Early returns show incumbent Sylvia Arenas on track to hold her seat on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, with a commanding lead over challenger Rebecca Munson in a race to represent District 1.<\/p>\n
Election results released Tuesday evening showed Arenas leading the race with 61% of the vote, followed by first-term school board trustee Munson with just over 38%.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m deeply honored by the trust and partnership that the voters of District 1 are placing in me to continue the work to make our county better serve our families,\u201d said Arenas over text.<\/p>\n
The Mercury News will rely on information from election officials and candidate statements before determining whether a candidate has won outright. As of this vote count, 19% of ballots sent out had been tallied, according to the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.<\/p>\n
County election officials estimate a final voter turnout between 35% and 45%. Since many California voters waited to submit ballots<\/a>, locals could wait weeks until final results, as election workers process and tally final vote counts.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very early in the election,\u201d said Munson over text. \u201cI\u2019m very optimistic and have confidence that as time goes on we will see more support and votes coming my way.\u201d<\/p>\n The results mark the last leg of a relatively quiet race for the only contested seat on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors<\/a>, where Arenas, 52, who has held the seat since 2022, defended her record against Munson, 51, who argued for more financial scrutiny amid historic budget problems in the county.<\/p>\n While the county budget has been plagued by years of growing costs and stagnating revenues<\/a>, massive cuts to Medicaid from the Trump administration\u2019s landmark spending bill have led to the most significant budget crisis in decades. Despite the passage of a temporary sales tax, Measure A<\/a>, and job cuts earlier this year<\/a>, the county is forecasting a $500 million shortfall in the 2027-28 fiscal year.<\/p>\n Both candidates admitted that the county\u2019s financial issues presented a key roadblock to maintaining and expanding services like behavioral healthcare.<\/p>\n Munson has been critical of the county\u2019s approach to its budget, saying the tax measure \u201cwasn\u2019t going to fix the problem\u201d and that it raised costs on \u201cour most vulnerable.\u201d She called for a more rigorous review or audit of the county\u2019s departments, in particular the healthcare system<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Arenas\u00a0has named preserving preventive services, particularly for youth, a top priority\u00a0as one of the supervisors that will decide on a county budget that could cut\u00a0hundreds of jobs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Along with budgetary issues, the winner of the seat will be tasked with addressing a slate of problems throughout the District 1 and the county.<\/p>\n District 1 stretches from south San Jose to the southern extremes of the county, covering Gilroy, Morgan Hill and large swaths of unincorporated and agricultural land, including San Martin. Its cities to the south have long grappled with gaining equal access to emergency<\/a>, healthcare<\/a> and county services<\/a> while facing disproportionate need, and an imbalance of jobs and housing<\/a>. While homelessness is endemic throughout the Bay Area<\/a>, San Jose and Gilroy have some of the highest homeless counts<\/a> in the region.<\/p>\n In addition to the District 1 race, Supervisor Susan Ellenberg is running uncontested to keep her seat in District 4 \u2013 a region that encompasses West San Jose, Campbell and Santa Clara. She was first elected to the Board in 2018 and again in 2022, when she also ran unopposed. She previously served as a trustee for San Jose Unified School District and worked as an attorney. Currently, she is the president of the California State Association of Counties.<\/p>\n Vote counts will continue until midnight on Tuesday, with further tallies announced every evening on subsequent days this week, according to the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Office.<\/p>\n This is a developing story. Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early returns show incumbent Sylvia Arenas on track to hold her seat on the Santa Clara County Board…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1400,187,193,88,90,89,196,198,14533,201],"class_list":["post-344232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-2026-elections","tag-gilroy","tag-morgan-hill","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-martin","tag-santa-clara-county","tag-santa-clara-county-board-of-supervisors","tag-south-san-jose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}