KPIX 5 / SurveyUSA Poll Finds 2 Candidates Breaking Away In San Jose Mayor's Race
SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) -- With less than a week until the primary election, a new KPIX 5 / SurveyUSA poll found two candidates for San Jose mayor are separating themselves from the crowded field of candidates.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese is among those who have broken away from the pack, with 26 percent of the vote.
"Always makes me a little nervous because I'm used to being the underdog," Cortese told KPIX 5.
San Jose City Councilmember Sam Liccardo, who is the frontrunner in raising money, is in second place with 20 percent of the vote.
"We're feeling great about the momentum that we're feeling out there in the neighborhoods," Liccardo said.
The two leaders are both lawyers, both have been councilmembers and both of their Italian-American families have been influential in San Jose for generations, but that is where the similarities end.
They have different approaches to solving San Jose's biggest problem: public safety.
"What we need to do is stop these police officers from leaving. And there's some things about Measure B that need to be tweaked to make that happen. It needs to happen in a hurry and we need to restore trust," Cortese said.
"We can restore safety and we can restore services in this city if we're willing to be innovative, if we're willing to do things differently," Liccardo said. "We don't have to spend more, we can spend smarter."
This primary election has been one of the cleanest, most polite elections for mayor in recent years. As one campaign official said, with so many people in the race, there are too many targets. But that will likely change when the field gets narrowed down to the top two candidates in November.
The poll has a margin of error of 4.7 percent.
