SF Election Roundup: Ed Lee Declares Victory, Avalos Refuses to Concede
The races for sheriff, district attorney and mayor in San Francisco moved to ranked-choice voting after no candidate earned a majority of votes. And while there are still more than 30,000 votes to be counted, incumbents Ed Lee and George Gascon are both expected to be victorious in each of their races.
In the mayoral race, after 11 rounds of assigning second and third place votes from other eliminated candidates, Lee had 61 percent of the vote, compared to 39 percent for runner-up, Supervisor John Avalos. Lee has declared victory in the race but Avalos has not conceded as there is still a possibility, no matter how slight it may be, that he can overtake Lee.
District Attorney George Gascon also marched to a wide victory, garnering 64 percent of the votes after the ranked-choice process was complete. David Onek finished in second with 36 percent.
The race for sheriff is much closer as Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi has a 53 to 47 percent lead over Paul Miyamoto, leading by less than 8,000 votes.
Department of Election officials said they still have to count about 25,000 vote-by-mail ballots along with about 7,500 provisional ballots. The numbers are expected to be finalized this weekend.
In terms of propositions, it was another victory for Lee as Proposition C, the pension reform measure that he endorsed, passed handily while Prop. D, a pension reform measure from Public Defender Jeff Adachi, failed. Two bond measures, one pertaining to schools and the other to street improvement, both passed, Propositions A and B. Meanwhile, Propositions E, F and G all failed and Proposition H, a measure on the San Francisco Unified school assignment system, was passed, although it only has a lead of less than 3,000 votes.
