The San Jose Mayoral Race and Conventional Wisdom

Prologue:   Right after the primary,  with San Jose Councilmember Matt Mahan surprisingly strong but expected second place finish behind Supervisor Cindy Chavez, he had the momentum going to the run off this November.    For Chavez,  anything below a 40%  winning margin in the primary was considered a sign of rough water ahead for her campaign since she was running with big name recognition and against a freshman city councilmember and two other relative unknown councilmembers.   

Another 4 weeks  before absentee ballots will land in mailboxes, still some of the election drama can now be viewed through the lens of the Vietnamese-American community.  With over 70,560 registered voters or about 13% of the overall electorate,  Vietnamese-American voters once again will be crucial for both candidates.

 In the primary, Chavez  won the majority of the districts that are either Latino or Asian dominated.   Mahan,  on the other hand, won in districts that are dominated by established white voters.  It seems that he came in strong by winning the non-Asian, non-Latino demographics despite the fact that they are not the majority voting bloc.    Why, because they always have a higher turn-out rate.   For example in the primary,  Latino was about 26%,  Viet at  ~ 29%, and White at ~38%.   The overall turn out was 35.5%. 

Chavez won 55% of the votes in San Jose District 7.  This is a traditional Viet stronghold with about 34% registered voters are Vietnamese.   Chavez also won in D4 and D8,  44% and 43% respectively.  D4 has about 22% Viet registered voters while D8 has about 24%. 

But analyzing the results further, it reveals that her strength of working closely with the community for the last 10 years was not fully exploited.  A weak and inexperience campaign team could not send out the necessary messages needed to rally the community and capture the large Viet vote that is her to lose.  

Mahan has very minimal exposure to the community since he is new and has not done anything to deserve the Viet vote.   He does not have any significant contributions or relationships with the community as Hiep Nguyen, a long time D4 resident noted. 

However, he cleverly masks his lack of records with the connection to the old Madison Nguyen's supporters and hires some of them to work for him. 

He will likely concede the Asian and Latino votes but only to a small margin.    Case in point,  he is working hard to keep Chavez from winning a 20 percentage point margin in the Viet community (which Chavez should,  considering all the relationships and work that she has with the Viet community)  by going all out  on her with political attacks.   He is also going after the younger Vietnamese voters for they might see him as a fresh face as agent of change, the  shiny penny syndrome.   By keeping his loss within 5-10 percentage points, he is hoping that the advantage with the White voters and their high turn out will give him enough to win.

His main patron is Mayor Sam Liccardo,  and he is using the same playbook that Liccardo carried out in the 2014 mayoral race to defeat a more seasoned and well known then Superivsor Dave Cortese.

After the primary, Chavez realized with Matt only 7 percentage points behind, he would give her the fight of her political career.  She astutely moved her campaign headquarters to Councilmember Davis' district and received the endorsement of Davis who won almost 11% of the votes in the mayoral primary.   Mahan admitted that was a stinger.  But the consolation price is that Davis did not win her own district in the primary,  Matt did.   

Now with 9 out of 10 city councilmembers endorsing her,  Chavez has the momentum going to the general election.  She is forcing Matt to play defensive in his own backyard for  the white vote.

She also received enforcement in the Viet community with Hai Huynh throwing his support behind her campaign.  Hai Huynh was both courted by Mahan and Chavez for they knew he can bring fund raising and people to shore up either campaign.  Since joining, he brings his throngs of supporters along and helps focus her message in the Viet community.    Her main supporters are still the  traditional older, elderly Vietnamese voters.  They are reliable voters but the community is changing and the middle-aged, well educated  Viet voters who have spent most of their lives here in the US are where Chavez has limited outreach so far. 

 

A tracking poll is currently conducted by Scotch Pine Polling & Research, a Northwest based consulting firm, should provide a better glimpse into the race when the resutls are available.   In the meantime, the conventional wisdom is that it will be a tight race and at least in the Vietnamese-American community, the negative attacks are already flying.