Gibson, Paulding and Ortiz-Legg widen leads in race for SLO County Board of Supervisors
The three candidates aiming to flip the majority on the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors widened their leads after the Clerk-Recorder’s Office released another ballot count update on Tuesday.
In the span of a week, Bruce Gibson, Dawn Ortiz-Legg and Jimmy Paulding each have expanded their raw-vote margins by repeatedly leading each new round of vote releases.
The Clerk-Recorder’s Office counted another 8,044 ballots on Tuesday, bringing the total counted so far to 53,570 — or more than 60% — with about 34,768 ballots still remaining to be tallied, according to county estimates on Tuesday.
With those numbers, the county would come up just shy of a 50% overall turnout.
Elections office workers will resume counting on Friday and release another ballot-count report at about 5 p.m. that day.
Here’s a look at where each race stands.
Bruce Gibson holds lead for District 2
On election night, District 2 incumbent Bruce Gibson held a 445-vote lead over the sum of his three challengers, Geoff Auslen, John Whitworth and Bruce Jones.
On Tuesday, that lead had widened to 526 votes, even though his percentage of the current total has narrowed a bit.
Gibson now leads with 52.6% of the vote, followed by Jones with 17.1%, Auslen with 16.8% and Whitworth with 13.6%.
If Gibson picks up more than 50% of the vote, he will officially win the District 2 seat. If he slips in the polls and garners less than half of the vote, the top two vote-getters will advance to the general election in November.
For that to happen, however, the three other candidates need to reverse the trend and begin taking a larger share of the remaining ballots than Gibson.
With 10,893 ballots counted so far in District 2, voter turnout is at about 29.6% in the district. This could change when more ballots are released.
Dawn Ortiz-Legg on track to win District 3 seat
The same trend is happening in the District 3 race, where Dawn Ortiz-Legg is maintaining a 33-point lead over challenger Stacy Korsgaden.
As of Tuesday, Ortiz-Legg had 65.3% of the vote, followed by Korsgaden’s 31.5%. Arnold Ruiz trailed with 3.2% of the vote.
In raw votes, Ortiz-Legg’s advantage has grown substantially, from 2,619 after election night to 3,809 now.
Voter turnout in District 3 is now at about 31%, with 11,955 ballots counted so far.
Jimmy Paulding leads District 4 race
In the District 4 race, Arroyo Grande City Councilman Jimmy Paulding remains on track to defeat incumbent Lynn Compton.
On election night, Paulding led with 58.3% of the vote. As of Tuesday, that percentage stood at 57.1% to Compton’s 42.9%.
While that may seem like the race is tightening, it’s actually not. Paulding’s rate of gain has slowed, but he’s still gaining.
After election night, he led 5,599 to 4,005, an advantage of 1,594 votes. In the ballots counted since, he leads 1,739 to 1,501, a margin of only 238.
Add them up, however, and his lead is now at 1,832.
As in the other races, Compton can’t chew into that lead until she starts taking a larger share of the remaining vote counts.
As of Tuesday night, 13,229 ballots had been counted in District 4, bringing voter turnout to about 33%.
What about the other SLO County races?
For the county clerk-recorder position, Elaina Cano maintained her massive lead with 66.4% of the vote, followed by challengers James Baugh with 18.3% of the vote and Stew Jenkins with 15.3%.
For the Office 12 SLO County judgeship, Mike Frye led with 66.8% of the vote, ahead of challenger Paul Phillips with 33.1%.
The matchup in the race for a partial-term on Morro Bay City Council remains unchanged. As of Tuesday, Jennifer Ford held on to her lead with 59.7% of the vote, while James Costanzo followed with 40.4%.
Oceano’s fire tax requires a two-thirds vote to pass, and it hasn’t gotten close. As of Tuesday, 59.1% of voters cast their ballot in support of the tax, and 40.9% voted against.
This story was originally published June 14, 2022 at 7:55 PM.
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