Stockton’s election 2024 was feverish, sometimes brutal and underhanded, and seismic. And it’s not over.
Only 40.5% of San Joaquin County votes have been tallied as of this writing. Some races are too close to call. But there appear to be some clear winners, making some preliminary conclusions possible.
Another way to put it: It’s never too early to despair over the results of a Stockton election.
At the top of the local ticket are two surprise squeakers.
As Wednesday, incumbent Democratic Rep. Josh Harder, D-Tracy, has 50.7% of the vote to represent California Congressional District 9 (San Joaquin, Contra Costa and Stanislaus Counties) compared to Republican Stockton Mayor Kevin Lincoln’s unexpectedly strong showing of 49.3%.
“It’s too early to know the final results, but we are feeling optimistic with the early returns and I’m humbled by the outpouring of support,” Harder said in a statement.
Lincoln’s competitive position is surprising on two counts. Harder, a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, has been a strong voice for his district and he gets results. Most recently he secured $110.5 million for the Port of Stockton to improve air quality and upgrade to zero-emission infrastructure. He is a friend in high places.
Lincoln never clicked as mayor. He’s made a series of self-limiting missteps.
But the national Republican party poured money into his campaign, which hammered Harder as an out-of-touch elitist who stashed cash in an offshore tax haven while inflation “crushed” valley families.
Jerry McNerney (D-Stockton) holds a razor-thin lead of 50.2% over Clements Republican Jim Shoemaker’s unbelievable 49.8% in the race for California State Senate District 5.
Shoemaker may have benefitted from a depressed turnout by Dems who stayed home rather than show up for Kamala Harris. Another factor may be Donald Trump’s gift for turning out low-propensity Republican voters.
So it’s a toss-up times two, though in the State Senate race Dems enjoy a 2-to-1 advantage in Alameda County, which lags San Joaquin in releasing results, and which may break late for McNerney.
In the race for State Assembly District 13, Democrat Rhodesia Ransom is outpacing her Republican rival Denise Aguilar Mendez 55.4% to 44.6%.
Aguilar Mendez is doing better than she deserves, given that she stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, lied about it, pleaded guilty to welfare fraud in 2020, spread a kooky antisemitic conspiracy theory, is an anti-vaxxer and (does this count?) founder of the Mamalitia doomsday prepper group.
The Assembly District 13 race is one of two races — the State Senate District 5 being the other — that was the scene of Carlos and Edith Villapudua’s doomed race switcheroo.
Let’s skip the San Joaquin County Supervisorial races for now and cut to the Stockton City Council.
In the race for mayor, Christina Fugazi overcame Tom Patti’s first-place finish in the primary to lead 52.43% to Patti’s 47.57%.
Fugazi leap-frogged Patti with some negative but valid hits, such as a video showing Patti cruelly upbraiding an elderly female constituent. Curiously, Patti did not hit back. That was nice for a reputedly mean guy, but perhaps not good strategy.
The most outrageous and dispiriting race is for the District 2 council seat. Invisible woman Mariela Ponce looks like a clear winner against Planning Commissioner Waqar Rizvi.
Ponce, a health care worker with no government experience, ducked all public forums. She made no public appearances. She posted no campaign website or videos. She did no in-person interviews, preferring instead to email minimal answers.
Yet this ghost candidate is shellacking Rizvi 60.27% to 39.73%.
Rizvi has a doctorate in organizational innovation from National University. He chairs the Planning Commission. He’s an information systems manager for our county government. He’s far and away the better candidate.
He lost because of poor fundraising and, ominously, because of the influence of the 209 Times. That outfit sung Ponce’s praises and attacked Rizvi. It’s a model that appears to work: Pick anybody. Hide them from the press and the public. Shower the race with dark money. Attack the rival candidate by fair means or foul. Post a bunch of hooey about “the cabal” of developers running government and the lapdog press and count on Stockton voters to fall for it.
Which many do. Populists in Stockton blame city government for underserving certain groups. Okay. But Stockton voters underserve themselves. This city will never achieve its potential if voters don’t look deeper, study harder, and stop acting as if the truth conveniently drops through their mail slots.
Despite whatever positives Fugazi boasts, and I’ve always tried to be open about them, she should be called on this: her campaign magnet, which was included in a Ponce mailer, legitimized Ponce. Aspiring mayors should not help ghost candidates. Unless they, too, like the dark.
Another close race is City Council District 4. Mario Enriquez is a step ahead of Gina Valadez-Bracamonte with 51.52% vs. her 48.48%. Though Council seats are nominally nonpartisan, the local Democratic organization (Enriquez is a Dem, she’s a Republican) deploys a much better ground game than local Republicans. Their volunteers and paid staffers canvassed the district effectively.
A committee outside Enriquez’s campaign also shot out a couple alarmist texts falsely accusing Valadez-Bracamonte of supporting affordable or transitional housing in Brookside and on the Miracle Mile. But she never went negative in response. Perhaps her consultants worried doing so would tarnish her image as a food-bank angel.
In the District 6 race, wealthy celebrity Jason Lee is thumping Kimberly Warmsley 56.24% to 43.76%. Lee’s star power, and that of his Hollywood friends, dazzled District 6 voters. His campaign theme that City Hall neglects the south side resonated (though it’s not necessarily true anymore).
And he raised around $270,000 for his race, or around $13 for every registered voter in District 6. He also set up Citizens for Better Government, which raised six figures and pumped money into other races. Warmsley has reported about $80,000 in campaign funds.
Faced with this juggernaut, several of Warmsley’s supporters withdrew their endorsement and switched it to Lee.
What this augurs is a political realignment. A 4-3 or 5-2 council majority of politicians the 209 Times has written favorably about. Its members preach people power, but what will they practice?
Finally, Measure N. This change to the city charter submits impasses in labor contract negotiations between City Hall and police and fire unions to outside arbiters whose rulings are final. It looks like a winner with 65.94% of votes counted.
I can say with all due respect to police and fire this was not a good idea. It may not make Stockton safer — the chief of police and city manager are doing that through data-driven policing — but it will commit more of the general fund to two unions at the expense of the other seven unions and everything else in the city. Perhaps if police and fire invoke arbitration responsibly, which is to say seldomly, it need not be fiscally destructive.
Another power shift brought to you by election 2024.
Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email: mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com