As the number of ballots left to process dwindles down, gay San Jose City Council District 3 candidate Anthony Tordillos is now ahead by five votes in the race for second place and a spot in the runoff election for the seat. But it is expected there will be a recount of the vote in the April 8 special election to represent much of the city’s downtown area and Qmunity LGBTQ district.
With Tuesday’s tally update, Tordillos saw his second place showing strengthen to 2,005 votes, for 22.19% of the total counted. Trailing at 2,000 votes, or 22.13%, is Matthew Quevedo, deputy chief of staff to San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.
Only the top two vote-getters will move on to the special June 24 runoff election to determine who will serve in the council seat through 2026. Maintaining her first place standing on election night is Gabriela "Gabby" Chavez-Lopez, the executive director of South Bay nonprofit the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley.
She edged up to 29.98% of the vote with 2,709 total. Still in fourth place is pro tem judge Irene Smith, who unsuccessfully sought the seat three years ago. She is now at 15.96% with 1,442 votes.
Chavez-Lopez gained one vote Wednesday, with 19 challenged ballots remaining as of that morning out of the 9,101 ballots cast, according to the county registrar’s office. The next update is coming Friday by 5 p.m.
In an April 9 Instagram post Tordillos, chair of his city’s planning commission, had written, “We must make sure every vote is counted!”
Under the county’s election codes, if the vote difference between Tordillos and Quevedo is less than .25% then there will be an automatic hand recount. Tordillos leads by .06% at the moment.
A candidate needed to surpass 50% of the vote in order to clinch the council seat and avoid the summer runoff. It is coinciding with this year’s Pride week celebrations in cities around the Bay Area and across the country.
Hanging over the race has been the legal troubles of gay disgraced councilmember Omar Torres, who vacated the council seat last fall amid revelations he had been extorted for money by a Chicago man he had sexted with and his arrest for allegedly molesting a cousin years prior. As voting was underway Tuesday to decide who will serve out the remainder of his term, Torres pleaded no contest to child sex crimes related to his cousin and is now awaiting his sentencing. (See related story.)
Since earlier this year engineering firm owner Carl Salas has been serving as the interim appointed District 3 councilmember. He will do so until the winner of the special election is sworn into office.
Elected in 2022, Torres was the first gay Latino and out person of color to serve on the San Jose City Council, and only its second out councilmember. The San Jose City Council had gone 16 years without a member from the LGBTQ community until Torres took his oath of office two years ago.
Should she win the seat, Chavez-Lopez, 37, would be the second Latina to represent District 3 and the first since 2006 when Cindy Chavez left the office. She is a single mom to her 6-year-old son, Jaycius.
The Santa Clara County Democratic Party had dual endorsed Chavez-Lopez and Tordillos, 33, in the race. An engineering manager at YouTube, Tordillos lives with his husband, Giovanni Forcina, a cancer biologist, near the San Jose State University campus.
Quevedo, 36, had thrown his support behind a recall attempt of Torres prior to his resignation last year. From a Mexican American family, Quevedo is a San Jose native who with his wife, A’Dreana, is raising their sons, James and Atticus, in the Northside neighborhood.
Rounding out the candidate list is retired sheriff Lieutenant Adam Duran, retired family counselor Tyrone Wade, and Philip Dolan, a knife sharpener salesman. Duran is at 8% of the vote, Wade has less than 2% and Dolan is below 1%.
This story will be updated as additional vote counts are posted.
