Primary primer: Five curiosities as Santa Cruz County tallies the votes

Election day is finally here. 

The kind of catharsis that used to accompany the civics holiday, in which races were won and lost on Tuesday, has dissipated with the advent of ubiquitous mail-in voting. Mailed ballots now come in days after election day, leaving candidates and the public uncertain about the results for days and sometimes weeks. 

Here’s what we know about the order of things from here on out: Santa Cruz County Clerk Tricia Webber said the first round of votes will be counted by 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, and subsequent updates will come about every 90 minutes. She said the first round of results will include all in-person voting and by-mail ballots received through Monday, and subsequent reports will be “primarily the in-person votes from Tuesday coming in from the voting centers.”

Webber said some mail-in ballots received Tuesday could be included in the later election night updates, but that cannot be guaranteed. 

When the results are tallied, we will know who will serve as District 1 county supervisor over the next four years, fates of four Santa Cruz City Council seats, whether city of Santa Cruz voters want a say on building heights, and whether Watsonville Community Hospital will have a steady revenue stream over the next 30 years. 

But there are some deeper questions we’re keeping our eyes on. Here are five curiosities we’re tracking as we watch the results trickle in over the next few days. 

1. Will the county witness a full turning-over of its board of supervisors?

In 2020, the all-white, all-male Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors had a combined 44 years of experience setting policy and directing staff’s work for their more than 260,000 constituents. John Leopold, a 12-year veteran, was campaigning for his fourth consecutive term representing District 1, while Zach Friend and Bruce McPherson were seeking their third consecutive terms for Districts 2 and 5, respectively; Ryan Coonerty, halfway through his second term, had served District 3 for six years; and Greg Caput was in his 10th year as District 4’s representative. 

That year, Manu Koenig killed Leopold’s hope for a 16-year tenure, while Friend and McPherson continued on as incumbents. In 2022, newcomers Justin Cummings and Felipe Hernandez rose to the seats vacated by Coonerty and Caput, respectively. Friend and McPherson aren’t seeking reelection this year, assuring fresh faces fill supervisor roles in Districts 2 and 5. 

With one term under his belt, Koenig is the only incumbent in the race. If he fails in his reelection bid against challenger Lani Faulkner, the board of supervisors will begin 2025 with only a combined four years of institutional knowledge, and at least one woman will be taking county-level votes for the first time since 2012. While the District 2 and District 5 races have drawn crowded ballots, the battle for District 1 features only Koenig and Faulkner, which eliminates all possibility of a November runoff. We will know who the next District 1 supervisor is when all the primary ballots are tallied, and whether Cummings and Hernandez, each halfway through their first terms, will be the elder statesman of the county dais.

2. Will the students take ownership of Santa Cruz City Council’s District 5?

Although the city of Santa Cruz transitioned into district-based city council representation in 2022, only two city council seats were up for election that year, leaving the other four incumbent councilmembers to finish out their terms as representatives of the citywide electorate. This year marks the city’s full evolution into a geography-based system of representative governance. 

The UC Santa Cruz student impact on local elections has long been a hot topic. Some have argued that the students’ potential to influence electoral politics helped fuel interest in a district-based city council – the idea being that with districts, the students would likely sway only a single seat (and, potentially, the citywide vote for mayor). 

Well, that single seat is District 5, the city’s northwesternmost section, which wraps in UCSC’s campus, where about half of the university’s 18,000 students live on campus. The potential power of the student vote can be harnessed only if the students turn out. Perhaps it is a coincidence that both candidates battling for the District 5 seat are directly tied to the UCSC campus: Joe Thompson is halfway through their third year as a UCSC student, and Susie O’Hara lives on campus, as she is the wife of Stevenson College Provost Matt O’Hara. 

Bodie Shargel, Thompson’s campaign manager, said that mathematically, the “student vote’s potential to influence elections is overwhelming.” He has been working to get students to the polls for the past month, and said a student running to represent that district can have a real impact on turnout. “Students have never really gotten fair representation on the city council,” Shargel said.  

3. Can progressives get a foothold in the city of Santa Cruz elections?

In Santa Cruz, few seem to agree on the proper labels for the political forces in town. Terms such as progressive, liberal, neoliberal and establishment seem to rile up their own bit of controversy.

But for the sake of this article, we’ll use the term progressive to describe the candidates listed on the slates for two of the traditionally progressive organizations in town: Santa Cruz for Bernie and the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. This slate includes David Tannaci for District 1, Héctor Marin for District 2, Joy Schendledecker for District 3 and Thompson in District 5. This is the inverse of the more establishment-leaning Santa Cruz Together, the influential political organization favored by the real estate and development industry. Santa Cruz Together has put its money and support behind Gabriela Trigueiro in District 1, incumbents Sonja Brunner and Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson in Districts 2 and 3, respectively, and O’Hara for District 5. 

The progressive sect had a tough time breaking into elected office during the city’s first district-based elections. Schendledecker lost to Fred Keeley in the mayoral race, Marin lost to Scott Newsome in District 4 and Sean Maxwell lost to incumbent Renée Golder in District 6. Councilmember Sandy Brown has consistently provided the left-most perspective on the city council since Justin Cummings left the council in 2022, which has led to many 6-1 votes. However, Brown terms out at the end this year. If Santa Cruz Together’s preferred slate wins the four seats, prepare to watch the dais turn into more of an echo chamber over the next two years. 

4. How will voter turnout differ among elections throughout the county, and how will that affect the results?

Supervisor elections in the mountains and Mid-County, city council seats and a sales tax election in Santa Cruz, a hospital tax measure in South County, as well as a proposed increase in the county’s sales tax rate means the entire Santa Cruz County electorate will be casting ballots in this primary. 

As of Monday afternoon, Assistant County Clerk Rita Sanchez said countywide early turnout sat at around 20%, a number that has risen since the county opened more in-person polling places over the weekend. 

Primary elections typically draw older, more politically conservative voters to the polls as compared to November general elections. Without a competitive Democratic presidential primary on this year’s ballot, turnout has been a concern, with some statewide analysts predicting unusually low numbers. Sanchez was unable to say whether Santa Cruz County was poised for particularly low turnout. The June 2022 primary drew 47.1% of registered voters to the polls; the general brought out 63.6%. In both elections, more than 91% ballots were cast by mail. 

5. Might we see an outright winner in the District 2 and District 5 county supervisor races?

With five candidates running for the District 2 county supervisor seat, and four in the race to represent District 5, it is mathematically improbable that any one candidate will get more than 50% of the vote in their race, the threshold required for an outright victory in the primary. Without any candidate receiving a majority of the votes, the top two vote-getters would face off in the November general election.

However, mathematical probabilities do not take candidate momentum and connection with voters into account. Might we see an outright winner for one of these seats in March? In each race, two candidates have risen above in terms of campaign donations. In District 2, it has been Kim De Serpa and Capitola Mayor Kristen Brown; in District 5, Monica Martinez and Christopher Bradford have separated themselves from the other two challengers, with Martinez outraising Bradford 5 to 1. 

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