Election Night Results: Tight Race for Mayor, One Council Seat

As expected, we likely won't know for days or weeks who our next mayor will be.

Good morning! Did you all get as little sleep last night as I did?

The results (at least some of them) are in and, as expected, we’re looking at a tight race for mayor, with an unknown number of late-arriving mail-in ballots still to be counted. The race for the District 4 council seat between Debbie McKillop and Ben Therriault remains too close to call (as was the case for this seat four years ago when McKillop ultimately squeaked out a narrow victory). Jay Howard is headed to victory for the District 4 seat. You can see the results and continue to follow them in the coming days/weeks here.

Here’s a rundown of where things currently stand.

Mayor

This is down to a three-way race between longtime council incumbent Lara DeLaney, first-term councilwoman Brianne Zorn and Planning Commissioner Sean Trambley. DeLaney currently leads Zorn by 194 votes. Trambley is 79 votes behind Zorn. The interesting storyline so far is that DeLaney and Zorn were heavily outspent by candidates (and independent groups backing candidates) that are currently behind them (in some cases far behind them). The tens of thousands of dollars spent by developer-related interests backing Mike Menesini seem to have gone down the drain. Trambley, currently sitting in third, raised over $50,000 in his campaign, far outpacing everyone else; will be interesting to see if that money pays off with the late-arriving ballots.

City Council

The impact of the money gap in the council races, on the other hand, was more mixed.

District 1

Jay Howard, who raised nearly $30,000 during the campaign compared with less than $3,000 for Nakenya Allen, is currently leading by 301 votes. It’s safe to say this race will go to Howard.

District 4

As was the case four years ago, Debbie McKillop is in a tight race to hold onto her seat. Despite massively outspending Therriault, her lead is currently only 63 votes. Four years ago, the late-counted votes swung decisively in McKillop’s favor; we’ll have to wait and see if that happens again.

School Board

Trustee Area 3

In the only contested Martinez Unified School District Board of Trustees election, Yazmin Llamas currently holds a comfortable 130-vote lead in a race with a very small electorate. There would need to be a major shift in the trend of the late-arriving ballots for LeBoeuf to make up the difference, but we’ll have to wait and see. Llamas had the money advantage in this race and some big-name endorsements (including state schools chief Tony Thurmond), but LeBoeuf had the backing of the Martinez teachers union, outgoing incumbent Deidre Siguenza and Mayor Rob Schroder.

Measure K

The MUSD bond measure is currently in trouble as it needs 55% support to pass and is currently stuck around 50%. In past elections, late-counted votes have tended to go in favor of property tax measures like this, but, not to sound like a broken record, we’ll have to see if it can make up five percentage points (literally 1 vote currently separates the No and Yes tallies).

Other Races

Kristin Braun Connelly, an Acalanes Unified School District board member, is on her way to defeating former MUSD and Contra Costa College District board trustee Vicki Gordon to become the county’s next clerk-recorder/elections chief. This is not a surprise, as Braun Connelly was the top vote-getter in the June primary.

If you live in the part of Martinez covered by the Mt. Diablo school district, Debra Mason and Cherise Marie Khaund both easily won re-election.

Based on recent history, we’ll probably get a batch of fresh results from the elections office later in the week, most likely Friday afternoon. I’ll provide an update when there’s more results/trends to report. In the meantime, thanks for reading and supporting this newsletter throughout the election season!