SAN MATEO — San Mateo’s first city council meeting since the 2022 election devolved into a political power struggle that lasted until 3 a.m. Tuesday after two council members refused to elect a new mayor and deputy mayor, breaking with 128 years of precedent and going against the city charter.

After the city was threatened with a lawsuit over its election system, San Mateo moved to elect its first by-district council this year, and three new council members were elected: Adam Loraine, Lisa Diaz Nash and Robert Newsom. A fifth seat is currently empty after being vacated by Diane Papan, who was elected to represent the San Mateo area in the California Assembly, and the council is set to pick a replacement from a pool of applicants next week.

Following a bitter campaign for three open seats, election results showed the council was poised for a split between those who are gung-ho for more housing and development in the city and those who want to preserve neighborhood character and the city’s slow-growth policies.

But no one could have predicted the stalemate and deadlock the council found itself in on Monday.

What was supposed to be the quick succession of three-year councilmember Amourence Lee — the only current council member with experience on the dais — to the top council post based on the city’s rotational mayor system turned into a bitter stalemate that lasted hours after newly elected council members Nash and Newsom blocked her nomination, proposing instead to first fill the fifth council seat vacancy on Dec. 12 before electing a new mayor the following day.

For hours, Lee and Loraine pleaded with Newsom and Nash to conform to the charter’s rules which outline that the city must elect a new mayor and deputy mayor on the first week of December following a general election and allow Lee to become mayor. Though it appeared clear by about an hour into the discussion that the deadlock could not be undone — Newsom and Diaz Nash were advocating for moving the meeting to Dec. 12 — Loraine and Lee pushed on for hours, extending the debate to attempt to reason with their new colleagues, to no avail.

“It’s very disconcerting to advocate for a violation of the charter,” Lee said during Monday’s council meeting. “We are being asked to fulfill these roles today and there is a guideline to adhere to and there is a tradition and respectability of our city. I think this is an embarrassment for San Mateo and I’m very ashamed right now for the way we’re proposing to do business which is to stagnate our governance structure. This is a really sad day for San Mateo.”

Diaz Nash and Newsom however were steadfast in their refusal to move forward with the mayoral rotation and urged their colleagues to allow the meeting to wait until the day after the four-member council appoints a fifth colleague. Diaz Nash said she was concerned about the power of the mayor as a tie-breaker vote in the event the council deadlocked on a  decision for a fifth council member.

In a back and forth between Diaz Nash and Loraine, Diaz Nash said the council has “never been in this situation before” but she has faith that “if we have a wide variety of people (apply for the fifth council seat) that we would have a better opportunity to compromise,” advocating for pushing the meeting.

“It’s not a violation of our charter and I don’t see what the problem is,” Diaz Nash said. “Let us have the entire city be represented. There might be 100 people who applied, 50 people who applied, they might present all sorts of opportunities for compromise. I want to wait until I see everyone who applied for the (fifth council seat).”

Loraine pushed back, saying the city is already represented by Lee, a Asian American Jewish woman hailing from an underrepresented section of the city who is the only current council member with experience on the job and who was elected at-large, garnering some 22,000 votes, three years ago.

“I have great news for you (Diaz Nash), the city is currently being represented fully by Amourence Lee who was elected at-large,” Loraine said. “And we have a process for determining how we move forward, it was already described by our city attorney and city manager. I think if we were to wait until we see all candidates, that would simply multiply the number of permutations and possibilities so as to potentially make this much more difficult and complex to find consensus than we are today.”

Following multiple failed attempts to continue the meeting another day and to elect Lee to be mayor, the council finally decided at about 2:59 a.m. to continue the meeting to Wednesday, Dec. 7, though it doesn’t appear much will be different then.

Like Lee, many members of the public who attended in person and phoned in also described the meeting as an “embarrassment” and “shameful” for San Mateo, highlighting the ideological divisions within the community. Over multiple hours, including two public comment sections, dozens of residents expressed either their support for one camp or another but many agreed the conversation had devolved into chaos.

“There is no other way to say this, tonight has been an embarrassment and there has been a dereliction of duty,” said San Mateo resident Jordan Grimes. “It does not bode well for the years to come. You’ll be no less deadlocked a week from now than you were tonight, in fact tensions will be higher. Nash and Newsom are stalling because they couldn’t win a conservative majority on the council by right and so instead of appointing the person who should be mayor by every conceivable measure, you are trying to sideline her to further your own political ends and goals, tradition, decorum and protocol be damned.”

Other elected officials around the Bay Area chimed in on social media to voice their shock at the mayoral discussion in San Mateo. Newly elected San Mateo County Supervisor Noelia Corzo — who is from San Mateo — said in an interview Tuesday that the board should get involved in some way. Other elected officials like Mountain View councilmember Ellen Kamei went to Twitter to say “I stand with Amourence.”