U.S. House 16th District Race Goes Down To The Wire – 60 Votes Between 2nd Place Candidates

A large Secretary of State voting count update late on Wednesday pushed the U.S. House 16th District primary race to be the closest in the state, with Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) and Santa Clara County Supervisor and former state Senator Joe Simitian (D) currently within only 59 votes of each other with over 95% of the ballots in.

Following the November announcement by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) that she would not run for reelection in 2024, candidates from all over Silicon Valley and the Southwestern San Francisco Bay area announced runs.  Former Saratoga City Councilor Rishi Kumar (D), Palo Alto Councilwoman Julie Lythcott-Haims (D), and former Menlo Park Mayor Peter Ohtaki (R) joined Simitian and Low, with most analysts expecting a Low-Simitian matchup in November. However, the entrance of former San Jose Mayor and current Stanford professor Sam Liccardo in December quickly threw the race into the most open House race in the state.

Liccardo, who had promised not to run if Eshoo was still running, was suddenly the front runner in the race. Even more, Republican candidates, usually being relegated to 3rd or 4th place in primaries in the area, suddenly now had a chance with Liccardo severely fracturing the Democratic vote. Polls in January showed Liccardo in an insurmountable lead, with Simitian and Low, who had expected to face each other in earnest in November, now suddenly having to fight each other in March. Support levels generally stayed the same through February, but with GOP candidates seeing a surprising bump in support thanks to the U.S. Senate primary and the Republican presidential primary bringing out more than usual in the area.

On March 5th, results of the night showed that Liccardo had just about clinched a spot in November, but with Low, Simitian, and Ohtaki and being within a few thousand votes of each other. The next day, straggling votes led Liccardo to pick up at least one of the spots, leading to a race of votes to still be counted for the others still in contention.

While there are many, many votes yet to count I'm encouraged by our first place finish as of the count tonight – and grateful to all of our incredible supporters who worked so hard for this. And thank you to every single voter in our District for making your voice heard. pic.twitter.com/TTiYy97xD6

— Sam Liccardo (@sliccardo) March 6, 2024

Votes continued to trickle in until Wednesday when the Secretary of State’s office released a large new block of counted votes. As of Thursday morning, Liccardo leads with 37,473 votes, or 21.3%. Low and Simitian were in a virtual tie, with 29,431 and 29,372 votes respectively, with 16.7% each. Ohtaki meanwhile slipped into a distant 4th place, with 22,571 votes, or 12.8%.

“The reality is, decisions are going to be made for you if you’re not making the decisions,” said Liccardo on Thursday. “So I encourage everybody to get out there and vote in November, because as we’re seeing here, from this March election, this is going to be decided by a very small number of votes, whoever my opponent is.”

Both Low and Simitian also responded to the latest totals on Thursday, with Low saying, “To me, no matter the ultimate outcome, the closeness of this race shows that your vote truly matters. Your vote can have a real impact on who represents your community.”

Simitian noted, “Every vote counts, and every vote has to be counted. That’s the nature of our process, and that’s as it should be. Having said that, we were in the top two on election night and have been every day since. So, I’m confident and optimistic, but we’ll wait for the results.”

With a final call likely to come down to the wire and a recount all but certain, analysts told the Globe on Thursday that the results could have been even wilder than they are now.

“If the GOP had consolidated behind one candidate, we could be talking about their candidate embarrassing pretty much every Democratic candidate,” Northern California pollster Paula Gonzalez said on Thursday. “The Democrats had 9 candidates who got at least 1% of the vote, 6 of them with at least 5%. The GOP had only two major candidates, Ohtaki and (Karl) Ryan. Ohtaki right now has 22,571 votes and Ryan 11,226 votes. If they had just chosen one, we’d have a Republican already getting that number 2 spot and locking out both Low and Simitian. That would have been incredible.”

“But, as it stands, Liccardo is in, largely because of his recent tenure as the mayor of San Jose. But now it is Low and Simitian. They both have solid bases, they both have regional name recognition, and they both can grab significant fundraising dollars and have good campaign histories. And that really shows where we are, with it being 59 votes apart. Neither of them expected to be out this early and have a lot riding on this.”

Final vote tallies are expected to be in by early April due to a high volume of by-mail and late votes.