The mayor and council members-elect hung on to their leads
Wednesday as the county began counting an unprecedented number of
absentee ballots.
The mayor and council members-elect hung on to their leads Wednesday as the county began counting an unprecedented number of absentee ballots.
The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters reported Wednesday morning that it had received about 9,000 absentee ballots from across the county Tuesday night on top of the tens of thousands it received before the election. An unknown number, probably about 900, came from Gilroyans who dropped their absentee ballots off at the polls instead of mailing them in earlier, according to spokesman Matt Moreles and City Clerk Shawna Freels. Cupertino, Los Altos, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale also held elections.
Freels sent an e-mail to candidates Wednesday morning telling them that the registrar must verify the signatures on all these absentee ballots and incorporate the tallies into the evolving results.
But as of 5 p.m. Wednesday, the registrar had counted 6,351 of the 9,000 ballots, 448 of which came from Gilroy’s 11th-hour absentee ballots. This means about 400 or 500 are left to count before the all-but-final results materialize, probably by Friday or the week after, Moreles said. The final results – after the manual audits and paper work are done – will come no later than Nov. 26, he said.
While it’s still mathematically possible for the outcome to change when the final count is completed, it’s a probability so low as to be all but moot. From the moment the polls closed at 8 p.m., the percentage lead among the council and mayoral candidates wavered by only tenths of 1 percent until all 19 precincts were tallied shortly after 11 p.m.
“We’re not sure we’ll have everything done by Friday, but as we get to that point, the inventory we have left will drop off significantly,” Moreles said. “We kind of plan for this, so we’re definitely on track … But we’re not seeing anything that indicates that as vote-by-mail ballots get tallied, they’re going to radically shift the results.”
That’s good news for Mayor Al Pinheiro, who retained his 7.6 percent lead over Councilman Craig Gartman by 416 votes as of Wednesday night. Council members-elect Perry Woodward, Cat Tucker and Bob Dillon held on to their leads, with Dillon leading fourth-place Councilman Roland Velasco by 364 votes.
Despite his apparent victory, Pinheiro’s margin of victory was by far the slightest since the 1987 mayoral race, both by percent and the number of votes. The mayor said he will continue to strive for consensus on the council.
“A win is a win for me, and I’ve qualified that win,” said Pinheiro, adding that Dispatch columnists with “free rein” concentrated on a few issues and set the tone of the campaign – “they made this thing really go.”
Pinheiro said he was surprised when he heard the newspaper endorsed him over Gartman, who said he saw the bigger picture in the mayor’s small margin of victory.
“I’ve never seen a race this close,” Gartman said. “Forty-six percent of the people who voted said, ‘I want a change. I don’t like what’s going on.’ And that sends a very strong message to the mayor and the current sitting members on the council.”
Woodward and Tucker echoed Gartman’s thoughts.
“I think (the election is) an eye opener for Al (Pinheiro), and he needs to listen to the citizens,” Tucker said. “He needs to remember this.”
Woodward said he received a congratulatory call from the mayor and an invitation to sit down for coffee.
“I congratulated Al on his victory, and he was very cordial, and he congratulated me. And we talked about sitting down and getting to know one another other than through the media,” Woodward said. “We’ll find a way to work together to do the job we were put on the council to do.”
Woodward said he wants to bring more transparency to City Hall and rescind a salary program for the city’s 42 top-level employees that ensures they make 15 percent more than their subordinates and 10 percent more than comparable officials in nearby cities.
“We need to do away with the ‘Best of the Best’ policy and we need to pay people according to the value they bring,” Woodward said. “If I can persuade my colleagues, we’ll be paying employees according to merit.”
In a move that parallels Woodward’s transparency niche, Tucker said she hopes to convince her new colleagues to hold quarterly budget reviews. Perhaps she’ll get started on this over coffee with Dillon this weekend, she said,
One person who can provide a suggestion on the way things work at City Hall is also Gartman.
“I will offer my services to the new candidates if they want to sit down and talk,” Gartman said. “I wouldn’t want them to come to the first meeting (Dec. 3) and start demanding that things happen. We need to work together as a team. We need to understand not only their issues, but everyone’s, and then prioritize.”
Woodward and Tucker both said they would approach the dais gingerly yet confidently, and Pinheiro said he welcomed the next two years with his new colleagues.
“No matter what happened, my job is to get back to work with the new council as it was given to me by the voters and do the best thing for Gilroy,” said Pinheiro, adding that councils that split with 4-3 votes “are no good.”
“I will work and work and work until we make sure things happen,” Pinheiro said.
TOP TWO FINISHERS FROM PAST MAYORAL ELECTIONS
2007
Al Pinheiro 2,973 votes 54%
Craig Gartman 2,557 votes 46%
2003
Al Pinheiro 3,461 votes 65.39%
Guadalupe Arellano 1,240 votes 23.43%
1999
Tom Springer 1,943 40.4
Charles S. Morales 1,218 25.3
1995
Don Gage       3,586   79.6
Augustine Gomez   918   20.4
1991
Don Gage      2,941   59.5
Pete Valdez      1,998   40.5
1987
Roberta Hughan 2,584   72
Ricardo Mello    1,015   28
