MANY LOCAL RACES for mayor and city council seats are going uncontested in this November’s election, from rural Salinas Valley to some of the Bay Area’s richest cities and towns up in the hills.
In Santa Clara County, for example, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno and Saratoga all chose to appoint councilmembers rather than hold elections on Nov. 5 because the number of candidates did not exceed the number of open seats, according to the county Registrar of Voters’ office.
Other local cities with no contested council races this year include Belvedere in Marin County, Gonzales and Del Rey Oaks in Monterey County and Rohnert Park and the city of Sonoma in Sonoma County.
A similar scenario unfolded in 2022, when other cities in the Bay Area like Danville, Hillsborough, Lafayette and Mill Valley also canceled their city council elections and appointed councilmembers because of a lack of candidates.
Democracy inaction
Political experts say the widespread issue of uncontested elections, whether in poorer or richer areas, entrenches the power of existing officeholders and discourages a competition of ideas in local governance.
“It’s an undemocratic race when voters don’t have a choice,” said Alex Niemczewski, CEO of the nonprofit research organization BallotReady. “Also, it’s a missed opportunity for voters to become more civically engaged. When a race is contested, there are often ways that candidates get in front of voters that can be educational.”
Niemczewski said it is usually smaller cities or counties around the country that tend to have candidates running unopposed, with those races often skewing toward low-income and more rural populations.
BallotReady found that more than two-thirds of races on the November 2022 ballot around the U.S. were uncontested. In the Bay Area, 62% of the nonpartisan positions up for election that year were uncontested.
“It’s an undemocratic race when voters don’t have a choice.” Alex Niemczewski, BallotReady
The organization’s analysis found that federal races almost always draw multiple candidates — only 3% in November 2022 had someone running unopposed — and state races had more competition that year but still had 35% races unopposed. The number of uncontested races is much higher as voters go down the ballot, including 91% of county district attorney positions across the country that went uncontested in 2022.
‘No one really shows up’
Gonzales, an agricultural community along U.S. Highway 101 south of Salinas in Monterey County, is one such small, rural city that has its mayor and an incumbent city councilmember running unopposed this November. The city has a population of under 8,700 and an average median household income of about $75,000, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data.
Gonzales Mayor Jose Rios, who was first elected to a two-year term in 2020 and then again in 2022, says there is not a lot of engagement at their City Council meetings, even with big projects underway like the building of a new community center.
“Our council meetings, I would say 95% of the time is us and staff,” he said. “It’s available and open but no one really shows up.”
Gonzales is a close-knit community focused on farming, said Rios, a retired PG&E employee.
“There are row crops, as you go up the foothills, all the vineyards begin, tons of vineyards. As you go further up, lemon and avocado orchards,” he said. “I have enough friends that I never have to buy lettuce or any vegetable.”
Gonzales recently moved to district elections, where councilmembers are each elected by voters in specific parts of a city. The city joined many others around California that, under the threat of lawsuits triggered by the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, have changed from at-large elections that allow everyone in a city to vote for one or multiple council seats, a system critics say can dilute the strength of minority votes.
The only district council race on this November’s ballot for Gonzales was for its District 2 seat, with just incumbent councilmember Scott Funk running.
“This is our first race that has district elections and the only district up was Mr. Funk,” Rios said. “He’s done a good job. I did speak to someone else who was thinking of running, but he said Scott’s doing a good job.”
The mayoral seat occupied by Rios, who has been dealing with failing eyesight recently, would have been decided citywide if anyone else threw their hat in the ring, but no one came forward to face him.
“I said to the council, I was thinking about not running because I’ve lost a lot of my sight, physical sight, but I haven’t lost my sight of the community and think I’m the best candidate to get it through,” Rios said.
‘The lack of opponents as a vote of confidence’
Saratoga was one of the four cities and towns in Santa Clara County where council positions were recently appointed because there were no contested races on the November ballot. All four have median household incomes of about $200,000 or above, according to the latest Census numbers, and none have more than 34,000 residents.
Located in the hills southwest of San Jose, Saratoga had two at-large council seats open this election cycle. However, only the two incumbents, Tina Walia and Kookie Fitzsimmons, filed to run for the seats, so the City Council decided to cancel the election and save what the city estimated was $100,000 in election costs by appointing the incumbents.
Walia said she saw “the lack of opponents as a vote of confidence” in her performance on the council after being elected in 2020.
“I ran as I believed more needed to be done with public outreach and input on key issues,” Walia said, noting Saratoga recently began recording and posting videos of all council meetings, among other changes aimed at increasing communication between the city and its residents. “You never know when an issue may prompt someone to file to run against you.”
‘Democracy in name only’
Niemczewski from the BallotReady organization said a lack of participation in local democracy “compounds over time. If a race is uncontested, it’s more likely that it will continue to be uncontested.”
If no one is challenging a race, “that also means the incumbent is less accountable to their constituents and there are fewer checks on corruption,” she said.
BallotReady works with “nonprofits and companies that care about civic engagement, such as those that recruit and train candidates to run for office,” Niemczewski said, including a 2022 partnership with Snapchat that the organization said got more than 25,000 users to sign up to take steps toward launching a campaign.
BallotReady provides data on offices up for election as well as filing instructions, deadlines and salaries for elected offices, “which may be incentivizing or not” given the time commitments required of some positions, Niemczewski said.
California State University East Bay professor Nolan Higdon, a lecturer of history and media studies, said modern politics tends to be fixated on winning rather than debating ideas.
“Previous generations would get into races not necessarily with the goal of winning but to push left or right on a particular issue,” Higdon said, while “today’s generation of politics are so fixated on winning and not policy that they no longer see the value in losing.”
He said if a city or county has uncontested elections or appoints people to seats, then they are in some ways a “democracy in name only.”
“The purpose of debates is not some trivial exercise,” Higdon said. “People defend where they stand on different issues and if you don’t have those types of contentious interviews or debates, the public’s voice ends up missing.”
