Jessica Cejnar / Wednesday, March 4, 2020 @ 5:23 p.m. / Elections, Local Government
Lori Cowan Will Face a Run-off Election in November, But The District 2 Supervisor Race Is Still Too Close To Call
Staff at the Del Norte County Elections Office speak with local media on Super Tuesday. Photo: Jessica Cejnar
With a 12-vote margin between two of the three candidates, it’s still too soon to call the Del Norte County District 2 supervisor race.
Incumbent Lori Cowan will face a run-off election in November — something she’s excited about — but whether she’ll face Valerie Starkey or Jim Ramsey has yet to be determined.
“I wouldn’t even guess at this point. I think we all need to wait until Friday,” Cowan told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Wednesday. “I’m looking forward to going forward in November. I’m determined to finish the job I started.”
When the Del Norte County Elections Office released the first results at 8:02 p.m. Tuesday, Cowan was in the lead with 40.58 percent of the vote. Ramsey came in second with 30.81 percent and Starkey, third, with 28.61 percent.
By 9:53 p.m. Starkey and Ramsey’s positions had switched with Starkey having 30 percent of the vote to Ramsey’s 28.87 percent. Cowan remained the front runner with 41.13 percent of the vote, according to the election results.
Like her opponent, Starkey said she felt it was too soon to make a statement on the outcome of the election. She said she has a strategy and a vision for moving forward, but didn’t want to elaborate until a clearer picture emerged of who would challenge Cowan in November.
“It’s still way too close today with just 12 votes separating me and Jim Ramsey,” Starkey said.
Speaking to KFUG News reporter Brayden Hatch when the early results came in Tuesday, Ramsey was optimistic, saying “it’s going to work out however it works out.”
“You’re looking at 748 votes and Lori’s got, oh, about 70 more and I’ve got about 15 or 16 more (than Starkey),” Ramsey told Hatch. “It just depends on how it all sets up.”
Del Norte County Clerk-Recorder Alissia Northrup and her staff had about 794 ballots to process as of Wednesday afternoon. These include vote-by-mail ballots turned in at the polls, provisional ballots and conditional voter registration ballots, she said. Based on the final report Tuesday evening, about 42 percent of the 15,000 registered voters in Del Norte cast a ballot, Northrup said.
Northrup said she hopes to process a “considerable amount” of ballots by the weekend, potentially giving District 2 voters a better idea of who will face Cowan in November.
“You’re looking at a 12-vote difference between Jim Ramsey and Valerie Starkey,” she said. “Twelve votes are not that many.”
Northrup’s office has to process all ballots they receive by Friday that were postmarked on election day.
Meanwhile, though she said Super Tuesday was a test case, Charlotte Svolos carried Del Norte County in the race for California Assembly District 2. Svolos received 54.70 percent of the vote in Del Norte County to incumbent Jim Wood’s 45.3 percent.
Districtwide, however, Wood came out ahead of Svolos with 66.5 percent of the vote to his opponent’s 33.5 percent, according to the California Secretary of State’s office.
Svolos, a special education teacher with Del Norte Unified School District, said one of her primary objectives in challenging Wood was to draw attention to Del Norte County. She said she also felt voters deserve more than one candidate to choose from.
On Tuesday, she told the Outpost that Svolos, who ran as a Republican and was secretary of the Del Norte Republican Central Committee, said she was also eager to see how she did with No Party Preference voters and Democrats.
“You look at the percentage that voted and you look at the percentage of a certain party that voted and then you can see by how much you beat that margin,” Svolos said. “Del Norte’s the only place I ran my ballot statement. Now (I) can decide how I’m going to do that for the general election.”
There were clear winners in the Del Norte County District 1 and District 5 races.
Crescent City Councilor Darrin Short, a battalion chief with Crescent Fire & Rescue, carried the District 1 race, receiving 61.60 percent of the vote on Tuesday, according to election results. His opponent, Del Norte Ambulance general manager John Pritchett, received 38.40 percent of the vote.
Short told the Outpost that he was pleased he and Pritchett ran a friendly campaign.
In District 5, incumbent Bob Berkowitz will serve a second term on the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors, receiving 57.76 percent of the vote. His challenger, Kevin Hendrick, chair of the Del Norte Democratic Central Committee, received 42.24 percent of the vote.
Contributed by KFUG Community News reporter Brayden Hatch.
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