Mayoral election changes on horizon
The next time San Jose residents cast a ballot for the nation’s president, they may also be voting for mayor of the country’s 10th largest city, which would mark a historic shift aimed at boosting voter turnout and improving representation in the city’s mayoral races.
The San Jose Charter Review Commission on Oct. 4 overwhelmingly voted in support of moving the city’s mayoral contests from midterm election years to presidential election years beginning in 2024. Commissioner Tobin Gilman was the only person to dissent.
If the proposal is also endorsed by the San Jose City Council this year, voters will get to decide in 2022 whether or not to institute the change.
“Low turnout is problematic,” said Commissioner Garrick Percival, who is also a political science professor at San Jose State University. “… This proposal is designed to make San Jose mayoral elections more representative of the community and to give a greater voice to people who have often been left out of our political process.”
Should voters pass the proposal, the city’s next mayor, who will be elected in 2022, would initially serve a two-year term and have the option to run for two additional four-year terms in 2024 and 2028, for a potential of up to 10 years in office.
Typically, the San Jose city code limits mayors to two four-year terms in office. Mayor Sam Liccardo, for instance, was first elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2018. He will reach his term limit next year.
Since the 1960s when San Jose voters were given the power to elect the city’s mayor, San Jose mayoral elections have been held during midterm years, which generally have lower voter turnout, especially among low-income residents and communities of color, than on presidential election years.
In San Jose, less than half of the city’s registered voters have cast ballots in the last four mayoral races. According to Percival’s research, he anticipates that holding future San Jose mayoral elections on presidential years could increase voter turnout by up to 33% — or about 169,000 additional voters.
For nearly three years, a group of San Jose leaders and community organizations like the NAACP and the South Bay Labor Council have been pushing to move the mayoral election, but they have been largely unsuccessful up to this point.
In April 2019, the city council narrowly shot down the proposal from the council’s five-member Latino delegation who argued that it would increase the number of people participating in the mayoral election and make the city’s government more reflective of the views of all residents.
Top labor leaders then put more than $420,000 into a similar proposed ballot measure, known as the Fair Elections Initiative, but they fell short of the required signatures to place it on the ballot before voters.
Ultimately, the proposal was handed off to the Charter Review Commission for vetting after San Jose leaders scrapped a proposed 2020 ballot measure that could have awarded Liccardo additional powers in addition to moving the next mayoral election to 2024, automatically giving him two extra years in office.
Krista De La Torre of the South Bay Labor Council said during the commission meeting that it was time for San Jose to finally allow voters to choose their mayor and president at the same time.
“In an era rampant with voter suppression across the country that threatens the political voice of communities of color, we must take this opportunity to make our local democratic processes accessible to everyone,” she said.
Chava Bustamante of Latinos United for a New America called increasing voter participation in San Jose’s mayoral race “essential to our democratic health.”
“Young people of color, low-wage workers and renters will comprise a much larger share of the electorate as a result,” he said. “The initiative would ensure that voters who choose the mayor would more accurately reflect the city of San Jose.”