Jun 25
Gay San Jose council candidate Tordillos closes in on win
Matthew S. Bajko READ TIME: 3 MIN.
Gay San Jose City Council candidate Anthony Tordillos ended Tuesday night in a strong position in his runoff race for the governing body’s District 3 seat. But with more votes left to be counted, his campaign is not declaring victory just yet.
After the polls closed June 24, Tordillos was in first place with 64% of the ballots counted, for a total of 4,449. In second was Gabriela "Gabby" Chavez-Lopez with 2,413 votes. Wednesday, after another tally was posted, Tordillos’s vote count grew to 5,328 and Chavez-Lopez’s stood at 2,954.
According to the Santa Clara County registrar, the vote tally will be updated by 5 p.m. Thursday. Turnout in the special election is so far at 17.64%.
One group, the Housing Action Coalition, declared Tordillos the winner Wednesday. In a social media post it noted it has “worked with Anthony for years, he’s the pro-housing champion we need on council!”
A spokesperson for Tordillos’s campaign did not respond to the Bay Area Reporter’s request for comment on when it expected to declare victory. As of Wednesday morning, it had not issued any official statements or posted to its social media accounts about the early results.
Talking to reporters at his election night party, a smiling Tordillos said he was “feeling very good. We were not expecting the early results to be this positive.”
The District 3 seat covers much of downtown San Jose and its Qmunity LGBTQ district. The special election is to serve out a council term that expires at the end of 2026.
It has been represented since earlier this year by engineering firm owner Carl Salas. He was selected as a caretaker of the seat by the council following the resignation last fall of gay former councilmember Omar Torres due to his arrest for allegedly molesting a cousin years prior.
Torres has since pleaded no contest to child sex crimes. He is awaiting his sentencing and must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Elected in 2022, Torres was the first gay Latino and out person of color to serve on the San Jose City Council, and only its second out councilmember. The governing body had gone 16 years without a member from the LGBTQ community until Torres took his oath of office two years ago.
Many LGBTQ leaders and groups had supported Tordillos in the contest. Chair of the San Jose Planning Commission, Tordillos, 33, is an engineering manager at YouTube. He lives with his husband, Giovanni Forcina, a cancer biologist, near the San Jose State University campus.
He beat out Matthew Quevedo, deputy chief of staff to San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, in the special April 8 primary for second place in order to advance to the runoff that happened to coincide with Pride Week. Because Quevedo fell short by six votes behind Tordillos to land in third place, it triggered an automatic recount of the results that confirmed the outcome.
Quevedo threw his support behind Tordillos in the runoff, as did Mahan, who walked precincts with Tordillos in the final days of the campaign leading up to Tuesday’s election. Their backing of him was expected to give Tordillos a leg up in the runoff race since his and Quevedo’s combined support in the primary dwarfed that of Chavez-Lopez, 37, a single mom.
Chavez-Lopez is the executive director of South Bay nonprofit the Latina Coalition of Silicon. Seen as more to the left politically of Tordillos, and a potential check on the more moderate agenda of Mahan, Chavez-Lopez had received support in recent weeks from a number of prominent progressive South Bay leaders, such as bisexual Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San Jose).
Last month, she was hit by a report in the San Jose Spotlight that a friend of hers who works for electric utility company PG&E had closely coordinated her campaign activities earlier this year, which Chavez-Lopez denied. She alluded to the story in an Election Day post on Instagram, writing that, “Yes, the attacks came. They were relentless. But I never lost my faith. Never lost my fire. Because leaders don’t retreat, we rise. We keep walking for the people who can’t afford for us to stop.”
