Bruce Gibson wins race for District 2 SLO County supervisor — by just 13 votes
Bruce Gibson won the District 2 Board of Supervisors race by a margin of only 13 votes, according to San Luis Obispo County’s final election results released Wednesday.
That means control of the Board of Supervisors will shift, with three liberal supervisors now in the majority for the next two years.
The final count showed Gibson with 11,722 votes, or 50.03%, and Republican challenger Dr. Bruce Jones with 11,709 votes, or 49.97%.
“We are just so unbelievably happy,” Gibson said. “So many people did so much to get us this victory. I’m just excited as can be about what we’ll be able to accomplish.”
Jones declined to comment on the election results.
“I’m just trying to figure out what’s happening,” Jones said.
When The Tribune asked SLO County Republican Party official Erik Gorham if the party planned to request a recount, he said, “we’re looking into our options.”
Gorham declined to give further comment, but said the party plans to release a statement later this week.
Any California voter can request a recount within five days of the county certifying the election, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office website.
In the final tally, 830 ballots were added to the total with Jones receiving 427 and Gibson 403. That further narrowed the gap that had been 37 after the last count two weeks go.
But it wasn’t enough to overcome the lead Gibson built coming out of Election Night on Nov. 8 and then expanded to more than 1,000 on Nov. 11.
Gibson retained his seat despite radical gerrymandering in the redistricting process that turned District 2 into an oddball region that included parts of both the North Coast and the North County.
Gibson now joins Jimmy Paulding and Dawn Ortiz-Legg, giving them a 3-2 majority on the board, which also includes John Peschong and Debbie Arnold.
The race was even closer than the District 4 Supervisor race, which Jimmy Paulding won over Lynn Compton by only 639 votes.
The final batch of ballots brings SLO County’s voter participation rate to 66% with 121,156 ballots cast out of 182,291 sent out, according to the Clerk-Recorder’s Office.
This story was originally published December 7, 2022 at 3:36 PM with the headline "Bruce Gibson wins race for District 2 SLO County supervisor — by just 13 votes."
