Mayor Rich Tran Wins Second Term, while Carmen Montano and Karina Dominguez Win Councilmember Seats

Milpitas voters made a very clear, decisive choice this election: 

With 46.9% of the vote (a total of 3834 votes), Rich Tran blazed past all four other Mayoral candidates to secure his spot as Mayor and get re-elected for a second term. 

“We’re going to do a lot of great things,” said Tran last night, in front of a room of supporters gathered for his Election Party at Crawdaddy Restaurant in Milpitas. 

He spoke of his 2014 bid for City Council, where he came in at third place. In 2016, when he ran for Mayor, people thought he was crazy for daring to step into that race. However, Tran won his first Mayoral term with 37% of the vote. And this year, in 2018, he clinched his victory even more, with a 19% gap between him and his second place opponent, former six-term Mayor Jose Esteves, who came in with only 27% of the vote. 

Bob Nuñez, who is currently in the middle of his first term as City Councilmember, came in with 17.9% of the vote, trailed by Voltaire Montemayor with 4.47%, and Yoon Lee with 3.59%. 

In the City Council race, where eight candidates were competing for only two spots, Carmen Montano and Karina Dominguez also saw a clear victory. Montano, who was a former Vice Mayor for Milpitas, secured 19.6% of the vote (with 2630 votes), while Dominguez secured 18% (with 2436 votes). Incumbent Garry Barbadllio came in third place with 17% of the vote, while incumbent Vice Mayor Marsha Grilli came in fourth place with only 14.4%.

In the Milpitas Unified School District school board race, the winners were: Chris Norwood, Kelly Yip-Chuan, and Michael Tsai.

The Measure AA Bond for the school district passed with 65.24%, which will give the school district access to $284 million in bonds to be put toward upgrading technology, modernizing classrooms, enhancing safety and security, bringing in a second high school campus, and also continuing to build out Mabel Mattos Elementary School. 

Measure R also passed, taking in 65.72% of the vote. This is the Transient Occupancy Tax item, which would increase hotel tax from 10% to 14%, and go toward funding general city purposes, like maintaining parks and enhancing public safety. 

“Tonight we celebrate Milpitas,” Mayor Tran told the room full of supporters surrounding him on Tuesday night; to which he received a wild round of applause.