☆ Letter: Far-left Dem newcomers romp in SJ, NYC
Longtime SJ political-watcher Richard Davenport writes from NYC to note some parallels between local political wunderkinds Anthony Tordillos in SJ and NYC's Zohran Mamdani. An Opp Now exclusive.
Dear Opp Now team:
I'm writing you from my new apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn, preparing to go out on a bar crawl with a cadre of joyous hipster friends who are all Zohran Mamdani supporters.
There's a lot of energy around Mamdani here—especially with young, educated, just-out-of-hot-shot-colleges, 20-something, YIMBY progressives, who are increasingly fed up with what they see at the hidebound, Labor-run mainstream Democrat party.
This group wants noise, action, and cheaper rents.
(And yes, so do I, if you are wondering—but not quite in the way of my just-off-the-bus-from-Bowdoin friends).
Even though I'm just reading the Merc online, it's hard not to notice some parallels with the recent SJ D3 council race results:
Young, relative newcomer romps.
Traditional, older, Labor-backed candidates trounced.
The issues-race is 100% on the left.
Center-right is invisible.
I am assuming that the SJ center/center-right is still licking its wounds from the primary wipeout, with Quevedo (who probably counts as center-left, anyways)/Smith/Durran all going down, leaving the field to the two Santa Clara County Dem-endorsed candidates: Tordillos and Chavez-Lopez.
That strikes me as quite a win for Bill James & Co., as they essentially won the race in the primary, as their top two choices ran the table.
Mahan's late-inning endorsement of Tordillos seems more like an opportunistic play to stay relevant, and will very likely end in tears for Team Mahan. Despite the Merc studiously ignoring the SCC Dem endorsement of Tordillos, it's hard to see Tordillos as "aligned" (as Devan Patel puts it) with Mahan, as Tordillos' base of support has to be with his longtime pals: the hard-left SCC Dems Central Committee, and his cadre of far-left labor and nonprofit supporters. Look for Tordillos to pull Mahan leftward, not the other way around.
I'd be interested in hearing other opinions because I'm not there, but my big takeaway isn't so much D3 liberals rejecting South Bay Labor, but more of D3 liberals giving a complete heave-ho to what must be a diminishing center-right voice in that district.
Feels similar here in Brooklyn.
Best,
Richard D
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