Lee wins Grover Beach mayor’s race with Bright, Miller and Robert ahead for council
With the final unofficial round of election results in, Jeff Lee won re-election as mayor of Grover Beach, while Karen Bright, Anna Miller and Robert Robert appearing to secure seats on the City Council.
Final election results could vary as more mail-in and provisional ballots are counted in the coming days.
Grover Beach voters cast their votes to decide who will lead their city in one of the largest races in San Luis Obispo County.
Incumbent Mayor Jeff Lee defended his seat against challenger Elizabeth Doukas, winning by more than 40 points, 70.3% to 29.6%.
“It feels good,” Lee told The Tribune Tuesday night. “I’m proud of the positive campaign that we ran, and I look forward to continuing to serve the people of Grover Beach.”
Lee said his priorities moving forward were to fix the streets, support economic recovery and support police, fire and emergency services.
Meanwhile, eight people ran for three open spots on the City Council. Incumbent Councilwoman Karen Bright ran against Joseph Homes, Will Bruce, Anna Miller and Daniel Rushing for one of the two open four-year seats on the council, while David Duringer, Robert Robert and write-in candidate Kara Ramirez ran to replace Barbara Nicolls, who resigned from the council partway through her term earlier this year.
Another council candidate, Fred Buenrostro, Jr. qualified for the ballot but dropped out of the race ahead of the election.
Depending upon how the final results shake out, Grover Beach’s five-person council has at least two new faces on it following this election.
For the four-year seats, Bright won a new term with 31% of the vote, followed by newcomer Miller at 23.3% for the second seat. They were followed by Bruce (16.9%), Rushing (15.1%) and Holmes (13.7%).
Miller said she was “optimistic about a potential win and thankful for the support of my community.”
Bright noted that campaigning was very different this year due to COVID restrictions, so she was “unsure how things would go.”
“I must say the Grover Beach voters never fail to amaze me and remind me why I love this city,” she said.
For the two-year seat, Robert held down a lead with 34.2% of the vote, followed by Duringer (32.5%) and Ramirez (0.8%).
Buenrostro, who told The Tribune he withdrew from the race early in September, had 32.5% of the vote.
About 4,752 votes were counted from Grover Beach, about 58.6% voter turnout.
This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 8:27 PM.
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