Election Update: Scales-Preston on Path to Win Supervisor's Race; Measure O Hits 55% Threshold for Passage

Pittsburg Council Member extends lead in race to represent Martinez and other waterfront communities on Board of Supervisors as more vote-by-mail ballots are counted.

Shanelle Scales-Preston appears poised to win the hotly contested race for Contra Costa County District 5 supervisor after extending her narrow Election Night lead with the counting of more ballots.

Based on the latest update from the county Elections Office on Friday afternoon, Scales-Preston, a Pittsburg City Council member, now holds a 1,843-vote lead (51.4% to 48.6%) over Antioch Council Member Mike Barbanica in the race to succeed Federal Glover on the Board of Supervisors. That is a significant improvement over the 67-vote margin she held in the Election Night vote and mirrors the trend from the March primary, when she picked up the lion’s share of the late-counted mail-in votes.

The district encompasses much of the Contra Costa County waterfront, from Antioch through Martinez to Hercules, and Martinez was seen as a key battleground during the race, with both candidates spending a significant amount of time in the city trying to sway voters. Scales-Preston had the backing of all five members of the Martinez City Council, while Barbanica was backed by the pro-open space political action committee Thousand Friends of Martinez; Scales-Preston had run afoul of some Thousand Friends’ leadership over a housing development vote she took on the Pittsburg City Council.

Scales-Preston was also the target of hundreds of thousands of dollars in attack ads from a law enforcement-backed political action committee that tried to paint her as soft on crime, often with outlandish or outright false mailers. One echoed the infamous Willie Horton ad of the 1988 presidential campaign with a mug shot and rap sheet of a Latino criminal who was a repeat offender after being paroled, despite the fact that as a City Council member, Scales-Preston has no role in making arrests or prosecuting crimes. Scales-Preston ran on taking a balanced approach to crime prevention, saying she supported investing in law enforcement resources where appropriate while also addressing the root causes of crime, also advocating for building positive relationships between police and youths. She also said she supported Proposition 36, which state voters overwhelmingly approved to increase penalties for certain theft and drug crimes.

The PAC, sponsored by the Contra Costa Deputy Sheriffs Association, also claimed in a mailer that Pittsburg had no major grocery stores. In fact, it has multiple ones.

On the other side of the coin, a pro-Scales-Preston PAC funded largely by local labor unions attacked Barbanica, a retired Pittsburg police lieutenant, hard on his changing voter-registration status over the years and relatively recent move to the Democratic Party, as well as crime problems and a police racism scandal in his hometown of Antioch.

While the race remains too close to call until more ballots are counted, Scales-Preston now looks like the heavy favorite to prevail.

In other election count updates:

• Measure O, the Martinez Unified School District construction bond measure, is now passing by the slimmest of margins. It requires 55% of the yes vote for passage, and stood at 55.13% on Friday. It had only 53.5% in the Election Night count, so if the current trend holds with late ballots, it should prevail — a big win for the school district after narrowly failing on a similar bond two years ago. Its passage would pave the way for multiple upgrades at Alhambra High School and Martinez Junior High, as well the rebuilding and relocation of the Martinez adult school, possibly opening its current space off Alhambra Avenue for workforce housing development.

• Logan Campbell modestly increased his lead over incumbent Carlos Melendez in the race for the MUSD Board of Trustees Area 1 seat. He now leads by 117 votes, up from 90 on Election Night. While the race remains too close to call, Campbell is clearly in the driver’s seat.

• Greg Young continues to hold a large lead (449 votes) over Dylan Radke in the race for the Martinez City Council District 2 seat. This race can be safely called for Young. The same is true in the Contra Costa County Board of Education Area 3 race, where current MUSD trustee Yazmin Llamas holds an insurmountable lead (16,520 votes) over Vicki Gordon.

The latest results from through the county can be found at the following link: https://www.contracostavote.gov/wp-content/uploads/ElectionSummaryReportRPT-90.pdf