Also serving the communities of De Luz, Rainbow, Camp Pendleton, Pala and Pauma
A Democratic majority is locked in for the San Diego County Board of Supervisors after the Nov. 3 election, but it still remains to be seen which of two Republicans running in one supervisorial district will claim victory.
Currently, Republicans have a 4-1 majority on the technically nonpartisan Board of Supervisors, but one seat in the District 1 supervisorial district was already guaranteed to flip to the Democrats in 2020, with no Republicans on the ballot after the primary.
Nora Vargas won that seat in November, beating state Sen. Ben Hueso by 13 points.
The question mark was the supervisorial District 3 seat, where incumbent Republican Kristin Gaspar was facing Democratic challenger Terra Lawson-Remer, an attorney and UC San Diego professor. Lawson-Remer was ultimately able to top her opponent by about a 60%-40% margin.
So control of the Board of Supervisors is not at stake in District 2, which covers much of East County, including El Cajon, La Mesa, Lemon Grove, Poway and Santee, the unincorporated communities of Alpine, Campo, Julian, Ramona, Rancho San Diego and Spring Valley, as well as portions of the city of San Diego.
But while the outcome of the race may be low-stakes for most of the county, it’s certainly a nail biter for Poway Mayor Steve Vaus and former state legislator Joel Anderson – nearly a month after the election at press time, a winner still has not been declared.
Vaus led by a little more than 1,200 votes on election night, which would have been a relatively narrow margin even if it had stayed that way. But it did not; Anderson ate into Vaus’ lead and eventually overtook him, holding an incredibly narrow lead of 284 votes before Nov. 25.
After the latest update (as of press time) from the San Diego County Registrar of Voters on Nov. 25, Vaus did chip away at Anderson’s lead – by just one vote. Anderson now leads Vaus by 283 votes, or 145,044-144,761 (50.5%-49.95%).
There are about 7,000 ballots remaining to be counted in San Diego County, but it’s not known how many of those are in supervisorial District 2, according to Registrar of Voters Michael Vu.
The next update will be announced after 5 p.m. Dec. 1, after press time.
Whoever the final winner turns out to be will succeed Supervisor Dianne Jacob, who could not run for re-election because of term limits and was first elected in 1992.
All of the newly-elected supervisors, including whoever the ultimate victor is in District 2, will take office Jan. 4.
Will Fritz can be reached by email at [email protected].
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