The roller-coaster District 3 city council race took another sharp turn Friday, with incumbent Cassandra Abram cutting into challenger Ryan Taylor’s slim lead and leaving the candidates just 22 votes apart.
Abram led by 100 votes at press time on election night, then saw that lead dwindle to 31 votes after an update from Stanislaus County Registrar of Voters Donna Linder. Another update showed the lead had dipped to 28 votes before Taylor surged ahead by 82.
The most recent update, which accounted for another 1,324 ballots being processed, showed Abram garnering 52.3 percent of this recent batch of votes to trim Taylor’s lead by 60.
According to Linder’s office, there remains a little more than 5,000 ballots to be processed countywide. While it’s not known from where in the county those ballots originate, population figures suggest that about 13 percent – some 660 – would be from Turlock, a city divided into four council districts. The math also suggests that one-quarter of those 660 ballots would be from District 3 and another quarter from District 1, where incumbent Kevin Bixel has an insurmountable 851-vote cushion (Districts 2 and 4 are not up for reelection this cycle).
Additionally, there remains 56 ballots yet to be cured – corrected for minor errors – in District 3. Ballot cures must be completed by Nov. 25.
All told, there could be some 220 ballots outstanding in District 3. Abram would need increase her speed down the home stretch and grab about 55 percent of those remaining ballots to overtake Taylor.
“I just want to make sure that everyone who intended to vote gets to have a say in who their district representative is,” said Abram. “So, I’m going to do everything I can to help people cure their ballots and make sure their voice is heard.”
With nearly total 6,000 votes already counted in this race, Taylor has garnered 50.2 percent to Abram’s 49.8.
The next update is scheduled for Monday.
In Turlock’s mayoral race, incumbent Amy Bublak continues to hold challengers Jim Reape and Kelley Coelho at bay.
With an additional 6,417 votes processed since the previous update, Bublak received 2,853 went into Bublak’s column and 2,850 into Reape’s – essentially a push – while Coelho got 714.
The mayor’s overall lead now sits at 544 votes. Again, with statistics indicating there are a combined 800 ballots and cures still to be processed in the mayoral race, Reape would need to capture about 90 percent (given that Coelho figures to siphon off about 10 percent of the 800) – a statistical miracle.
In the District 4 state senate race, Democrat Jaron Brandon, a Tuolumne County supervisor, has conceded to Republican foe Alexandra Duarte.
“Today, I’m conceding this race for state senate,” Brandon said. “I congratulate Alexandra Duarte on her victory.”
Duarte congratulated Brandon on a hard-fought campaign and thanked him for his service to Tuolumne County, and added, “In a tough year for Republicans, we defied the trend. We won by taking conservative values into every community in this district, by listening to people who’d been ignored for years and by telling them the truth: they deserve better than what Sacramento gives them … I’m ready to get to work.”
