San Jose D7 Election Update

Who would have thought that San Jose D7 race between the lawyer Tam Nguyen and Maya Esparza would not be decided by now.   Four days since Nov. 4 and there is no clear winner yet.

The early result showed Tam Nguyen ahead Maya Esparza by 18%.  However, as we are finding out that there are still thousands of votes still being counted due to computer problem at the Registrar of Voters, the lead has been shrinking every day since election night.

There are probably still 1,500 to 2,000 votes left for D7.  Nguyen is now ahead by 365 votes.  Is there enough votes left for Maya to catch up?   It will be nail biting and who ever wins, it might be  less than a hundred votes separating them.  Recount anyone?

TAM NGUYEN		5,412	51.74%
MAYA ESPARZA		5,047	48.26%

Garden Grove Mayoral Race Is Not Over Yet

With there are hundreds more provisional ballots to be counted, the mayoral race for Garden Grove City is still up in the air. 

Bao Nguyen is trying to unseat an incumbent mayor, Bruce Broadwater, who is controversial to a point that the firefighter's union is coming out against him.  And not because he is cutting their pension or benefits. 

Bao Nguyen was just randomly throwing his hat in the ring and he happened to be at the right place at the right time.

Bao Nguyen is gaining votes after Nov. 5 as more VBM ballots are counted.  He is trailing only by 256 votes after being down by more than 350 votes.   There are now only 1% point separate them.   This election is from over since there will be a recount in the horizon.

BRUCE ALLAN BROADWATER	9,907	43.0%
BAO NGUYEN	9,651	41.9%

Dave Cortese Lost the Mayoral Race

With additional 15,000 ballots, Dave Cortese finds himself further behind.  He is trailing by almost 2,500 votes.  It is safe to predict that Sam Liccardo is the next mayor of San Jose. 

It will be a contentious next 4 years in city hall with the budget and labor issues and Liccardo already knows who to approach.  He called Tam Nguyen last night and personally congratulated him for his D7 victory.

It is not too early to think 2015 and perhaps 2016, so LSI will venture into the crystal ball -

Dave Cortese will be content to serve out 6 more years as county supervisor unless Mike Honda decide to retire. 

Daisy Chu will be running for city council to replace her husband.

Jim Zito is planning for his 2016 city council bid for D8.

 

Ro Khanna Cannot Let Go

It was one of the most expensive US congressional races  between 2 Democratic candidates.   The young gun Ro Khanna outspent and outraised the incumbent Mike Honda by millions.  And with the help of big corporate money, he was hoping to unseat a lovable but old congressman.   LSI received a total 15 negative mailers from him during the general election alone. 

In the end,  Ro Khanna even lost in his own home town, Fremont, by 2%.   He trailed by 5% in Santa Clara County.  Basically, this race for the CA-17th is over since the trend is against him as more votes are counted.  

However, he has not conceded since he claimed that there are about 40,000 ballots left and most are VBM.

He is young and still have quite a political career ahead of him but he will need to learn how to lose gracefully.  Remember there is always 2016, by then Mike Honda would be 73 years old and he might just decide to retire. 

 

How Many Votes Left to Save Dave Cortese?

From: bushey, shannon
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 3:26 PM
To: ROV - BOS
Cc: Moreles, Matt
Subject: Election Count/Process Update

 

Honorable Members of the Board of Supervisors,

 

I want to take this opportunity to provide you with a status update regarding the counting of votes from yesterday’s election and to let you know what you may expect for the coming days.

 

We estimate that approximately 120,000-150,000 Vote By Mail (VBM) ballots were dropped off at polling places yesterday and arrived at the ROV Office last night.  In addition, about 14,000 Provisional ballots were received at the polls.

 

Once the VBM ballots have been processed through our ballot sorting machine, we will have an accurate count of the number of ballots remaining to be tallied.  The goal is to complete the count of VBM ballots by this weekend.

 

Once the VBM ballots have been counted, we will begin validating and counting the Provisional ballots.  We anticipate that the validation and counting of the Provisional ballots should be completed by the end of next week.

 

Our website (http://www.sccvote.org) will be updated by 5:00 p.m. each day to reflect the latest counts.

 

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

 

Take care.

Shannon

 

 

Shannon Bushey

Registrar of Voters

County of Santa Clara

1555 Berger Drive, Bldg. 2

San Jose, CA 95112

(408) 282-3005

shannon.bushey@rov.sccgov.org

Low Turnout Dooms Dave Cortese's Mayoral Hope

With an extremely low turnout of only 109,100 ballots casted,  Dave Cortese is losing the San Jose mayoral race to Sam Liccardo by 2%.   The most updated number shows that turn out in the general election is lower than in the June primary where there were 130,100 ballots.    Labor Unions still think that  their own Hispanic base and their last minute effort can turn the tide.  However, the trend is against Cortese all night long.  He is about 2,000 votes behind.

