San Jose calls itself the “Capital of Silicon Valley” and was ranked by WalletHub this yr because the second happiest metropolis in america.
However, like a lot of the Bay Space, California’s third-largest metropolis additionally struggles with housing affordability, homelessness, public security and post-pandemic revitalization of its downtown.
As San Jose leaders look to vary that, voters in District 3, which covers the downtown core, will likely be filling an sudden Metropolis Council emptiness in a particular June 24 runoff election.
The district’s 47,000 registered voters can have a selection between Anthony Tordillos, chair of the San Jose Planning Fee and a software program engineer at Google, and Gabby Chavez-Lopez, govt director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley, a downtown-based nonprofit.
The candidates have comparable positions. However on this race, concepts, particulars and expertise are additionally essential. That’s what makes Tordillos the superior candidate.
Tordillos would offer District 3 residents with a robust and articulate voice on the Metropolis Council. He’s a detail-oriented, data-focused coverage pragmatist who, as a planning commissioner, has direct, latest and related expertise to assist navigate the one drawback on the confluence of lots of the metropolis’s issues: housing.
What’s at stake on this election is greater than District 3’s illustration; it’s additionally town’s general route. The winner will probably forged decisive votes on key points dealing with San Jose’s narrowly divided Metropolis Council, which for the final two years has been break up between moderates aligned with Mayor Matt Mahan and public-union-backed councilmembers.
District 3 voters will choose somebody to fill the final 18 months of the time period of Omar Torres, who stop on Nov. 5, midway via his time period and hours earlier than he was arrested on suspicion of kid molestation, for which he was later charged and pleaded no contest.
The April 8 election to exchange him ended with no candidate receiving a majority. Chavez-Lopez completed first with 30% of the 9,107 votes forged. After a recount, Tordillos captured second place, with 22%, qualifying for the runoff by edging out the mayor’s deputy chief of workers, Matthew Quevedo, by six votes.
What separates the 2 surviving candidates isn’t the issues they wish to clear up. Tordillos and Chavez-Lopez largely agree on San Jose’s points. They each consider homelessness stays too rampant; housing, too costly; constructing, too bureaucratic; downtown, too blighted; and the sensation of security, too distant.
And on the 30,000-foot view, each Tordillos and Chavez-Lopez agree on lots of the options.
They each say that the unhoused want much less criminalization and extra psychological well being care; extra housing must be constructed; development approvals have to be streamlined; the California Environmental High quality Act, or CEQA, must be reformed; downtown wants revitalization; and the Police Division must fill its open jobs, velocity up response instances and rely extra on non-sworn workers to deal with some issues.
However if you drill down, Tordillos sharply distinguishes himself. Tordillos, who moved to town in 2018 and has been co-president of the South College Neighborhood Affiliation since 2022, can determine precisely what components of the planning course of want change to juice development.
That’s not shocking given his expertise. As he notes, “I’m the only candidate in this race … who has worked with city staff to get policy passed in terms of housing, land use, homelessness and economic development.”
Not solely has he learn the most recent RAND analysis figuring out the obstacles to reducing the per-unit value of housing, however he can level you to its most practical, actionable takeaways. For instance, Tordillos notes, buildings are constructed sooner in Texas cities, partly as a result of inspections are performed concurrently not sequentially. That little distinction provides up, he argues.
Chavez-Lopez, who served on Santa Clara County’s Planning Fee from 2020-22, doesn’t present the identical form of specificity. She supplied that she has the community-building abilities to get issues finished. She works with folks, not knowledge, she says. An absence of communication and coordination throughout the metropolis and throughout the area’s patchwork of overlapping jurisdictions are the core issues, not concepts.
Whoever wins this race will take workplace in July and must hit the bottom operating to make an influence earlier than the 2026 election. Tordillos is greatest positioned to do exactly that.
Key election dates
• Week of Could 26: Vote-by-mail ballots will likely be despatched to voters.
• June 9 is the final day to register.
• June 17 is the final day to request a vote-by-mail poll.
• June 24 is Election Day, the final day to forged a poll in individual or have it postmarked.
