With Christmas just about over — except perhaps for a few lights on your neighbor’s house — the District 6 Campaign Season gets a jumpstart this week. Pierluigi Oliverio and Steve Tedesco are back into the swing of things, ringing doorbells and opening campaign offices.

Tedesco might be the most visible this week, with new election lawn signs popping up around town (they are the fancy new round ones). He is also hosting an open house in his new campaign headquarters: You can join him from 12:30-3 p.m. on Sunday, January 7, at 1090 Lincoln Avenue.

Just in case you missed the final results, Pierluigi Oliverio will face Steve Tedesco in March in the runoff to represent District 6 on the San Jose City Council.

Tedesco’s lead over Clark Williams narrowed a bit from the 101 orginally reported on election night. Jim Spence wasn’t far behind, either, trailing Williams by a scant 251 votes:

PIERLUIGI OLIVERIO: 6,984 Votes (30.57%)
STEVE TEDESCO: 4,938 (21.61%)
CLARK WILLIAMS: 4,889 (21.4%)
JIM SPENCE: 4,638 (20.3%)
ART MAURICE: 820 (3.59%)
BRAD IMAMURA: 579 (2.53)

The SJ Mercury News reported the final results late last week, after the Registrar of Voters finished its tally, which now includes absentee ballots and provisional ballots.

The WG Resident had declared Oliverio and Tedesco the finalists earlier in November. Although its monthly press deadline was unforgiving, the WG Times published its election coverage this week, providing additional biographies of the three top candidates.

WGx extends appreciation to Williams and Spence, who have been gracious in their narrow defeats … but one does wonder what difference could have been made by the 579 people who wasted votes on Brad Imamura, who had dropped form the race weeks earlier.

WGx just loves the election lawn signs!

That’s why Clark Williams wins one of the “Most Graceful Campaign Concession” awards in the latest version of the “Willow Glen Mosts.”

In an email to his supporters sent on November 9, Williams acknowledged the 118 vote deficit, and went on to encourage his supporters to remove their lawn signs right away.

Among other things, Williams wrote:

Our campaign has placed hundreds of yard signs throughout District 6 and I need your help in getting them down. As someone committed to neighborhood beautification, please remove your yard sign as soon as possible.

As a veteran of several political campaigns, the following are some creative ideas for reuse of your yard sign:

• place under hedges and bushes to suppress weeds
• use to lay on while making repairs under your car
• use for snow-sledding this winter in Tahoe
• use for insulation for a dog house or other backyard structure
• build a “dollhouse” or “castle” for your son or daughter
• cover your sign and use to promote your next yard or garage sale
• donate metal stakes to another political candidate

As Election Night draws to a close, Pierluigi Oliverio has cruised into the run-off election for San Jose City Council District 6 (scheduled for March 6, 2007). Steve Tedesco appears to have edged out Clark Williams — by only 101 votes — and is separated from Jim Spence by another 100 votes.

The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Election Results are updated online every 30 minutes, as votes are counted. Shortly after midnight Wednesday morning, 74 of 74 District 6 precincts had been counted:

PIERLUIGI OLIVERIO: 5798 votes; 30.45%
STEVE TEDESCO: 4128 votes; 21.68%
CLARK WILLIAMS: 4027 votes; 21.15%
JIM SPENCE: 3923 votes; 20.6%
ART MAURICE: 687 votes; 3.61%

… and 481 people wasted their votes on Brad Imamura (481 votes, 2.53%) who dropped out of the race a month ago. Could they have made a difference instead? We will never know …

It’s another of WGx’s honorary — and essentially random — “Willow Glen Mosts” …

Most Polite Political Campaign of 2006: Proudly awarded to all five candidate’s for the San Jose City Council representative for District Six. Heck, let’s include Brad Imamura, too, for bowing out nice and early.

Has anyone else noticed how nice and polite the District 6 campaign for City Council has been? Compared to the public sniping and privately-funded hit pieces typical of the race for Mayor of San Jose and Governor of California, the D6 campaign has been a walk in the park. Just a little bit north of us, the District 3 runoff between Manny Diaz and Sam Liccardo has hit a new low.

The candidates are collectively so pleasant that the WG Times hasn’t offered an endorsement, profiling all five in its Novemebr edition.

Even the weekly Metro, which has gotten all worked-up over most of the other campaigns, has nothing interesting to say about D6, quietly endorsing Pierluigi Oliverio, but not blaring their opinion with big headlines and glossy photos they’ve used for their other endorsements. addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Fwillowglenextra.com%2F2006%2F11%2Fmost-polite-campaign-in-wg%2F'; addthis_title = 'Most+Polite+Campaign+in+WG%21'; addthis_pub = '';

Whether or not you read this post, please be sure to vote!

