Is The Election Over Yet?

In Which: California tries to keep slavery, The Real Estate lobby manages painfully big victories, and Local races have startling initial results.

It Ain’t Over 'Til It’s Over

Elections, at the State and local level, are far from over. With the transition to mail-in ballots, there’s a good chance that the tallies won’t be finalized until next week. To give you an idea of how far we have to go, the Associated Press is estimating about 50% of the votes have been counted statewide. Locally, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters has turnout at 24%—as of the time of this writing—when turnout is expected to be closer to 70%.

On top of that, the Registrar makes everyone’s lives more stressful by taking Wednesday off—though they did stay up counting votes until 1am on Election night—and won’t have an update until end-of-day Thursday. They’re also slowed down by a recent mandate from the Board of Supervisors to release Cast Voter Record Reports with every update, which is going to incentivize the chronically understaffed department to release updates less frequently.

All of this is a long way of saying that things are going to change. There is very little that is certain about the races—with a few exceptions—so don’t email me in three days saying I’m wrong. If you want up-to-the-minute results, hit up the Registrar of Voters with the button below.

The Pendulum Swings On Propositions

After the Movement for Black Lives in 2020 and the continued tailwinds of 2022, the pendulum of Public Opinion is swinging back. Wealthy interests sunk millions into ballot measures that would have damaged their bottom lines, scaremongering about crime pushed us backward, and apparently millions of people are okay with slavery.

Good News

Prop 2 - Passing

This means a more money for school renovations—especially helpful as HUSD is planning to move Bret Harte Middle School—and other facilities needs.

Prop 3 - Passing

We also undid a mistake from the early 2000’s that had defined marriage as only between a man and a woman—big win for our LGBTQIA+ neighbors, if only on principle. But with the new administration, you can never be too careful.

Prop 4 - Passing

The Natural Resources bond passed, so we’ll have a pot of money for parks and water resources. Most of them will probably go to bigger forested parks throughout the state. But since we get our water from the Hech Hechy Reservoir through the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, those forests feed our water supply.

Prop 35 - Passing

Medi-Cal will continue to get funding from a tax on healthcare service providers that providers who treat low-income patients—like St. Rose—keep getting the money they need to stay open.

The Worrying News

These Props are still close enough that the outcome could change—older, more conservative voters tend to vote early, while younger and more progressive voters tend to vote later—but the initial results tell a disheartening story.

Prop 5 - Leaning No

Apparently people don’t like the idea of affordable housing! This Prop would lower the threshold to pass an affordable housing bond from 60% to 50%. But the Real Estate Lobby doesn’t like the idea of housing being cheaper, so they spent big to defeat it—$30,000,000 big. So it’ll be harder for Hayward to pass a bond to fund affordable housing in the future.

Prop 6 - Leaning No

This one, I honestly don’t understand. There was no formal opposition. All it’s asking is to remove Slavery from the State Constitution. And over 5,000,000 people saw “Eliminate Slavery” and voted No. I can’t even.

Prop 32 - Leaning No

This would raise the minimum wage, basically giving everyone a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). There’s plenty of armchair economists who think giving people more money will hurt the economy, when it is actually the opposite. This is one of the closest ones, if that makes you feel better. If it passes, it’ll raise the minimum wage in Hayward to $18 from the current max of $17.36

Prop 34 - Leaning Yes

This misleading proposition was put forward by the Real Estate Lobby to try to stop the AIDS Foundation from sponsoring any future propositions to help renters. Unfortunately they’re winning, having spent $44,000,000 on it. Fewer chances to stabilize rents or get affordable housing in Hayward if it doesn’t flip.

The Bad News

These last two races are almost certainly settled by big margins. Unsurprisingly, they’re also ones that had huge support from corporate interests. There’s not much chance these are going to flip, so let’s see what we’ve lost.

Prop 33 - No

This was the latest attempt to repeal Cost-Hawkins in California allowing expanded rent control. If you live in a detached home, your landlord can raise the rents as much as they want. If you live in an apartment built after 1995, your rent is free game. If your older apartment has had more than $2,000 worth of renovations, your rent can’t be held back. Thankfully Hayward has rent stabilization, but if inflation rises above 3%, so can your rent.

The Real Estate Lobby spent $124,660,000 fighting against this because high housing and rental prices benefit them massively. There were misleading ads everywhere and they clearly paid off. This will lead to more homelessness, more working class families leaving, and possibly increased gentrification.

Prop 36 - Yes

The people who materially benefit from incarceration are having a field day over this one. With the passage of Prop 36, several petty theft and minor drug offenses will be reclassified as Felonies. This will not only push more people into the prison system—and slavery, I guess!—but it will also deprive existing preventive programs of money that was saved by not incarcerating people for petty crimes.

