Wong, Sinks Lead in Early Election Results

Mayor Gilbert Wong is leading by more than 400 votes in the early vote count, while Rod Sinks and Marty Miller aree are following close behind in a battle for second place for the Cupertino City Council, according to the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.

Only 122 votes are between Sinks and Miller. With 23 percent of the votes counted, Homer Tong is trailing in fourth place, with Donna Austin in fifth, and Chris Zhang at the bottom. (See box below)

Measure C appears headed for certain approval, with 83 percent of the voters saying "yes". The measure will allow the city to raise its transient occupancy tax from 10 percent to 12 percent beginning Jan. 1, 2012. The extra revenue is expected to make up for at least part of the sales tax revenue that will be lost when Hewlett Packard leaves the city in about a month.

The first vote count reflects vote by mail ballots prepared for counting by the registrar’s office over the last several days. As precincts are counted, additional updates will be released tonight and tomorrow morning. The next update is expected at 10 p.m.

The campaign was a relatively quiet and positive one, until the final week when some last-minute flurries of negative flyers, emails and Internet comments began questioning campaign contributions by developers to Wong, Miller, and to some extent Austin.

Wong took the biggest hit of the three, with a large number of negative comments on a , as well as some unflattering cartoons that began circulating on the Internet.

A campaign flyer from Tong’s campaign was mailed and dropped on doorsteps depicting shadowy developers and directly calling out Wong and Miller for taking thousands from developers and landowners around town. 

According to information filed with the city on Oct. 27, Wong’s campaign collected more than $64,000 since Jan. 1, twice the amount collected by Miller, and three times more than other candidates. About half his money came from sources with development interests in Cupertino.

Miller collected more than $19,000 from development interests; he raised just over $29,000 this year.

Wong told Patch last week that he is not influenced by donations from developers, insisting that he has been an independent voice on the council for the past four years. Miller, a planning commissioner, has made similar comments in recent campaign forums.