Elections in San Francisco don’t end on Election Night, and while progressives are celebrating, there were still 78,000 more votes to count as of this morning. That will end up being about a third of the total number of votes cast.
Most of those are Election-Day absentees – vote-by-mail ballots that were delivered to a polling place or to city hall on Election Day, or were put in the mail that day and will still count. Some 20,000 are provisional ballots, according to the Department of Elections; I would guess from the calls I’ve been getting that a lot of those were No Party Preference voters who had recently registered as Democrats or NPPs who wanted to vote for Sanders.
The department will release results every day at 4pm until all the votes are counted. The first batch were released this afternoon.
Since Election-Day absentees generally tend to break about the same way as Election Day votes, we’re not seeing any dramatic changes. Kim and Wiener are still within two percentage points, a big boost for Kim. And the Reform Slate will still have at least 14 seats on the Democratic County Central Committee, and possibly 15.
On the east side of town, where there are 14 seats, the Reform Slate won 11. If the numbers change a little, the people in 15th and 16th place are both members of that slate, Alysabeth Alexander and Jon Golinger. So that’s safe.
On the west side, the progressives won three solid seats that won’t change; right now Rachel Norton is hanging on to the final slot, but progressive Leah LaCroix is only 100 votes or so behind, and if she moves up the progressives would have four in that district, bringing the total to 15.
There are 31 members of the committee, 24 elected seats and seven “ex officios,” superdelegates so to speak, including all of the Democrats who hold statewide or national elected office from SF.
To control the party, the Reform Slate will need a couple of those folks (possibly state Sen. Mark Leno and Assemblymember Phil Ting) to vote with them for a new party chair. The conservative real-estate slate would need virtually all of the ex-officios. You think there are phone calls being made today?
A few noteworthy results that won’t change: Josh Arce, an appointed incumbent on the committee, raised some $70,000 for the race, and came in 3,000 votes short of winning a seat. That’s a setback for his chances in the District 9 supervisorial race.
Same pattern in District 1: Marjan Philhour spent tens of thousands of dollars and finished out of the money; Sandy Fewer, her opponent for supervisor, came in fourth, behind only Angela Alioto, Norman Yee and Eric Mar and ahead of Mark Farrell. That positions her pretty well in the supe race.
Tom Ammiano spent virtually no money, and came in second on the east side, with 32,000 votes, a reminder that he’s the most popular politician in town.
We will see how the remaining ballots shake out, but Kim – in an upset and a sign of how effective her GOTV effort was – clearly beat Wiener on Election Day. She went from nine points behind in the early absentees to less than two points behind by the end of the night.
Of course, this is only Round One; Wiener and Kim will face off again in November. But the momentum – and fundraising advantages – she will get from this strong showing are significant. And turnout will be even higher in the fall.
