In San Jose, gay Planning Commission chair Anthony Tordillos finds himself in a squeaker of a race for the District 3 city council seat. As of Thursday, he was back in third place trailing by two votes in the contest for the two spots in the June 24 runoff election.
Meanwhile, in Southern California, bisexual Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre is headed to the July 1 runoff for the open District 1 seat on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. The Democrat placed second in her April 8 contest with nearly 32% of the vote, according to the unofficial returns, and will face off against Republican Chula Vista Mayor John McCann, who placed first with nearly 43% of the vote.
Tuesday will see if lesbian civil rights and environmental justice expert Charlene Wang wins election to the District 2 seat on the Oakland City Council. As the East Bay city uses ranked choice voting, the special April 15 election will be decided next week, along with the race to be Oakland’s next mayor.
Wang is one of six candidates vying to serve out the remainder of the term through 2026 vacated by Nikki Fortunato Bas after her election last November to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. If elected, Wang will be one of three out women on the council and one of the few out female Asian elected leaders in the Bay Area.
Lesbian interim District 2 councilmember Rebecca Kaplan will be stepping down as soon as the winner of the race is sworn into office. She opted last year not to seek reelection to the council’s at-large seat that she had held for close to two decades and then was tapped by the council as a caretaker of Bas’ seat.
South Bay race
In the South Bay, Tordillos is aiming to return out leadership to the San Jose City Council and be only the third LGBTQ community member to serve on it. The District 3 seat covering much of the city’s downtown and its Qmunity LGBTQ district has been represented since earlier this year by engineering firm owner Carl Salas.
He was selected as a caretaker of the seat by the council following the resignation last fall of gay former councilmember Omar Torres due to 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 through 2026, Torres pleaded no contest to child sex crimes and is now awaiting his sentencing.
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 governing body had gone 16 years without a member from the LGBTQ community until Torres took his oath of office two years ago.
Coming in first place in the April 8 special election for the seat was Gabriela "Gabby" Chavez-Lopez, the executive director of South Bay nonprofit the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley. As of Thursday’s vote count update, the single mom took the top spot with 29.97% of the 9,071 ballots cast. Her total stands at 2,700 votes.
After landing in third place on election night, Tordillos leapfrogged into second place Wednesday evening by one vote over Matthew Quevedo, deputy chief of staff to San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who had sole endorsed him. Following the April 10 vote update Tordillos is now at 1,996 votes and Quevedo has 1,998.
According to the county registrar, it had 38 ballots to count as of Thursday morning, with 15 processed and added to the vote count that afternoon. It will count any ballots postmarked as of April 8 and received through next Tuesday.
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.
Should she win the seat, Chavez-Lopez, 37, would be the second Latina to represent District 3 and the first to do so since 2006. The Santa Clara County Democratic Party had dual endorsed Chavez-Lopez and Tordillos, 33, an engineering manager at YouTube married to cancer biologist Giovanni Forcina.
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 has two sons with his wife, A’Dreana.
San Diego candidate has Bay Area ties
Born in San Francisco, Aguirre moved at age 8 back to her parent’s hometown of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and relocated to Southern California in 2001 to pursue her higher education and compete as a top bodyboarder. In 2022, she won election as mayor of her city, where she resides with her husband, Delio, and their dog, Dasha.
Aguirre jumped into the supervisorial race following the surprise decision in late December by former San Diego County supervisor Nora Vargas that she was resigning despite being elected to a second term last November.
The election for her seat has been followed closely throughout the state as it will determine if Democrats or Republicans will have a three-person majority on the county board. It is currently evenly split between the four supervisors on it, including nonbinary and pansexual District 3 San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, a Democrat who won reelection last year.
The top three Democrats running in the special election combined received nearly 53% of the vote Tuesday. It bodes well for Aguirre if she can consolidate support from her party’s voters in the summer runoff.
She suggested as much in an election night statement, arguing that voters in the district had sent "a clear message” and “want a supervisor who fights on the side of working people who are struggling, gets results on the sewage crisis, and pushes for the more affordable San Diego County we need."
The seat represents the cities of Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, and National City, along with a large swath of San Diego and several unincorporated communities. Like Tordillos and Wang, Aguirre had received support from state and national LGBTQ groups for her candidacy.
“We are thrilled to see Paloma Aguirre secure a decisive top-two finish in Tuesday’s primary election, advancing her to June’s general election runoff. Her opponent, a far-right extremist aligned particularly with Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, is out of step with the values of District 1 voters,” stated gay Equality California Executive Director Tony Hoang. “The people of San Diego County deserve a leader who will fight for all communities—not just a select few. Equality California is proud to support Paloma and will continue working to ensure her victory in June.”
