Bruce Gibson loses all of his lead as SLO County’s District 2 supervisor race tightens
Suddenly, the District 2 Board of Supervisors race may be heading to the November general election.
According to another ballot count update on Friday, Bruce Gibson lost his lead in his San Luis Obispo County supervisor’s race, giving up a 526-vote advantage in one fell swoop.
As of Friday, he now holds an even 50% of the vote in his district, which is not enough to win the seat outright in this election. He needs to pick up one vote more than 50% in the primary, or he will face off against the second-place vote-getter in November.
The Clerk-Recorder’s Office tallied 10,328 ballots on Friday, bringing the total counted so far to 63,898, or roughly 72% of the total cast.
Clerk-Recorder Elaina Cano said counting would resume at 9 a.m. Wednesday, with the next release likely that evening. In a news release Friday, she also said the elections office would begin a 1% manual tally on June 20, as required by law, to verify the accuracy of the automated count.
Here’s where the races stand now:
Bruce Gibson’s lead evaporates in District 2
On election night, District 2 incumbent Gibson held a 445-vote lead over his three challengers, Geoff Auslen, Bruce Jones and John Whitworth, and then widened it to 526 votes as of Tuesday.
On Friday, his advantage disappeared by exactly that margin — leaving him with precisely half of the vote tallied so far — and under the threshold to end the race here.
If Friday’s trend holds, District 2 would become a battle of the Bruces in November, with challenger Jones advancing as the No. 2 vote-getter. He holds that spot with 18.2% of the vote, followed by Geoff Auslen at 17.1%, and John Whitworth at 14.7%.
In raw votes, Jones holds a 153-vote lead over Auslen in third place.
But, there are still likely thousands of votes to be counted in this race.
All along, Gibson said that he expected the District 2 contest to carry over into the general election.
“Our expectation was never that we’d have the final final tonight,” he told The Tribune on election night.
So far, 13,424 ballots have been counted in District 2, bringing voter turnout to 36.5%. This will change as more ballots are released.
Dawn-Ortiz Legg holds strong lead in District 3
The District 3 race looks a bit more decisive. There, incumbent Dawn Ortiz-Legg widened her lead on Friday, adding 653 more votes than her challenger Stacy Korsgaden.
Ortiz-Legg now holds 65% of the vote, Korsgaden followed with 31.7% and Arnold Ruiz is a distant third at 3.3%.
In District 3, 14,139 ballots have been counted so far, with voter turnout hovering at about 36.7%.
Jimmy Paulding leads District 4 race
Jimmy Paulding kicked off election night with a strong lead of 1,594 votes over the incumbent Lynn Compton.
In the last two counts, he had expanded that margin by 238 votes. On Friday, for the first time, Compton took a bigger share, trimming 57 votes off his lead.
Essentially, that made the last two vote releases a wash, because Paulding had a 59-vote advantage in Tuesday’s count.
In the last two releases, 3,640 ballots have been counted in District 4 — Paulding 1,821 to Compton 1,819.
The result is that Paulding maintains his first-place position with about 56% of the vote to Compton’s 44% — a margin of 1,775 votes.
Mathematically, Compton could still defeat Paulding, but she’s running out of ballots to draw from.
The Clerk-Recorder’s Office has processed 15,302 ballots in District 4 as of Friday night. District 4 has the highest voter turnout, which has increased to 38.2%.
What about the other local races?
Incumbent Elaina Cano maintained a strong lead for county clerk-recorder with almost 65% of the vote. James Baugh and Stew Jenkins followed with 19.7% and 15.4% of the vote, respectively.
For the Office 12 County Judgeship, Mike Frye kept his lead with 66.8% of the vote, and Paul Phillips followed with 33.2%.
The race for a partial term on the Morro Bay City Council also looks similar, with Jennifer Ford leading with 58.8% of the vote, and James Costanzo following with 41.2%.
The Oceano fire tax is still on track to fail. The measure needs a two-thirds vote to pass, but 58.5% of voters have supported the measure, and 41.6% voted against it.
This story was originally published June 17, 2022 at 6:09 PM.
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