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Career Detour
After losing his bid for reelection as Stockton mayor , Michael Tubbs is weighing his options
BY Marcus Crowder | PHOTOS BY Terence Duffy
ichael Tubbs losing his Stockton mayoral reelection bid didn ’ t make anyone ’ s 2020 top 10 tragedies list . The year was far too brutal for a political wunderkind ’ s early career hiccup to register as anything more than a pause .
Tubbs , 30 , became the youngest mayor in the country of a city with more than 100,000 residents ( Stockton has around 313,000 ) when he was elected in 2016 , the same night Donald Trump won the presidency . Tubbs remembers it well , “ I was thinking , ‘ Wow , Stockton got it right .’”
Tubbs instituted some of the most progressive and innovative civic initiatives in the country , recasting Stockton as a community that took pride in a new problem-solving sensibility . But a very 2020 thing happened on Tubbs ’ path to reelection — he wasn ’ t . Conservative challenger Kevin Lincoln waltzed in and handed Tubbs a surprisingly decisive defeat , winning 56.4 percent of the vote . In the March primary , no candidate garnered more than 50 percent of the vote ( Tubbs received 41.5 percent to Lincoln ’ s 21.6 percent ), forcing November ’ s showdown with Lincoln . While the November vote counting process was
34 comstocksmag . com | February 2021