Santa Clara County’s Assistant Assessor Neysa Fligor led former Saratoga Councilmember Rishi Kumar by more than 50,000 votes in the election for county assessor, in early returns announced at 8pm tonight.
The 52,000-vote margin could prove insurmountable, likely exceeding the total number of votes that remain to be counted in a low-turnout race.
The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters reported Fligor with 106,685 votes – 66.2% – and Kumar with 54,530 votes – 33.8%.
As the top two vote-getters among four candidates in the Nov. 4 general election, Fligor and Kumar were the only names in the runoff election for assessor. Turnout was expected to be under 25%, as most county voters chose to pass on the chance to cast a vote for a post that hasn’t been up for grabs in three decades.
Fligor will fill the seat vacated by the June announcement by Assessor Larry Stone that he would retire after more than 30 years and leave before his term expired.
Fligor is a native Jamaican who earned a law degree from Georgetown University who had stressed her expertise and experience in the assessor’s office. She is a member of the Los Altos City Council and serves as the city’s vice mayor.
Kumar, an Indian-American engineer, and self-described “tech dude” who campaigned on what he called a “Prop 13 approach,” pushing a ballot initiative to give all property owners age 60 and older a 100% property tax exemption. He ran three unsuccessful campaigns for Congress.
As of this evening’s report, only 161,954 – 15% – of the county’s 1,071,024 registered voters had cast ballots for assessor, according to the Registrar of Voters. An undetermined number of ballots remained to be counted.
The anticipated low turnout in the darkness of the year’s final days heightened the anxiety and uncertainty of the final weeks of the abbreviated campaign.
Most voters cast ballots by mail, but thousands showed up at the 38 vote centers scattered across the county, or dropped their mail ballots in 109 ballot drop boxes. Polls closed at 8pm.
Because the mail ballots were tallied as they came in, the first results announced reflected those totals. Election workers begin counting the in-person ballots precinct by precinct as well as late arriving mail ballots tonight, with counting expected to continue in the New Year.
In the November vote, Fligor, the current assistant county assessor, led Kumar, a former Saratoga city council member, by more than 63,000 votes.
An election cycle that began more than five months ago in the bright sun of the summer solstice with the ends just before a new year dawns. If it’s close, the results may not be certain until the first week of 2026 or later.
The latest campaign finance reports filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission show that Fligor, who spent about $300,000 in the general election, raised about $40,000 for the runoff. As of Nov. 15, she reported $55,582 on hand, with $111,500 in campaign debt. The politically powerful South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council’s Committee on Political Education spent $15,474 on behalf of Fligor since the November vote. The independent committee had spent $37,298 on her general election campaign, according to the FPPC.
In contrast, Kumar continued to spend modestly on his campaign, reporting $20,000 in contributions in November and December. He spent $12,872 in the general election race, had $17,147 on hand as of Nov. 15, and reported just $108 in campaign debt, according to the FPPC.