Our own Progressive Lite® Senator Wahab was a big proponent of this Prop, having leaned heavily toward police since her election to the Senate. Big retailers spent $16,000,000 in support of this plan. Now more people will go to jail and our Statewide deficit will increase while preventive programs fold from lack of funds. Great job.

No Surprises For The Big Races

President

Kamala Harris has taken about 3/4 of the votes for the County. We did our part.

Senator

Adam Schiff took a similar lead over Steve Garvey for the Senate—both partial and full terms.

District 14 Representative

Eric Swalwell has a commanding lead of over 60% on his Republican challenger, despite spending most of his time in other states campaigning for other people.

State Assembly District 20

Liz Ortega has almost 70% of the vote over her Republican challenger.

Local Races Are Full Of Surprises

Almost everything else you’ve read so far will be covered in more detail by someone else who knows a lot more about them than me. But the local races are still very much in flux and also saw some unexpected early results.

AC Transit

The new AC Transit Board seat that covers Hayward and Newark appears, at least at this point, to have been dominated by A. Curtis Silva—a candidate who seems to have run no campaign whatsoever beyond listing “Transit Engineer” as his occupation. Currently holding over half of the votes, Silva seems the easy favorite.

Jesse Gunn, the Tennyson teacher who secured strong union endorsements and aligned himself closely with Bruckner-Carrillo, is currently a distant second at 29% of the votes. It’s possible that, if the trend holds, the Establishment may have split the vote by backing Shonda Goward. It may also be an indication of how little endorsements matter in this particular race—how many people talk about AC Transit in Hayward?

But this race, like all the other local races, has a long way to go before it’s settled.

HARD

The three incumbents for HARD are currently holding onto their seats, though Luis Reynoso is only ~1,000 votes behind Peter Rosen. But Rosen ran a decent ground campaign—he came to HARD during one of their rare elections in 2020—so there’s a good chance he’ll continue pulling ahead.

Reynoso is running entirely on name recognition, having put himself on the ballot for 5 different races simultaneously.

HUSD

The early results have given watchers a fright. Luis Reynoso has the second-highest votes so far, currently in the top 3 with Peter Bufete and Sara Prada. Dark horse candidate Sophia Jauregui is in 4th and Austin Bruckner-Carrillo in 5th. Calyn Kelly is next, with Tom Wong bringing up the rear.

The early results suggest two things: conservatives vote early and endorsements and money don’t mean as much in this race. Jauregui’s partnership with Araceli Orozio, who made a strong showing in 2022 without a campaign committee, is showing dividends from her early vote count. Reynoso is likely benefitting from the strong following he had while in office.

Meanwhile there’s a chance that Establishment support of Kelly, far from peeling votes from Sara Prada as they hoped, may have split the vote between Kelly and Bruckner-Carrillo. It would also cast doubt on Bruckner-Carrillo’s strategy, which focused on endorsements, fundraising, and being not-Joe Ramos.

However, the counting is far from over. There is only a 1,300 vote difference between Bruckner-Carrillo and Bufete, who has the most votes so far at 7,330. But the lowest vote-getter in 2022 was Tom Wong at 10,019. With so many votes left to tally, nobody should be counted out yet.

City Council

So far, the four incumbents are leading the pack, but Tom Ferreira is only 60 votes behind Dan Goldstein. Andrews, Bonilla, and Zermeño all put some effort into getting votes—though Zermeño has allegedly been absent from the Democratic Party canvassing, despite dropping off his own literature.

Goldstein, however, has been the weak link for some time. He was the lowest fundraiser and seemed less interested in campaigning than his colleagues. During the last Downtown Street Fair, while his colleagues were all at a table on B Street shaking hands and campaigning, Goldstein was representing his Christian Motorcycle Club on Main hidden behind a fire engine.

Ferreira has already gotten more votes than he did in 2022—over 1,500 more—despite not bothering with a campaign committee. He could be relying on connections he’s made through the Hayward Concerned Citizens Nextdoor group and other online forums like Facebook. He was also seen rubbing shoulders with Planning Commissioner Ron Meyers—Meyers is also a part of the Hayward Concerned Citizens and has been taking actions that may hint at a future Council run.

If Ferreira manages to pull ahead, it could be the realization of a dream he’s had since at least 2020. He would also be an incumbent in District 3, which doesn’t currently have a representative.

So Where Are We?

We’re in the waiting room, unfortunately. National races have mostly been called, but the local races are going to take a while before they settle down. The huge reliance on mail-in voting—while incredibly convenient—delays the results. That’s a trade-off that I’m okay with, though.

Expect another update on Tuesday, when more results are in. And if you want to keep an eye on it yourself, check out the County Election Results website in the button above.