Primary Election 2024 Live Updates: Bay Area and California

Larkspur’s rent control measure is still passing by the slimmest of margins, according to the latest vote count, updated just after 5 p.m. on Wednesday. 

Measure D is ahead in the Marin County community with 50.35% approval, 1,066 votes to 1,051 — a difference of just 15 votes.

It would implement a 7% rent cap the Larkspur City Council passed last year. That plan was set to go into effect last October, but opponents of the law gathered enough signatures to get this referendum on the ballot. 

Advocates say the rent control plan is necessary to prevent residents from being displaced amid the city’s housing shortage. Opponents argue it would discourage the construction of new housing, ultimately worsening the city’s housing shortage. 

Whether or not it passes, tenant activists are working to get a stronger 3% rent cap on the November ballot. 

Sonia Ledo, the lone Republican in the state Assembly race to represent District 15 in Contra Costa County, was narrowly leading her Democratic rivals as of late Tuesday night. 

The most recently updated county election results showed Ledo, a realtor from Concord who has never held public office, with nearly 33% of the vote, almost three percentage points ahead of Anamarie Avila Farias, a county Board of Education trustee, suggesting a potential matchup between the two candidates in November’s general election. 

The race remains too close to call, with less than 50% of all votes counted, primarily from ballots received before Election Day.

“I’m honored that the voters have placed their trust in me for positive change in California,” Ledo told the Contra Costa Herald Tuesday night. “I think this is proof the candidates can run on their merits and the two candidates who ran the most positive race came out on top.”

Relatively little is known about Ledo, who declined to be interviewed by KQED about her policy positions. On her campaign website, she describes herself “as the average working class resident of the district.”

The results also showed Antioch City Councilmember Monica Wilson in third place, with nearly 24% of the vote, close enough to Farias to not yet be ruled out, while Karen Mitchoff, a former Contra Costa County supervisor, had just under 13%.

The four candidates are competing for an open seat currently held by longtime Assemblymember Tim Grayson, who is running for state Senate. The district encompasses a wide and economically diverse portion of the county, including Antioch, Concord, Martinez, Pittsburg and some of Walnut Creek.

The top-two finishers in the primary will compete in November for the two-year Assembly term.

Mountain View City Councilmember Margaret Abe-Koga held a wide lead in the District 5 race for Santa Clara County supervisor — but will likely fall short of the majority needed to avoid a fall runoff.

In the race to succeed termed-out Supervisor Joe Simitian, Abe-Koga currently received 40.5% of the vote through Tuesday night. She’ll likely face Board of Equalization member Sally Lieber, who received 24.5%, or El Camino Healthcare District Director Peter Fung, who garnered 20.9%, in the November general election.

Abe-Koga built wide support for her campaign, drawing the backing of powerful union groups like the South Bay Labor Council, along with business interests such as the California Apartment Association, a group representing landlords.

“I attribute a lot of it to my service for close to 20 years in elected office,” Abe-Koga told KQED on Wednesday. “My approach has always been to try to work with everyone. I try to find common ground and I think that’s the way to move things forward.”

Former Cupertino Councilmember Barry Chang (7.3%) and business owner Sandy Sans (6.6%) rounded out the five-candidate field hoping to represent Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, Saratoga and Los Gatos on the board.

Corporations, business coalitions and labor groups spent tens of millions of dollars in “independent expenditures” across the state trying to influence the outcome of Tuesday’s primary elections. 

No race saw more of that spending — made in support of or opposition to candidates but outside their official campaigns — than the East Bay’s state Senate District 7. 

Returns early Wednesday show Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín leading that race with 31.9% of the vote, with Dan Kalb, a member of the Oakland City Council, in second place with 17.2%.

Four other candidates — former state Assemblymember Sandré Swanson, AC Transit board member Jovanka Beckles, University of California union leader Kathryn Lybarger and Piedmont property manager Jeanne Solnordal — are bunched between 11% and 14% of the vote. 

