More than a million ballots are in the mail. The first votes will be counted in less than a week. The Santa Clara County Assessor’s runoff off election is jogging into the homestretch toward Election Day: Dec. 30.
December 30? That’s right. An election cycle that began more than five months ago in the bright sun of the summer solstice with the resignation/retirement of Assessor Larry Stone ends in the shadows of its winter counterpart.
Assistant Assessor Neysa Fligor and three-time congressional candidate Rishi Kumar topped the field in November and face each other in a runoff election to fill a post left vacant for the first time in more than three decades.
The final, official count of the Nov. 4 election was announced Tuesday, showing Fligor with 38% and Kumar with 24% of the vote. Saratoga Councilmember Yan Zhao was a close third with 21% and Eastside Union School District board President Bryan Do tallied 17%.
Turnout in the assessor runoff voting that begins this week will hold the key. The two finalists have to contend with potential voters distracted by the holidays, nearly empty campaign coffers and the absence of turnout-boosting state redistricting and county sales tax ballot initiatives.
Even with the near-record special election turnout of nearly 52%, fewer than 44% weighed in on the hotly contested assessor race. Nearly 86,000 county voters left the assessor choices blank.
Turnout in the special runoff election could be half the November total.
The latest campaign finance reports filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission show that Fligor, who spent about $300,000 in the general election, had $55,582 on hand, with $111,500 in campaign debt, as of Nov. 15. The politically powerful South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council’s Committee on Political Education spent $15,474 on behalf of Fligor since the November vote. The independent committee had spent $37,298 on her general election campaign, according to the FPPC.
In contrast, Kumar is spending very little on his campaign. He spent $12,872 in the general election race, had $17,147 on hand as of Nov. 15, and reported just $108 in campaign debt, according to the FPPC.
The elephant in the room in the remaining month of the campaign may be Yan Zhao
The elephant in the room in the remaining month of the campaign may be Yan Zhao, who ran the most expensive general election campaign, spending $438,995. As of Nov. 15, she reported no outstanding campaign debts, and an unspent war chest of $186,865.
Do spent $57,968 on his campaign, and reported a cash balance of $30,071 with outstanding debts of $22,989 as of Nov. 15
As of Dec. 2, neither Zhao or Do had made any endorsements in the runoff.
Another question mark hovering over the runoff campaign will be the impact of ethnicity. Third- and fourth-place finishers Zhao, a Chinese-American, and Do, a Vietnamese-American, ran strong in downtown San Jose and East San Jose precincts with large Asian populations. Fligor, with strong endorsements from elected officials, the Democratic Party and organized labor, polled well across the city, and Kumar polled well in eastern and western suburbs.
Fligor’s campaign website in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese and Hindi. Kumar’s campaign website has text in English, Chinese, Spanish and Vietnamese.
Kumar would need to outpoll Fligor by more than two-to-one among Zhao and Do supporters to win the runoff. He released a poll this week that he said showed him with a 43%-to-38% lead over Fligor, with 19% undecided. The poll was conducted by New Way Forward Strategies of Palo Alto, according to the Kumar campaign.
Fligor, a native Jamaican who earned a law degree from Georgetown University, has stressed her expertise and experience in the assessor’s office. She is a member of the Los Alto City Council and serves as vice mayor.
Kumar, an Indian-American engineer and self-described “tech dude,” who is campaigning on what he calls a “Prop 13 approach,” is pushing a ballot initiative to give all property owners age 60 and older a 100% property tax exemption. He is a former Saratoga city council member.
(Read the original article here on San Jose Inside: https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/voter-turnout-is-key-as-sc-county-assessor-race-hits-home-stretch/)
