Welcome to Mayor Watch!

Welcome to Mayor Watch, the blog that makes sense of local politics. The goals of this blog are to a) take a long hard look at city hall and b) keep it real. Now if you haven’t had time to read the newspaper everyday for the past several months to track the San Jose mayoral race, you should know that I don’t blame you and more importantly I’m here for you. I understand why those of you without a burning passion for government skip the local politics section of the newspaper and go straight to Doonesbury. And how can anyone be expected to watch the local news while any one of the 9 CSI spin-offs is on? Hell, I’m surprised you’ve made it this far through this article when there are videos of fat singing kids at CollegeHumor or EbaumsWorld. Nonetheless, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s a quick review of what has gone on thus far in the mayoral election…

In the beginning, there were ten. Five of them raised a sizeable amount of money and received a sizeable amount of votes. The other five are like the points on Whose Line Is It Anyway? or the opinions of pop singers – they just don’t matter. So let’s stick to the ones that do matter. In alphabetical order:

Cindy Chavez was the frontrunner from the beginning and consequently the recipient of gratuitous attacks from all parties. Chavez, a City Councilmember from District Three, received and continues to receive a lot of bad press for her connections with San Jose’s pride and joy, Mayor Ron Gonzales. Their perceived alliance is based on their similar votes in the past, their titles as Vice-Mayor and Mayor and, let’s be honest, their Latino last names.

David Cortese is a Councilmember who was previously a businessman and School Board Member from East Side Union High School District. He was predicted to fare well in the primaries and was surprised to find that he didn’t.

Michael Mulcahy is a businessman and former executive director of Children’s Musical Theater San Jose. In order to curb lobbyism, Mulcahy promised not to accept any campaign contributions from lobbyists. This promise was made easier by the fact that Mulcahy is extremely rich. And I ain’t gonna lie – he was probably the best looking candidate for mayor too.

David Pandori, aside from having a last name that sounds like my favorite Indian food, is also Santa Clara County’s Deputy District Attorney. Most political hopefuls know that people have short attention spans and thus need their messages to be delivered succinctly. Rather than releasing a nice sound-bite however, Pandori wrote a novel. A Better San Jose by David Pandori is the War and Peace of mayoral literature.

Chuck Reed is a lawyer and a District 4 Councilmember who ran on a platform of ethics. I know what you’re thinking: Yeah right, I’ll vote for an ethical lawyer right after I wash my pet unicorn. But this guy is legit. After several years in the Air Force, Reed has a rigid persona that makes Dick Cheney look like Steve-O.

If any one of these candidates had received more than fifty percent of the vote, he or she would have become the mayor and this blog probably would never have been started (a scary alternate universe indeed). That didn’t happen, and thus the story continues. After all was said and done back in June, Chuck Reed came in first place with 28.8% of the votes and Cindy Chavez came in second place with 23.2% of the votes. In November, Chavez and Reed will face-off in what is quickly becoming a heated election.

-Governator Jr