Sunnyvale will carry forward with a series of uncontested city council elections in the November midterm.
Three seats on the Sunnyvale City Council are up for grabs on election day. Council members Linda Sell, Murali Srinivasan and Vice Mayor Richard Mehlinger are campaigning to keep their seats in elections they are all but certain to win.
Mehlinger and Srinivasan both faced challengers in their 2022 bids for council. Mehlinger won nearly three-quarters of the vote for District 5. Srinivasan and his opponent, a former city sustainability commissioner, each received 2,814 votes. Per city rule, Sunnyvale drew names out of a bag to settle the tie over District 3.
“I won’t lie,” Mehlinger told the Voice. “Obviously, an uncontested campaign is much less stressful.”
This year marks the second election in which Council member Sell runs unopposed. The city appointed her in 2022, cancelling the election and saving Sunnyvale $20,000 in administrative costs.
Sell’s appointment came just months after Sunnyvale updated its district maps, which the city drew using federal census data. Sunnyvale previously allowed voters to participate in all council elections under an at-large system. But residents approved a measure in 2020 to replace that system with a by-district one, requiring council members to live in the districts they serve.
The district election system aims to promote inclusion in the city’s electoral processes. City analysis from 2020 revealed some agencies in California faced lawsuits claiming at-large election systems illegally diluted minority groups.
Former Council Member Glenn Hendricks, who voted to appoint Sell in 2022, described the lack of competition as a failure of the district election process.
“This does not seem to be the way we wanted district elections to go,” he said.
Mehlinger and Srinivasan disagreed, citing their own contested races. Sell described herself as a fixture in the Cupertino Union School District — she joined a grassroots community effort that successfully saved more than 100 teaching jobs from budget cuts in 2010 — giving her name recognition when she ran for city council.
“A lot of people know me,” Sell said. “If they know I’m running, they might pause to think if they should run against me or not.”
Sunnyvale will keep these council races on the ballot because there will be other city initiatives for voters to consider. When District 4 Council Member Charlsie Chang ran unopposed in 2024, she remained on the ballot because of initiatives such as Measure F, which sought to eliminate the citizenship requirement to serve on city boards and commissions.
“I was in a meeting, and someone said, ‘Oh, it’s a waste of taxpayer money,’” Srinivasan told the Voice. “But democracy is expensive.”
The Santa Clara County Office of Elections sent out mail-in ballots on Oct. 5.
Chris Ramirez is a California Local News Fellow.