FREMONT — Voters appeared poised to elect Raj Salwan as Fremont’s next mayor, after a contentious race between the current councilman and Vinnie Bacon, a former councilman.
Salwan was leading with a 15-point margin over Bacon, according to initial results posted after the polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Bacon and Salwan had been considered the top contenders in the four-way race to replace outgoing Mayor Lily Mei, who is termed out after eight years in office. The other two candidates, Hiu Ng and Rohan Marfatia, did not appear to raise any campaign money to reach voters in the Bay Area’s fourth largest city.
Bacon and Salwan, meanwhile, largely self-financed their campaigns.
Salwan, a landlord and veterinarian who is termed out as a District 5 councilman, raised over a quarter of a million dollars on his campaign. Campaign finance records show he spent a grand total of over $305,000 to date. Most of that was self-funded, with Salwan loaning his campaign $200,000, and most was spent on mailers and ads attacking Bacon.
Bacon raised over $226,000 for his campaign, including $200,000 in personal loans. He spent about $144,000 of that, mostly on mailers and attack ads too, including $50,000 on TV ads from a company in New York City called Effectv.
He was joined on the campaign trail by former Fremont Councilwoman Jenny Kassan, his wife who previously said she dropped out of public office to help Bacon run for mayor.
Comparatively, other candidates in the Fremont City Council races fundraised much less this election season. For example, incumbent Councilwoman Teresa Cox, who had to fend off Gen Z software engineer contender Raymon Liu in her District 6 race this year, raised just under $31,000 to date. Liu raised less than $5,000.
Early returns showed Cox was leading Liu.
Incumbent District 1 Councilwoman Teresa Keng was ahead of challengers Ranvir Sandhu and Pravesh Kumar, early results showed.
Both Bacon and Salwan each accusing the other of misinforming voters. Bacon slammed Salwan for alleged mismanagement of some of Salwan’s rental properties in Fremont and the greater Bay Area. Salwan took shots at Bacon for what he called a “smear tactic” on his name, and he asserted that Bacon was scraping the bottom of the barrel for empty accusations as the election came to a close.