It’s official: incumbent supervisor Valerie Brown will face challenger Will Pier in November’s runoff for Sonoma County’s First District.
The final results, released this afternoon, show Brown with 11,399 votes (44.1 percent) and Pier with 6,005 votes (23.2 percent). The initial June 4 count had Brown leading with 9,422 votes (44.2 percent) and Pier at 4,796 votes (22.5 percent).
“I surely expected such,” Brown said this afternoon. “I’m looking forward to the next race, and in the meantime, I continue to do the job for which I was hired.”
For his part, Pier sounded both relieved and pleased.
“It’s great. I’m really happy, and we’ve been just continuing on with the campaign, and so I’m glad that we did,” Pier said this afternoon. “I’m thrilled, and thank everyone for their support.”
Fellow First District hopeful David Reber placed third with 5,137 votes (19.9 percent). “I’m not surprised, and my congrats to Will,” Reber said. “I am sure that he will run a fair campaign.”
Brown failed on June 3 to gain the electoral 50 percent she needed to retain her Board of Supervisors seat, meaning the race would go to the top two vote-getters.
The two-week delay between election and final tally was partly due to counting and recounting the five-seat, seven-candidate race for the Second District’s Republican Central Committee. Five votes separated the fourth- and fifth-place winners.
But precinct workers also waded through almost 20,000 absentee or provisional ballots in the days immediately following June 3. Of these, 14,700 ballots were collected at the polls and another 5,000 arrived by mail. Since the ballots can be dropped off at any polling place – not just in a voter’s residential precinct or supervisorial district – election staff opened each envelope, matched the ballot to its native precinct and checked the signature to make sure no one voted twice.
The results will not affect the complaint filed June 11 with the state Fair Political Practices Commission by Reber, Pier and Lawrence Wiesner, alleging that a prescription discount card sent by Brown just before the election violated two sections of California’s 1974 Political Reform Act. An FPPC spokesman said Thursday that the commission was reviewing the complaint but had not yet issued a ruling.
News reporter Bonnie Durrance contributed to this report.
