was for our campaign for common sense or not. We are seeing in real-time how important it is that every vote is cast and counted.”

Chavez-Lopez, the executive director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley, has continued to lead the seven-person field trying to replace disgraced former City Councilmember Omar Torres, who resigned in November due to sexual abuse charges that he later pleaded no contest to this month.

Although the race will drag on until the summer, Carl Salas, appointed to the District 3 seat in late January, will continue to serve in an interim capacity until a winner is declared.

While Chavez-Lopez received 30% of the vote, her strong performance was not enough to earn an outright victory, as that status is only reserved for those earning more than 50% of the vote.

Tordillos, a Google engineer by trade, and Quevedo, Mayor Matt Mahan’s deputy chief, have duked it out for second place, with both candidates earning just over 22% of the vote.

Pundits had pegged Chavez-Lopez, Tordillos and Quevedo to be among the leading candidates due to their qualifications and strong abilities to fundraise in the race that has seen spending top seven figures, largely due to the infusion of special interest money.

While Tordillos was the only candidate of the three to swear off donations from lobbyists and corporations, he and Quevedo have both marketed themselves as candidates trying to break up the status quo.

The District 3 race could also play a key role on whether Mahan successfully implements his policy agenda over the next year, as his bloc currently holds a slim voting advantage on the dais that could shift if Quevedo does not win the seat.

Due to his allegiance to Mahan, Quevedo’s policy platform largely mirrored the types of proposals emerging from the mayor’s office.

After Quevedo held a 159-vote advantage on election night, Tordillos immediately cut into his lead before ultimately taking and holding onto second place this week.

Irene Smith, who challenged Torres in the 2022 election, placed fourth with 16% of the vote, followed by Adam Duran, Tyrone Wade and Phil Dolan.

County policy dictates an automatic review for contests with a margin of victory less than .25% or where that margin is less than 25 total votes.

Michael Borja, as associate communication officer at the county, said the recount would begin at 8:00 a.m. on April 24. While the count could drag into the next day, he said it was highly likely election officials would finish on the 24th.

Borja added that before the recount, the county would also complete a 1% manual tally in a precinct chosen at random “to double-check we did everything right.”

At the time of the last ballot drop, the county estimated that 18 unprocessed ballots remained as of Friday morning. All of those ballots had been challenged and were pending signature verification.

Borja said those affected would have until late next week to cure their ballots and the county intends to update the vote tally on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Kurt Frewing, a spokesperson for Tordillos’ campaign, referred The Mercury News to past statements when asked for comment.

“We must count every vote and there is still more to count,” Frewing said. “We’ve crushed the special interests and pundits’ expectations and we look forward to this process playing out.”