When it came to independent expenditures, outside groups focused significant spending, nearly $6 million in all, on just two of those candidates: Arreguín and Lybarger.

Several groups funded by real estate interests, developers and employers — East Bay Forward, Housing Providers for Responsible Solutions, Keep California Golden, Jobspac and Uber Innovation PAC — spent $1.4 million to support Arreguín, who has evolved into a champion for accelerating housing construction.

But that tells only half the story of their spending in the race: Those same groups combined to spend $1.8 million to defeat Lybarger. 

The biggest spender in pro-Arreguín/anti-Lybarger spending: the Uber PAC, which threw at least $1 million into the effort to beat Lybarger and $330,000 to back Arreguín.

Tuesday night, Arreguín said he found it “kind of surprising” that Uber had spent money to support him.

“I wrote the tax in Berkeley to tax Uber and Lyft,” he said.

“I frankly think that we need to reform our political system. I strongly support public financing of elections at all levels of government — I actually helped pass our public financing system in Berkeley. And I think money has an outsized impact on our elections.”

Lybarger, the president of the California Labor Federation and head of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents 30,000 workers at the University of California’s 10 campuses, also got a big boost from independent expenditures. 

State expenditure reports show two union-funded groups spent about $2.6 million to support her campaign. Two groups made those expenditures — East Bay Working Families and UC Berkeley Cooks, Custodians and Nursing Assistants for Kathryn Lybarger. Both got most of their funding from Lybarger’s own union local.

San José Mayor Matt Mahan appears headed to a second term as leader of the region’s largest city.

Mahan received more than 87% of the vote against his lone challenger, Tyrone Wade.

“This was an overwhelming vote to get our city back to basics and focus our government on reducing crime, ending the era of street encampments, and cleaning up every neighborhood in San José,” said Mahan.

Mahan was on the ballot less than two years after winning office, in 2022. San José voters approved changes that year to align the timing of the city’s mayoral races with presidential elections. No prominent challenger emerged to challenge Mahan in this election, and his opponents in organized labor directed resources to other races.

Now, Mahan can keep the top job for another four years — and run for a second four-year term in 2028.

But given the limits of the mayor’s powers in San José, the direction of city government will be charted in November — when at least four seats are up for grabs.

On Tuesday, one council race appeared to have been decided: in north San José, long the city’s most politically contested neighborhood, incumbent David Cohen holds a wide lead over Kansen Chu, a former state Assembly member.

Cohen’s apparent victory is a political win for Mahan’s push to build temporary housing for people experiencing homelessness in the city. Cohen worked with the mayor to advance interim housing and safe parking sites in District 4, while Chu emerged as a fierce critic of some temporary housing proposals, and vowed to keep tiny homes and RV parking sites away from residences if elected.

In a state Senate race that attracted big expenditures from the oil industry and labor unions, former Congressman Jerry McNerney appears to have beaten Assemblymember Carlos Villapudua for a spot on the November ballot. 

In returns early Wednesday, Republican Jim Shoemaker, a business owner who campaigned on a platform of getting tougher on crime, led McNerney by 44.9% to 31.7% in the primary for state Senate District 5. The district includes parts of Alameda and San Joaquin counties. 

Villapudua trailed with 23.4% of the vote. First elected to the Assembly in 2020, Villapudua has been a leading “tough-on-crime” Democrat. Earlier this year, he introduced a proposal for a ballot referendum that would revise 2014’s Proposition 47 and strengthen penalties against retail theft. 

The race between McNerney and Villapudua drew heavy spending from outside groups. 

Independent expenditure reports show that oil industry and business political action committees spent nearly $900,000 opposing McNerney and $750,000 to support Villapudua. 

A PAC made up of nurses, teachers and others spent $650,000 to defeat Villapudua and about $450,000 in support of McNerney.

