Tonight Richmond voters could find out the unofficial winner of a five-way mayoral race or if there will be a run-off election in November to determine the city’s next leader.
Incumbent mayor Eduardo Martinez is facing four challengers: current District 6 council member Claudia Jimenez, Ahmad Anderson, Demnlus Johnson and Mark Wassberg.
According to the Contra Costa County registrar of voters, the first round of unofficial primary election results will be released after the polls close at 8 p.m. The first count will include mostly early in-person voting and mail-in ballots. Richmondside will update this story tonight with the latest numbers from the county.
The primary is the first since voters passed Measure J in 2024. Under the new primary 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.
This is Martinez’s first mayoral reelection bid. He was elected in 2022 while serving as an at-large Richmond City Council member. He has long been a member 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
Here’s where to find a list of ballot drop-off boxes.
Polls will be open until 8 p.m. tonight. Here’s a list of Richmond polling places.
For more info.: Visit Richmondside’s voter guide or the Contra Costa County elections page.
Martinez’s first mayoral term, however, 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.
Ultimately, it appears that the controversy lost him the RPA’s endorsement, which went to Jimenez when she joined the race.
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.
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.
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, is trying again on his usual anti-RPA platform. He previously ran against Martinez in 2022 but finished last behind Nat Bates and Shawn Dunning. He has not reported any campaign contributions this cycle.
