Mayoral hopefuls looking to shed labels
Election, nine months away, shaping up to be competitive battle
Though the San Jose mayoral election is eight months away, it’s already shaping up to be a competitive primary as well-known and established contenders enter the race, looking to blur the line between business and labor interests that have long divided South Bay politics.
That became apparent when early front-runner Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, a longtime labor leader, announced her candidacy this week while standing alongside Carl Guardino, a registered business lobbyist and former head of the influential Silicon Valley Leadership Group, making for a largely unexpected duo.
“I appreciate that for some, there’s this desire to simplify it in a way that creates good guys and bad guys,” Chavez said in an interview after launching her campaign Thursday night. “But the problems are so complex that we all have to be able to work together or we’re not going to be able to address the issues that are so pressing.”
As of this week, Chavez, whose campaign slogan is “a city of equals,” is among six candidates who have launched campaigns for San Jose’s June primary to succeed Mayor Sam Liccardo, who will reach his term limit at the end of next year.
The wide-ranging field includes four well-established candidates, San Jose council members Dev Davis, Matt Mahan and Raul Peralez, as well as Chavez, and two political newcomers: Jonathan Royce Esteban and Tyrone Wade.
Wade ran for San Jose mayor in 2018 against Liccardo and Esteban ran for a Nevada Congressional seat in 2020 before moving to San Jose. Both candidates were soundly defeated in their respective fields.
A poll recently commissioned by the San Jose Police Officers’ Association indicated that Chavez was an early front-runner in the race,
though nearly three in five voters — of 59% of those surveyed — still were undecided.
San Jose’s current council is divided 6-5 in favor of council members who are backed by the city’s labor unions over those whose campaigns were supported by the now-defunct Silicon Valley Organization PAC, the former political action arm of the area’s largest chamber of commerce. A labor-backed candidate has not held the city’s mayor seat since 2006 when Ron Gonzales vacated the role. That year, business favorite Chuck Reed walloped the laborbacked Chavez.
Though the council comes together for unanimous votes on the vast majority of issues, the divide has been apparent in several contentious votes in recent years — from expanding the power of the mayor to waiving fees for developers.
Despite efforts to blur the lines between labor and business, Davis and Mahan still likely will be battling one another for the support of the city’s business factions, which have historically backed them. Peralez and Chavez, meanwhile, will likely be facing off against one another for the endorsements of labor organizations such as the South Bay Labor Council, which has supported both of their past campaigns.
Even so, Peralez, like Chavez, doesn’t want to be “pigeon-holed” as a labor candidate.
While he’s a steadfast supporter of unions, he said he’s also spent the last eight years as the city’s downtown council member working with the downtown business association and chamber of commerce to encourage increased development downtown and offer lifelines to businesses struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Each of us (candidates) are trying to show how we represent the entire community and I think that’s something I’ve been successful in and will be able to continue to demonstrate in our community,” Peralez said, adding that he felt his identity as a lifelong San Jose resident set himself apart for the rest of the field.
Still, he is hoping to win the endorsement from the South Bay Labor Council.
“I recognize that it’s going to be an uphill battle,” he said, acknowledging that Chavez was the organization’s former executive director and maintains strong ties to the group, “but it is something that I value.”
Council member Davis, who is running on a platform partially focused on preserving single-family zoning, said she’s “focused on her own campaign” over winning the endorsements of certain factions or beating out certain candidates.
“I’m running to put forward my ideas and hope it’ll gain as much traction with as many people as possible,” she said.
For Council member Mahan, a former tech company founder who just joined the council in January, the noticeable distinction that he sees between the candidates is not “business versus labor” but “the status quo versus change.”
“I view myself as being in my own lane,” he said, noting his campaign’s focus on increasing government transparency and accountability by tracking key goals such as reducing homelessness and cleaning up parks. “I just think if we want different results, then we need to be willing to shake up the way government does business.”
To many, it came as a surprise that Guardino, a longtime business leader and friend of Mahan, would endorse Chavez instead of Mahan, who was a Silicon Valley Leadership Group board member when Guardino was the organization’s leader. Guardino’s political fundraising committee, Innovation for All, also supported Mahan in his bid for council last year, raising more than $67,000 for him.
Guardino said Friday that he was looking to endorse someone who he felt has the best “traits and skills for the role much more than any ideological alignment.”
“My support of Cindy is in no way a reflection of the other fine people running. I just really believe that she’ll do the best job as mayor for the city of San Jose,” he said.
Terry Christensen, a professor emeritus of political science at San Jose State University, said Guardino’s endorsement of Chavez doesn’t mean that other prominent business leaders are going to line up behind her, but that it may take a large funding source away from Mahan and Davis.
While the South Bay Labor Council typically pours money upon its favorite labor-aligned candidate, the SVO has historically raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for its chosen business-aligned candidates. However, the SVO dissolved its fundraising arm after coming under fire for a racist attack ad last year and has chosen not to endorse candidates in the upcoming election. For now, it is unclear what group might form to boost the fundraising of business candidates in the 2022 election and those moving forward.