Thursday, May 22, 2014

Madison Nguyen, Dave Cortese, Sam Liccardo and the San Jose Mayoral Race

In the 2006 San Jose mayoral race,  then San Jose Councilmember Dave Cortese came in fourth while receiving 20,691 votes.   It was such a poor showing for him.  He was considered to be one of the two candidates to be in the run-off.   To this day, he still considers it to be a very disappointing loss.

Eight years since passed and he is now a presiding supervisor for Santa Clara County.    He is once again considered to be one of the favorites.   Dave Cortese, by all people who know him well, is a politician who genuinely believes in using government to benefit the people.   He is truly a behind-the-scenes deal maker who will carefully weigh issues often to a fault.  

He very actively involves in the Vietnamese-American community.  LSI could see him attending at least 2 community events a month for the last 4-5 years; unlike Madison Nguyen who rarely makes appearance in the community.  The community has taken a really liking of him and the poll done on behalf of LSI showed a great amount of support for him. 

If the 2006 mayoral election results could be used as a predictor of the 2014 race,  Cortese will need at least 30,000 votes to be in the runoff.

In a city where there is no majority voting block anymore and where the demographic is  1/3 White, 1/3 Hispanic and 1/3 Asian,  a true rainbow voting coalition is needed for any candidate to win. 

Cortese is well known and liked among the Chinese-Americans and Indo-Americans.   His long friendship with elected leaders of the respective ethnic groups certainly will bring him the needed votes.  Labor will deliver their voting bloc of Hispanic and union folks to him for he is their favorite candidate.

The Vietnamese-American voters is expected to be about 11,000 to 13,000 if past history holds true.  Cortese is hoping to split the votes with Madison Nguyen.   Based on the last poll taken in the Vietnamese-American community,  LSI thinks Cortese will win about 40% of the votes and the rest will be split unevenly among the other 4 candidates,  It will be an unbearable failure for Cortese if he cannot get into the runoff.   This is his ultimate prize and he  works so hard and long to earn it. 

Madison Nguyen meanwhile is lacking support from her own ethnic base due to her controversial fighting with the community for the name Little Saigon.  Beyond D7, she is limited in her appeal. 

Sam Liccardo with the support of all the big money and Chamber of Commerce, suddently realizes that even with over $700k on hand, it is still not enough to convince people.  


LSI's prediction -  Dave Cortese will be in the runoff riding the stronger than expected  support of the Vietnamese-Americans.  
 

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