|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
When Sam Liccardo and Joe Simitian launched their bids for the U.S. Congress last year, both touted their long history in elected office and their track records of getting things done.
But while their experience and name recognition undoubtedly played a role in the March 5 primary election, a breakdown of precincts also underscores the hometown advantage that both enjoyed in Santa Clara County, which dominates the Congressional district.
Even though other candidates did better in some portions of San Mateo County, including Atherton, Portola Valley and Woodside, these areas simply didn’t have enough voters to move the needle when it comes to districtwide votes.
Altogether, the 11 candidates received a total of 22,327 votes in San Mateo County as of Friday morning. In Santa Clara County, they received a combined 87,924 votes.
The geographic composition of the district favored the candidates in the more populous portion of the district, with those in the north part of Santa Clara County leaning toward Simitian and those in the south favoring Liccardo and Assembly member Evan Low, a former Campbell mayor who dominated in his hometown.
Liccardo racked up votes in his hometown of Saratoga, in Los Gatos and in San Jose, where he served as mayor for two terms. In one San Jose precinct in the Willow Glen area, he received 324 votes, while Low got 185 and Simitian got 69. A district in the Briarwood area showed Liccardo picking up 275 votes and Low getting 132. Simitian received just 73 votes there, fewer than Peter Ohtaki (92) and Karl Ryan (84).
Low, who as of Friday trailed Simitian by fewer than 1,000 votes, saw an outpouring of support from Campbell. One of the city’s largest precincts, just east of San Tomas Aquino Park, showed Low picking up 258 votes, while Liccardo and Ohtaki finished second and third with 117 and 102 votes, respectively. Simitian received 47.
Just east of downtown Campbell, another precinct gave Low 201 votes, compared to 165 for Liccardo, 106 for Ohtaki. Simitian finished a distant fourth with 69 votes.
But Simitian, a former Palo Alto mayor who served in the state Assembly and the state Senate before his current term as a Santa Clara County supervisor, more than made up ground in his power base: north Santa Clara County. Palo Alto came out in full force so support Simitian, with the affluent and populous precincts around downtown lifting Simitian to his current position in second place.
The precinct that includes the Crescent Park neighborhood provided Simitian with a whopping 487 votes, or 53.3% of the total cast in the 11-candidate race. Liccardo finished second with 105 votes. Just west, in the University South and Community Center neighborhoods, 568 voters chose Simitian, compared to 158 who chose Liccardo. And in the precinct just south of Embarcadero Road that includes the Leland Manor neighborhood, Simitian received 338 votes, compared to 78 and 38 that went to Liccardo and Low, respectively.
South Palo Alto also chose Simitian by a healthy margin. One Barron Park district showed 395 voters choosing Simitian, while 120 voted Liccardo and 90 for Low.
These Palo Alto precincts are hardly an anomaly. A precinct map of Santa Clara County showed Simitian winning nearly every precinct in Palo Alto and Mountain View. The only exception was the precinct on the border of the two cities, around San Antonio Center, where Liccardo edged Simitian 117 votes to 113.
Simitian also did well in Menlo Park, a city that he had represented in Sacramento. In one downtown precinct near Santa Cruz Avenue, Simitian pick up 243 votes, compared to 132 for Liccardo and 124 for Ohtaki. Low finished in sixth place here with 73 votes, behind Palo Alto council member Julie Lythcott-Haims and Peter Dixon, who received 98 and 77, respectively.
Another precinct, in West Menlo Park, gave Simitian 120 votes, while Liccardo received 95.
Ohtaki and Peter Dixon each enjoyed some success close to their respective homes. Ohtaki won a precinct in Atherton just south of Bay Road with 111 votes, while Simitian and Dixon finished second and third with 93 and 85, respectively.
Dixon, meanwhile, won a precinct in the southern part of Atherton, just north of the intersection of Alameda de las Pulgas and Polhemus Avenue. He picked up 125 votes here, compared to 84 for Liccardo, 71 for Ohtaki, 58 for Simitian and 31 for Low.
The precinct results in some ways reflect the challenge that all 11 candidates faced in the primary contest, which kicked off in late November when U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo announced her intention to retire at the end of this year. With just three months to campaign, the frontrunners struggled to gain traction in geographic areas beyond their historic power bases.
Both Liccardo and Simitian said just after the initial results were released that they look forward to doing far more campaigning in other parts of the district between now and November 5.
“Our residents can expect that I’ll be reaching many more neighborhoods in the months ahead,” Liccardo said in an interview the day after the March 5 primary.
While his campaign was still assessing the results, he said it will continue to engage in a grassroots effort to reach the district’s diverse communities and “connect directly in the living rooms and at the doorsteps of our residents.”
Simitian also said he looks forward to going to different parts of the district over the next phase of the campaign. The primary election wasn’t just short, but it overlapped with the holiday season and Simitian observed that not too many people want to get engaged in politics during Thanksgiving, Christmas or, for that matter, Valentine’s Day.
“I think we will have the ability to make this campaign a people-to-people campaign in a way that we just couldn’t do in three months,” Simitian said.