Vol. VI, No. 1,356
—The East Bay will have to wait at least a few more days to learn the identity of its next member of Congress.
State Sen. Aisha Wahab leads BART Board Director Melissa Hernandez by two percentage points in the contentious special election to replace disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell in the 14th Congressional District.
Wahab leads Hernandez, 51 percent to 49 percent, after the Alameda County Registrar of Voters released two tranches of results Tuesday night.
More than 65,000 ballots have been counted in the Hayward, Fremont and Tri-Valley district, amounting to roughly 60 percent of all ballots cast.
The next scheduled results update is Friday, although the new regime at the Registrar’s Office showed a willingness during the June primary to release updated numbers earlier than promised.
The early results are unexpectedly close, but not entirely surprising after an unprecedented $6 million of Super PAC money flooded the district over the past month, overwhelmingly benefiting Hernandez and opposing Wahab.
Tuesday’s numbers suggest the negative campaigning worked, at least among the earliest ballots, which are typically cast by more conservative and moderate voters. The assumption going forward is that progressive voters who returned their ballots later could favor Wahab and potentially extend her lead.
That would be a stark contrast to the two June primaries in this race, when Wahab posted dominating victories of more than 20 percentage points over Hernandez in much larger fields of candidates.
The early returns indicate Hernandez successfully cobbled together a coalition of moderate and Republican voters. She also appeared to make inroads in Fremont, according to initial electoral maps, while Wahab continued to show surprising strength in the Livermore area — Hernandez’s political backyard.
Unlike the pair of June primaries, Tuesday’s special election comes with an immediate prize: a seat in Congress through the end of the year and the advantage of incumbency heading into the Nov. 3 general election rematch for a full two-year term.
Given the potentially narrow margin of victory for either candidate, Tuesday’s early results also point to a larger takeaway:
The increasingly negative and hostile campaign of the past month — fueled by millions of dollars in special-interest spending — is almost certain to continue through November.
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