Napa City Councilmember Liz Alessio is sailing toward a clear victory in the race for the District 2 Board of Supervisors seat. Her opponent, retired educator Doris Gentry, told KQED she plans to call Alessio and concede the race.

Speaking from the historic Hatt Building on Tuesday, Alessio said she was in disbelief when the first results came in.

“It’s way beyond what I hoped. I wanted it to be a clear decision by our residents in terms of who they wanted to be represented by and I feel like tonight we really did that,” Alessio said. 

Two other races for seats on the Board — Districts 4 and 5 — are much closer contests. But candidates backed by progressive groups and unions are holding on to a slim advantage there. 

One of those progressive candidates, Amber Manfree, is less than 200 votes ahead of her opponent. If she wins, Napa County will elect an all-female Board of Supervisors, the second time this has happened in California history.

Madison Nguyen and Betty Duong lead the race for the District 2 seat on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors — a result that, if it holds, would guarantee the election of the county’s first Vietnamese-American supervisor in the fall.

Nguyen, a former San José City Council member, leads a five-candidate field with 31.4% of the vote. Duong, the chief of staff to Cindy Chavez, the outgoing District 2 supervisor, is currently in second with 28.8% of the vote. Alum Rock Union School District Trustee Corina Herrera-Loera is in third with 23.6%.

The district includes downtown and East San José, along with Little Saigon.

“I’m very honored to be running as a Vietnamese-American but the district is very diverse,” Nguyen told KQED. “My life story is very similar to many families in the district, regardless of our ethnicity. So I plan to continue to walk and talk to as many voters as I possibly can between now and November, focusing on the issues that matter to them.”

The primary was hotly contested, with labor groups spending more than $270,000 to boost Duong, while a business-backed super PAC spent over $40,000 in support of Nguyen.

In early poll results, Proposition A, San Francisco’s $300 million affordable housing bond, appeared  headed toward victory.

The measure needs a two-thirds supermajority to pass. As of 11:45 p.m. on Tuesday, it had nearly 68% of votes in favor.

“We’re declaring victory,” John Avalos, executive director of the pro-housing Council of Community Housing Organizations, said of the early results. “I’m feeling quite ecstatic.”

Advocates had championed the measure as a much-needed infusion of funding to help the city make way for more than 40,000 affordable homes and apartments by 2031. But low voter turnout during the primary election threatened to imperil the measure. Instead, Avalos said support for the measure appeared to indicate there’s an appetite for more to come.

Housing advocates are already campaigning for a $10 billion regional housing bond for the Bay Area. Avalos described Prop. A as a first test for that much larger measure.

“It’s a drop in the bucket for what’s needed,” he said, “but this is a trial run for what we want to be able to achieve in November.”

Larry Marso, a member of the San Francisco Republican County Central Committee, criticized the measure for its potential to dramatically change the city’s “unique blended urban character and historical neighborhoods.”

“Tragically, San Francisco voters may have given Mayor London Breed the green light [Tuesday] to extraordinary rezoning that will change the character of every neighborhood,” Marso said in an email to KQED, adding that the measure could also “increase congestion and crime and commit our precious tax dollars to sweetheart deals for politically favored developers and donors.”

It’s the third time in nearly a decade that San Francisco voters have supported similar general obligation bonds, which represent the single largest source of local funding for affordable housing in the city. In 2015 and 2019, voters approved $310 million and $600 million bonds, respectively. The two bonds had promised to collectively deliver more than 4,200 affordable homes and apartments. Of those, a little more than 1,000 have been built, according to city reports, with the remaining expected by 2028.

Proposition A would add some 1,600 homes to that count.

Michael Wilson is leading Solano County’s District 1 supervisor race with just shy of 52% of counted votes as of 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The race is tight with only a few hundred votes separating Wilson from his competitor Cassandra James, a community development specialist for the San Francisco mayor’s housing office. 

Wilson currently works as a representative under the current District 1 Supervisor Erin Hannigan, who also endorsed Wilson for the seat.