For these voters, Eric Swalwell just won’t go away.
The disgraced former Congressman will appear on two separate ballots for East Bay voters: the special election for his 14th congressional district seat and the California June 2 primary ballot. Voters in the East Bay cities of Fremont, Hayward, Livermore, and Pleasanton should expect to receive the ballots.
Swalwell resigned from his congressional seat last month due to weighty sexual misconduct allegations that also forced him to drop out of the governor’s race. Swalwell has been in hiding for more than a month and denies the allegations against him.
The special election primary for Swalwell’s seat is on June 16, two weeks after the primary election. Voters in Swalwell’s district will first decide if there’s a candidate who should take his seat for the next Congress before deciding later in the month who will fill it for the rest of his term.
In either election, if a candidate gets a majority, they will win the seat outright. If not, the two top candidates will proceed to a later election. For the special election, it will be on Aug. 18, and the regular general election will be in November.
Voters will also see Swalwell’s name on the primary ballot for governor because he dropped out after the deadline to remove his name from the ballot.
Gov. Gavin Newsom called for the special election within hours of Swalwell’s resignation in April, likely to prevent Democrats from ceding ground to Republicans in the House for too long. The governor took 10 days to call a special election when GOP Rep. Doug LaMalfa died in January.
There are a myriad of candidates looking to fill Swalwell’s seat in the special election. They include Democrats like State Sen. Aisha Wahab, former BART Director Melissa Hernandez, and educator Rakhi Israni, along with Republicans including real estate investor Wendy Huang, florist Dena Maldonado, businessman Tom Wong, and educator Jack Wu.
Several of those candidates are also running to fill his seat permanently. The June 2 primary election will also take place under the new congressional lines approved via Prop 50, but the special election will use the old district lines.
Swalwell’s former benefactor, Stephen Cloobeck, was recently caught up in controversy of his own.
He got arrested on multiple felony charges pointing to witness tampering this week.