San Jose, CA Mayor: San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo is termed-out next year as leader of America’s 10th-most populous city, and the 2022 contest to succeed him could bring about a momentous change in government for the place nicknamed “The Capital Of Silicon Valley.” Labor groups are hoping to elect the first labor-aligned mayor in 16 years, while business interests are looking to extend their control over this office. Voters may also have the chance to take part in a referendum that could greatly enhance the chief executive's powers as well as move future mayoral elections to presidential years.
Two members of the City Council, who each announced in April within hours of each other, are currently running in next June’s nonpartisan primary: Democrat Raul Peralez and Dev Davis, a former Republican who announced she was becoming an independent in 2018 out of disgust with the Trump administration. However, party affiliation isn’t usually the main political faultline in San Jose, which voted for Joe Biden 71-27. Instead, local elections for decades have been skirmishes between labor and business: Last year, for example, the City Council transformed from a 6-5 business majority to a 6-5 union-friendly body following the victory of a candidate who ran as an “ally of labor.”
The two declared candidates sit on opposite sides of that divide, and they each have a like-minded former mayor in their corner. Peralez has the backing of Ron Gonzales, a longtime union ally who left office in early 2007; Gonzales is the first Latino to lead San Jose, while Peralez would be the second.
Davis, meanwhile, unveiled an endorsement this week from Chuck Reed, Gonzales’ immediate successor and a man that longtime political observer Terry Christensen last year called “the most conservative mayor we’ve had probably in half a century.” Davis would be the first woman to serve as mayor in nearly a quarter of a century.
The field is far from set, though. Councilmember Matt Mahan, who was elected as a business ally last year, has not ruled anything out, and San Jose Spotlight’s Lloyd Alaban writes that he’s “expected to join the mayor’s race.”
Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, who previously led the local AFL-CIO, recently set up a campaign committee, and while she has not yet announced a campaign, she debated Peralez at a mayoral forum on Monday. Chavez, who would be San Jose’s first Latina leader, ran here in 2006 when she was vice mayor but was held back by a number of scandals in local government and lost to Reed 59-41. She bounced back, though, in 2013 by winning a special election for the five-member Board of Supervisors. There’s also still time for other local politicos to get in.
It will also be a while before declared and potential candidates learn just how powerful the job they’re eyeing will be, or when they’d next need to go before the voters. As Mauricio La Plante explained last year at Spotlight, the mayor has only a little more power than each of the 10 other members of the City Council under the current city charter. Many of the city government's most important duties instead rest with the city manager, who is hired and fired by the City Council. However, the city’s new 23-member Charter Review Commission is currently contemplating proposals that would greatly strengthen the mayor’s power.
The Commission also voted last month for a recommendation to align future mayoral races with the presidential calendar starting in 2024: Under this plan, the person elected in 2022 would only serve a two-year term, but they’d be eligible for a pair of four-year terms going forward. The body is also mulling adopting a new electoral system going forward such as instant-runoff voting.
The Commission is currently scheduled to submit its recommendations to the City Council in mid-December. Based on those recommendations, the City Council will make the final decision on what proposed charter changes will go before voters in 2022 either in the June primary or the November general election.