Election notebook: Latest update doesn't change leaders in races
By THE BAKERSFIELD CALIFORNIAN
The Kern County Elections Division posted updated vote counts Monday from the Nov. 6 election, though the results don't appear to change who is leading in races in Kern County and Bakersfield.
Bakersfield Planning Commissioner Elliott Kirschenmann was still lagging behind local restaurant owner Terry Maxwell in the Ward 2 Bakersfield City Council race, with 41.8 percent of the vote compared to Maxwell's 46 percent. Just 424 votes separated the two, a smidgen of a change from the 387-vote difference between the two men according to counts on Nov. 19, the previous update.
Bakersfield city administrators have taken a cautious tack. City Manager Alan Tandy said last week that the race is still too close to call, and city council members have made no mention, at least publically, of who the next Ward 2 council member will be.
Efforts to reach Kirschenmann Tuesday weren't successful.
Councilwoman Sue Benham has represented Ward 2 since 2000 but decided not to run for a fourth term.
The third candidate in the race, David Mensch, had 11.4 percent of the vote, according to Monday's update.
The latest results in other races included:
* 23rd Congressional District seat: 75.1 percent for Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy, 24.9 percent for no-party affiliation Terry Phillips
* 32nd state Assembly seat: 61.3 percent for Democrat Rudy Salas, 38.7 percent for Republican Pedro Rios
* 1st District Kern County Supervisor: 58.9 percent for Mick Gleason, 40.7 percent for Roy Ashburn
Kern County Elections Chief Karen Rhea said there are about 3,000 provisional ballots left to process, but not all of them may count. Voters cast provisional ballots when there's a question of their eligibility to vote. All mail-in ballots have been counted, she said. Elections workers plan to finish processing all the ballots by Friday, Rhea said.
Most CommentedMost Popular
The family of David Silva announced Friday it has filed its long-expected federal civil rights claims against the Kern County Sheriff’s Office, six sheriff’s deputies and a sergeant, two California Highway Patrol officers, the county and the state alleging excessive police force killed him.
SACRAMENTO -- The California High-Speed Rail Authority won approval Thursday from a federal railroad oversight board to start construction this summer on the first leg of what would be the nation's first bullet train.
He’s Dr. Merle Haggard now. The bad-boy hero of the rebel strain of music that put Bakersfield on America’s cultural map half a century ago did something Friday he hadn’t done since he was 9: He sat still in school.
The Panama-Buena Vista Union School District Tuesday night unanimously approved a contract of employment to hire Kevin Silberberg as its new superintendent.
A Bakersfield attorney’s rocky marriage, marked by a divorce suit and a history of loud, public arguments, reportedly erupted into violence early Wednesday morning when police say he turned a gun on his wife and fired.
They don't look any more like millionaires in person than they do on television's A&E Network, but Hoffmann Hospice's bet on the cast of the reality show "Duck Dynasty" paid off Sunday.
A woman found dead in a southeast Bakersfield garage Tuesday was identified Friday as 18-year-old Mia Ramirez of Bakersfield.
After a search that lasted much of Tuesday afternoon, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man on suspicion of homicide in connection with the discovery of a woman’s body in a southeast Bakersfield garage.