More than a week after losing his seat in the June 2 primary election, outgoing Mayor Eduardo Martinez broke his silence on the loss, thanking Richmond residents and congratulating his opponents in a email sent Wednesday afternoon that called his tenure an “honor of a lifetime.”
“I would like to express my deep appreciation for the opportunity to serve as Mayor of the great City of Richmond, California,” Martinez wrote. “To my successor, I hope you find the same fulfillment and sense of purpose that I have experienced while working alongside the dedicated staff of our City. Their commitment, professionalism, and passion for public service have been a constant source of inspiration.”
The top two vote-getters in the race, council member Claudia Jimenez and Ahmad Anderson, will advance to a run-off in the November election. Martinez confirmed he will remain in office until January 2027.
“I look forward to working with our City staff, community partners, and residents to keep advancing the work Richmond deserves,” Martinez said.
The June 2 primary was the first since voters passed Measure J in 2024. Under the new system, a local candidate who secures more than 50% of the votes cast will win outright. If no candidate clears that threshold, the top two vote-getters will move on to the November General Election.
After all 938 precincts were counted, voter turnout countywide was tallied at 44% of the county’s 731,497 registered voters. The majority of ballots have been accounted, according to the county’s June 10 results update, with only about 2,000 provisional or damaged ballots being counted or reviewed.
This was Martinez’s first mayoral reelection bid. He was elected in 2022 while serving as an at-large Richmond City Council member but last fall lost the coveted support of the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA), the local progressive organization that has dominated the city’s politics for more than a decade.
June 2 primary election
Full election results are here.
For more info.: Visit Richmondside’s voter guide or the Contra Costa County elections page.
Martinez’s first mayoral term became complicated by controversy after he shared a December 2025 LinkedIn post that characterized the Bondi Beach mass shooting in Australia as a false flag operation. In the aftermath, more than 80 elected officials from across the Bay Area and Contra Costa County called for him to resign. Martinez subsequently avoided an effort by some of his council colleagues to officially censure him in January.
Jimenez, a fellow RPA member, won the endorsement right before the candidacy filing period opened and in recent months has reported receiving endorsements and campaign contributions from the same public labor unions that buoyed Martinez’s 2022 campaign. Her campaign has also received support from political action committees, including city employee unions, SEIU 1021 and IFPTE 21, and PACs associated with the nonprofits APEN Action and ACCE Action.
At an election night gathering at the RPA’s headquarters in the North and East neighborhood, supporters danced in a circle to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” as the vote totals were being refreshed on the television.
Jimenez reflected on her candidacy and said that she told supporters earlier in the evening that she believed they did everything they could to win.
“I was just telling people before we got the results that this campaign, we started really late,” Jimenez told Richmondside. “I didn’t know that I was going to even run for this. We did the best. We knocked thousands of thousands of doors.”
Jimenez said she believes residents are happy with the different initiatives the progressive council members have made and believe she is the right candidate for the job.
“People are giving me the confidence to be leading the city and continue to move Richmond forward,” she said.
Though the results are still early, Jimenez said that she is hoping she’ll qualify for a November run-off.
“There is a great opportunity with the $550 million (from the Chevron settlement) with things that we can do so that we can have a city of the future, where we can transfer from an economy based on fossil fuel to a more green economy,” Jimenez said.
According to campaign finance filings, Jimenez has raised nearly $50,000 this campaign season while Martinez has raised a bit less than $5,000.
Anderson, who has twice run unsuccessfully for city council seats, is making his first mayoral bid.
At an intimate Tuesday evening gathering at his childhood home in Laurel Park, surrounded by about a dozen supporters, Anderson told Richmondside he was “feeling good” about his campaign.
Seeing as he was one of the first candidates to announce he was running in the 2026 primary, Anderson likened his campaign to his time on the UC Berkeley football team.
“My experience of having run before and my experience of having played football before realizes that you prepare based upon where you’re playing. And that’s Richmond,” Anderson said. “I feel good that we’ve done a good job.”
When asked what he learned during this at-large campaign, Anderson said residents want a “proactive not reactive” representation on the dais.
“I feel like many folks feel like, ‘We’re yelling into a tunnel and no one’s responding back. Is there a time for new leadership?’ You have five people running for mayor,” Anderson said. “I’m not running against Eduardo. I’m running for the seat.”
He has positioned himself as a moderate who can appeal to voters outside of the RPA coalition and has campaigned on issues such as increasing police department staffing and economic development.
Anderson has also received the second-highest amount of campaign contributions of the mayoral candidates and secured a key endorsement from the Richmond Police Officers Association, which also funded a PAC supporting Anderson.
Johnson, who previously served on the council from 2018 to 2022, has similarly campaigned on a moderate platform looking to remove RPA influence from the council though he hasn’t raised much money. Johnson has also called for increasing police staffing and response times while advocating for increasing economic development in the city.
Johnson raised the third-most in mayoral campaign contributions while also self-funding his campaign.
Wassberg, whose name has frequently appeared on election ballots in Richmond over the past decade, previously ran against Martinez in 2022 but finished last behind Nat Bates and Shawn Dunning. He has not reported any campaign contributions this cycle.
I am very dismayed by the amount of people who showed up to vote- less than 10%. I certainly hope we don’t have as much apathy come November. I wonder if this low turn out is due to so many people fleeing the city of Richmond and so many unregistered or unable to vote citizens; it is very sad to see so many unconcerned and so many who refuse to vote, exclaiming “it’s pointless.”