Although tens of thousands of Stanislaus-area ballots have yet to be counted, some observations from early returns can be made now.
- These races are definitely too close to call: Measure N, a Sylvan school bond, was barely behind; Turlock City Councilwoman Cassandra Abram is neck-and-neck with challenger Ryan Taylor; and one of two seats on the Oakdale City Council remains up in the air.
Former Oakdale councilman Fred Silva will win one of the two, but the second is a cliff-hanger between incumbent Kayleigh Gilbert and Chris Chavez.
Chavez and Silva campaigned together as a self-described conservative slate. If both win, Councilman Jarod Pitassi – the subject of a current abuse-of-power investigation – hopes they join him to form a voting bloc that could transform how things get done at Oakdale City Hall.
- In very early returns Tuesday evening, it looked like Democrat Jaron Brandon might have a chance to catch Republican Alexandra Duarte in the race for state Senate. But with each ballot-count update, she pulled more ahead and now, with 52.2% in the latest count, seems the apparent winner.
- Elected officials pay a heavy price for bad behavior.
The mayors of Patterson and Hughson – both recently rocked by discipline from the city council’s they lead – decisively lost their reelection bids. So did Modesto Irrigation District Director Janice Keating.
Patterson Mayor Michael Clauzel has no hope of catching opponent Gaby Hernandez, a councilwoman who challenged him – and who benefited from the council’s public reprimand of Clauzel for bullying behavior.
And Hughson Mayor George Carr so far is dead last in a three-way race that will end in Geoff Powers taking the mayor’s gavel. Carr had been slapped twice with censures from his council for lewd behavior toward employees.
- Meanwhile Keating could not put behind her an MID board censure for petulant behavior, including tossing a clipboard at an employee. And Mike Moradian worked hard in his campaign to represent the heart of Modesto on the embattled MID board.
- Riverbank voters’ embrace of Measure M with 61% is a repudiation of the City Council’s Sept. 22 approval of the huge River Walk expansion, although how that plays out has yet to be seen.
River Walk opponents already have sued on environmental questions and they expect to see a citywide referendum vote on the project, once petition signatures are verified (unless the council reverses its decision).
Voters in Councilman Luis Uribe’s district, meanwhile, didn’t hold his vote for River Walk against him. Ahead of his closest challenger by 10 percentage points, his reelection looks secure.
- In this election, more Stanislaus Democrats voted early by mail, and voting in person on Election Day tilted toward Republicans.
- Four years ago, Stanislaus voters treated Gavin Newsom poorly, giving him only 42% of the local vote for governor. This year, Stanislaus voters somewhat surprisingly preferred his Democratic successor, Xavier Becerra, to Republican Steve Hilton – 53% to 47%.
“All the wind in the last few weeks went out of (Hilton’s) sails,” David Colnic, a Stanislaus State political science professor, told me.
- However, Stanislaus voters definitely skewed conservative on Proposition 39, the voter ID Initiative, awarding it 51.4% locally although it was losing big-time in the statewide count (41.4% support as of 1:30 p.m. Wednesday).
- Stanislaus voters were uninterested in the race for California insurance commissioner. You see that in the “undervotes” field of reports from the Stanislaus elections office – more than 3,000 local voters simply skipped that race rather than hold their noses to choose between two Democrats.
- If early results hold, Stanislaus County will continue to be represented on the state and federal levels by only one Democrat – Rep. Adam Gray – next to four Republicans: Rep. Tom McClintock, Senator-elect (probably) Duarte, and Assemblymen Heath Flora and Juan Alanis.
- Stanislaus Democrats may rue these truths. But they have only themselves to blame for sleeping through the redistricting process early this decade that transformed all state- and federal-level local districts crimson-red.
With little Stanislaus input, alert counties were rewarded with more autonomous boundaries. But state Senate and Assembly districts representing Stanislaus County (except Alanis’s) – as well as the 5th Congressional district covering the county’s east half – were lumped in with staunchly conservative swaths in neighboring counties.
If local Dems hope to prevent that from occurring again, they better get much more engaged with redistricting after the 2030 Census.
Garth Stapley is the accountability reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the nonprofit Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact him at garth@themodestofocus.org.