Quick Take
Friday’s vote count is likely to provide a better picture of where Santa Cruz City Council candidates will end up in their races for office. As they eagerly await that round of results, many remained hopeful that the next round will reaffirm their current standing — or shift things in their favor.
Super Tuesday saw the Santa Cruz County Clerk’s office count 46,679 total votes. Although there are still plenty of primary election ballots to be counted, what we currently know might be a good indicator for how most, if not all, local races will finish.
There will not be another vote tally until Friday at 4 p.m., and County Clerk Tricia Webber said that round will include somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 to 15,000 votes. She also said that, in total, the remaining ballots to be counted include:
- 22,500 vote-by-mail ballots.
- 700 same day registration ballots.
- 50 provisional ballots.
- 450 damaged ballots.
There are also a number of ballots to be counted that are not included in the figures above. Those are vote-by-mail ballots that need to have a signature cured, vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by Tuesday that the county clerk’s office receives by next Tuesday, and any ballots that were dropped off in another county.
There are about 23,700 ballots left to count, which means that about 70,379 ballots were cast altogether. With 169,243 registered voters in Santa Cruz County, that would put the primary election turnout at about 41.58% — higher than Webber’s initial estimate of high 20% to low 30% turnout.
Currently in the Santa Cruz City Council District 1 race, Gabriela Trigueiro leads David Tannaci by 137 votes. Trigueiro has received 52.7% of the votes cast, while Tannaci has garnered 46.5% of votes cast.
Tannaci said Wednesday that he has not looked at the vote totals yet, and plans to keep it that way until the final results. He added that he believes his team ran an “excellent campaign” and that it will show in the final results. He thanked his supporters for their engagement.
“Every group who asked to meet, every questionnaire and every neighbor or community member: Your voices were brought forward and raised up our city and district which we love so much,” he said in a statement. “Your participation is critical to this process and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to run on your behalf.”
District 2 incumbent Sonja Brunner leads Hector Marin by a large margin. Brunner has received 1,143 votes, or 59.7% of votes counted, compared to 749 votes, or 39.1%, for Marin. Neither candidate responded to Lookout’s request for comment.
District 3 candidate Joy Schendledecker trails incumbent Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson by a substantial margin as well — Schendledecker has received 25.6% of votes cast to Kalantari-Johnson’s 73.3%. Schendledecker said Wednesday she expects the coming vote counts to be more in her favor, hopefully narrowing the “gulf” between the two candidates. She also added that she is disappointed in the generally low turnout, and believes that some voters could still be confused by Santa Cruz’s new district elections.
“It goes to show that we need more voter education and participatory democracy,” said Schendledecker. “The city has tried to keep up communication with the community, and it’s great that the city manager has a weekly newsletter now, but most people don’t see those things.”
Kalantari-Johnson said she’s “feeling pretty good,” adding that she’s grateful for the support from voters, her campaign team and her family. While same-day registrants are often students, Kalantari-Johnson said, she does not anticipate a large enough number of them to be District 3 voters who could drastically change the outcome of the race.
A wave of progressive votes, many of which were counted relatively late in the process, shifted the trajectory of Kalantari-Johnson’s 2022 county supervisor race, in which she saw an early lead over Justin Cummings steadily erode into a loss.
“The results will change, but I’m feeling hopeful that this trend will continue,” she said.
The District 5 race is another that currently has a lot of distance between the two candidates. While only 836 votes have been counted so far, Susie O’Hara is beating Joe Thompson by 267. O’Hara has received 66.5% of the vote and Thompson has received 32.5%.
O’Hara said the early returns have her feeling “hopeful and optimistic,” but agreed that many UC Santa Cruz students end up as same-day registrants — a group that will be heavily represented in Friday’s vote tally. That could strongly influence the outcome of the District 5 race.
“Election results are very dynamic, and the votes at the college are very important in representing the students’ feelings and passions,” she said Wednesday, adding that she is looking forward to Friday’s tally, which will bring more clarity to the race’s outcome.
Bodie Shargel, Thompson’s campaign manager, admitted that the campaign hoped for a more even split in early voting from District 5, but also said he believes that Friday’s tally and subsequent rounds of vote counts will be the determining factor in how close the race gets. He said the campaign is banking on “Plan B,” which is to win the student vote decisively enough to make up for the large gap it’s currently facing.
“So far it’s not what we were hoping for, but we haven’t seen anything to make us feel defeated,” he said.
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