Oliverio clings to second place to face Ellenberg in November supervisor race

By Khalida Sarwari

Although the race for Santa Clara County’s District 4 supervisor seat was rife with accusations of sexual harassment and misconduct, it’s unclear how big a role that ultimately played in Tuesday’s primary election results.

Susan Ellenberg, one of only two female candidates in the race, received the most votes — 12,266, or 32.37 percent — to start the November general election runoff as the clear leader.

Her opponent at the moment, former San Jose Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, was one of two male candidates hit with the harassment allegations. With thousands of ballots left to be counted in the coming days, he is clinging to a 105-vote lead over his former colleague and current San Jose Councilman Don Rocha. Oliverio picked up 7,680 votes, or 20.27 percent, and Rocha 7,564 votes, or 19.96 percent.

The county registrar’s office didn’t have a final vote tally Wednesday, stating that an estimated 125,000 vote-by-mail and 15,000 provisional ballots have yet to be counted. Registrar spokesman Eric Kurhi said it would take at least a few weeks to count those votes.

Heading to a Wednesday luncheon hosted by the Italian American Heritage Foundation in San Jose, Oliverio said he was “hopefully optimistic” he’ll be in the runoff against Ellenberg and that he plans to stay the course heading to November.

“When everything is finalized I look forward to a good discussion on issues that are under the authority of the county and how we can best help the citizens,” Oliverio said.

Rocha said he would wait until Friday, when most of the vote-by-mail ballots are expected to be tallied, to decide whether he’ll seek a recount. The county requires automatic recounts for close races in which the margin of victory is either less than .25 percent of the ballots cast or less than 25 votes, according to Kurhi.

“Given there is a good amount of ballots to still be counted, I also think it’s safe to say that I’m waiting for the count to finish before making any decisions or statements,” Rocha said.

Time may tell whether voters behind the uncounted ballots were swayed by the Santa Clara County Democratic Party’s May 4 censure of Oliverio or the series of SEIU-funded campaign mailer ads that equated him to Harvey Weinstein and Roy Moore. Oliverio, who has consistently denied allegations that he verbally abused and sexually harassed his chief of staff Denelle Fedor while he was a sitting councilman five years ago, today reiterated his dismissal of the unions’ claims as a political smear campaign against him.

“I think it’s vicious and unwarranted, the union attacks on my campaign and spending upwards of $300,000 against me, not including how much they’ve spent in the race to influence the other candidates to win,” he said.

While he deemed the accusations against himself an unknown variable in the outcome of the race, Oliverio said he believes they did negatively impact his opponent, Dominic Caserta, a former Santa Clara City Councilman who dropped out after ex-campaign volunteers accused him of unwanted advances and impropriety and students at Santa Clara High School, where he taught civics, later surfaced with accusations. He has denied the allegations and on Tuesday his name still appeared on the ballot, where he came in fifth place with 2,573 votes. Caserta’s departure left six candidates in the race to succeed termed-out Supervisor Ken Yeager.

On the heels of wrapping up her first post-primary meeting with her campaign staff, Ellenberg said that as she gears up for November, she will continue to advocate for families, seniors and women and has no plans to leverage Oliverio’s past misconduct.

“I didn’t raise it directly in this (race); I certainly didn’t name him or the other candidate and I do not anticipate that being part of our message whatsoever” moving forward, she said.

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Oliverio clings to second place to face Ellenberg in November supervisor race