In an effort to consolidate information about the candidates for the District Six seat on the San Jose City Council, WGx has collected more online resources than you probably knew about. Enjoy this summary:

Resources right here on on WGx: The complete “City Council Elections” category — links to the WG Resident candidate profiles — Five Questions from the Merc —

Pierluigi Oliverio: Official Website — SmartVoter.org Profile — Endorsed by the Mercury News — Endorsed by SVCN (WG Resident) — Hey, was he in a movie?

Art Maurice: Official Website — SmartVoter.org Profile –

Jim Spence: Official Website — SmartVoter.org Profile — Endorsed by the San Jose Police Officers Association

Steve Tedesco: Official Website — SmartVoter.org Profile — Endorsed by the SJ Chamber of Commerce –

Clark Williams: Official Website — SmartVoter.org Profile — Endorsed by Ken Yeager —

“What about Brad Imamura,” you ask? He dropped out of the race in October. The printed sample ballots still have his name, but perhaps those fancy new electronic touchscreen voting machines will be updated so you don’t waste your vote.

Other places where you might find good information:

The City of San Jose’s official Municipal Elections page, including official campaign finance filings and other official regulations.

SmartVoter.org’s official District Six City Council page, and their complete Santa Clara County November 2006 Ballot.

It’s another of our “Willow Glen Mosts” … this time, WGx awards “Most Obvious Political Lawn Sign Color” … The votes are finally all in, and the tally is complete: The official winner in the balloting to replace Ken Yeager is … the Color Green!

You probably saw this coming. Right after David Pandori (who carried District 6 and Willow Glen in the June Mayoral Primary) said this at a debate focusing on the environment:

“If you look at my campaign signs, you might notice a color, and it’s not a coincidence,” Pandori said. “The color is green.”

Pierluigi Oliverio probably wins the lawn-sign-vote-count outright, with more signs in WG than most other candidates. The cute “olive” drawing suggests creativity, although we’re not sure why he choose “From Here For Us” as his website address. At press time, PierluigiOliverio.com was still available for registration … was he worried we couldn’t spell it?

It’s tough to tell with the naked eye, but Tedesco’s green does seem a little darker than Oliverio’s, and his signs recall the Italian flag more effectively (albeit it’s rotated 90-degrees) … hey, they won the World Cup!

The first Art Maurice lawn sign in WG was spotted early last week, indicating that all of the candidates had voted in this critical election. Maurice’s signs show a down-to-earth light green coloring the leaves of a tree, with his name in the same color. The candidate from the Rosegarden-Cory neighborhood knows how to appeal to WG.

Clark Williams wins the biggest sign contest (although Maurice challenged him in the width department), but that shade of greeen seems a touch bland. Is it pea green? There are other, less-savory words that could be used to decribe it, but certainly it’s not olive green?

Of course, the very first vote had been cast by Jim Spence years ago when he last ran for City Council, with his retro blue and hot pink signs. But, he’s a green candidate none-the-less, earning kudows for recycling his old signs in the true spirit of “reduce-reuse-recycle.”

We’ll find out whether these signs mean anything on November 7.

With the election for the District Six seat on San Jose City Council just three weeks away (if the calendar in the left-hand column is correct), Perluigi Oliverio has garnered significant endorsements from two local media outlets.

They may be owned by the same mega-media corporation, but it does appear that the SJ Mercury News and the local WG Resident came to the same conclusion via different logic. After Oliverio, the two papers came to different recommendations for their “second choice” (the Merc leans toward Tedesco and the Resident mildly supportive of Clark Williams). In fact, detailed scouring of the two endorsements detected only one other notable similarity: The word “amiable” was used by both papers to gently discourage votes for a lesser candidate … although the Resident goes with “amiable Art Maurice” and the Merc described Jim Spence as “an amiable retired policeman.”

Because it’s fun to boil down complex problems into cute one-page photo layouts, the SJ Mercury News asked the five remaining City Council candidates for their answers to a series of questions. Their brief (and possibly edited) answers are available in today’s SJMN: “5 questions with candidates for S.J. City Council District 6”

The published article in the actual newspaper includes easy-to-read columns and nice pictures of each candidate. The online version isn’t presented that way and might be hard for you to read. In the interest of reader comprehension, WGx has hijacked the Merc’s content to present the candidate answers in a possibly more intellgible format. (more…)

This content is simply reformatted from today’s SJ Mercury News, whose online story was originally formatted by Question-Candidate. (more…)