According to the Santa Clara County Registrar Office, there are still about 60,000 to 70,000 votes attributed to the mayoral race that have not been tallied.  Cortese is winning the Vietnamese-American heavily dominated districts - D7 and D4.    But he surprisingly is  losing in his own D8.


The Vietnamese-American community voted overwhelmingly for Tam Nguyen, an activist lawyer who was part of the recall Madison Nguyen effort, to represent them in San Jose D7.    Tam Nguyen is winning  by 9% with only 8,800 votes casted.   In the primary, there were over 10,500 people voted.  Even though there are still about 3,200 votes left to be counted, the trend is against his opponent all night long and for her to overcome a 9% deficit is not easy.

With Vietnamese-American voters compose of 35% of the electorate, if Tam Nguyen wins, the D7 will be controlled by Asian-American candidate for years to come.    There were 9 other Vietnamese-American candidates ran for various school board trustee seats.   Five won with large majority of the votes.

The biggest victory for the community of course is newly elected State Senator Janet Nguyen.  She will be the first highest elected Vietnamese-American in state legislature.  She won the 34th state senate seat.  A district that has been a Democratic seat.   This was the most closely watched race in the state with the local Democratic Party poured in over $3 million.   Nguyen raised $3.4 million while her opponent, Jose Solorio took in $2.6 million of direct contribution.   In the end,  Nguyen won in a landslide despite extreme dirty tactics by Labor Unions, trouncing Solorio 60% to 40%.   

 

Election Results for Santa Clara County and Orange County, Part II

With over  65% of the votes counted, here are some of the other races that have Vietnamese-American candidates.   A total of 10 candidates in Santa Clara County and 19 in Orange County.

City of Garden Grove Mayor

Bruce Broadwater  8,795   43.2%
Bao Nguyen            8,430  41.4%


City of Garden Grove City Council  (top 2 only)

Phat Bui        8,660    23.5%
Kris Beard    8,555    23.2%


City of Westminster City Council  (top 2 only)

Tyler Diep          7,309    34.4%
Margie Rice        6,376    30%
Charlie Nguyen  4,734     22.3%


City of Westminster Mayor

Tri Ta                   85%
Andy Nguyen       15%


In Santa Clara County,  Thanh Tran and Khanh Tran won the trustee seat for  the Franklin McKinley Unified School District and Alum Rock Unified School District respectively.  Huong Nguyen and Scott Hung Pham also won the trustee seat for San Jose Evergreen Community College District.

Richard Nguyen, Sam Ho and Anthony Phan lost their respective school board trustee bids.



 

Election Results in Santa Clara County and Orange County Part I

With the extreme low turn-out, the Vietnamese-American candidates are doing as expected.  Here are the early results for the major races with about 50% of the votes counted




State Senator D34

Janet Nguyen   52,187  61.7%
Jose Soloorio   32,366  38.3%

San Jose City Council D7

TAMNGUYEN		4,094	57.9%
MAYA ESPARZA		2,974	42.1%

Another Ethic Complaint from Sam Liccardo's Campaign

Earlier this September,   a group of Vietnamese-American activists organized a Rock the Vote event to get out the votes in the Vietnamese American community in San Jose.   The event was held on a beautiful Sunday at Grand Century Mall and widely advertised within the community.    A number of candidates showed up for the event including the leading mayoral candidate Dave Cortese.   

Couple weeks later, Sam Liccardo's supporters filed a complaint to the Ethic Commission.  The complaint alleged that  the organizers are Dave Cortese's supporters and they were putting together the event on behalf of Dave and nothing more.   And yet neither Cortese nor the organizers filed any monetary donation statement. 

This is somewhat of a stretch of course since Rock the Vote event is a common thing within the Vietnamese-American community to help voters aware of the issues as well as candidates. 

The Ethic Commission nevertheless sprung into action and immediately hired the law firm of Hansen Bridgett LLP to pursue the case.   They have investigated about a dozen people including Dave Cortese.  

The inquiry was nothing more than another political ploy that is too little too late for Sam Liccardo.  However, this kind of political gamesmanship irked Cortese.   He told the lawyer from Hansen Bridgett ,  "...  I don't see a problem of me practicing my constitutional right in attending civic event or political event for that matter....."     The lawyer defended his action, "I am just doing my job as being asked..."

A fishing expedition that will  cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars just because in the name of politics and a mayoral job