US election results (other than presidential) thread

Sarah McBride becomes the first openly transgender person elected to Congress (NPR)

McBride will succeed fellow Democrat Lisa Blunt Rochester as [Delaware’s] at-large member of Congress. Blunt Rochester handily won her race for Senate earlier on Tuesday night.

McBride has been a rising star in politics. She previously worked for former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell and the late Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden. In 2012, she interned with the Obama administration. Four years later, she became the first transgender person to speak at a major party convention.

Abortion rights ballot measures pass in 7 states, fail in 3 others (MSNBC)

Voters in Arizona and Missouri approved ballot initiatives that will effectively protect abortion rights until fetal viability and undo existing abortion laws on the books. But voters in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota rejected proposed amendments that would have done the same — becoming the first pro-abortion-rights ballot measures to fail since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

California Prop Roundup: What Passed, What Failed, and What's Still Up in the Air (KQED)

One of the winners is a measure toughening criminal penalties for some nonviolent crimes. Proposition 36 will reverse key parts of a decade-old voter initiative that reduced penalties for drug possession and low-level thefts and diverted thousands of people from prison. Proposition 36 came largely in response to concerns over retail theft and the fentanyl crisis, despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to convince Californians the problems could be handled without rolling back Proposition 47, the 2014 law.

A constitutional amendment to protect the right of same-sex couples to marry also succeeded. As of early Wednesday morning, 62% of votes counted were in favor of the measure. Proposition 3 will remove language defining marriage as “between a man and a woman” that was placed in the state constitution after voters passed Proposition 8 in 2008.

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A third winning measure is Proposition 35, which will shore up funding for Medi-Cal, the public insurance program for lower-income Californians.

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Today, more than 14 million Californians — about a third of the state population — use Medi-Cal. But with California’s reimbursement rate well below the national average, many providers won’t treat Medi-Cal patients. The measure is projected to generate more than $35 billion over the next four years. It’s backed by doctors, hospitals and clinics that want the money to go toward increased payments.

All three measures that succeeded were popular across the state, according to Mark Baldassare, survey director at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. Proposition 36, the criminal justice measure, he noted, was showing particularly broad-based support.

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Voters appeared to narrowly favor a landlord-backed measure that on the surface appears to be about prescription drug spending but in actuality targets only one health care provider — and organization that also supports rent control. Proposition 34 would ostensibly restrict how health care providers can spend revenue from a federal program that allows them to purchase prescription drugs at a discount, then charge insurers market rate and use the difference to expand health services to disadvantaged groups.

North Carolina agriculture commissioner reelected while two more Council of State incumbents wait

North Carolina’s incumbent Republican Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler has been reelected to his sixth four-year term, defeating Democratic challenger, Sarah Taber.

‘The math says this is over’: San Francisco mayor faces long reelection odds (Politico)

Mayor London Breed hasn’t conceded the election, but her path to winning another term leading San Francisco appears quite narrow.

Early returns show her trailing far behind Daniel Lurie, a Levi Strauss heir and nonprofit founder, who far outspent the incumbent using his personal wealth and blamed Breed for the city’s problems with homelessness, brazen theft and drug overdoses.

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Lurie surged in the polls during the final weeks of the race and performed strongly across the city — most notably in the Sunset and Richmond districts, where he had the backing of many Asian-American voters.

Polls also consistently suggested that Lurie would benefit from ranked-choice voting in the crowded mayoral race. Part of his strategy was to be the second-choice for many residents who voted for another candidate first — namely Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin or Mark Farrell, a former interim mayor.

Not only is Lurie leading Breed with more of those second-choice ballots from the other candidates, he’s also ahead in first-choice votes. That surprised many political insiders in the city.

East Bay votes to recall DA Pamela Price, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao (SF Standard)

Price, the first Black woman to hold the DA post in Alameda County, assumed office as part of a wave of progressive prosecutors seeking to reform criminal justice across the nation. The 67-year-old pledged to reduce sentences, stop charging youths as adults, and prosecute misconduct by police.

But Price’s tenure coincided with a spike in violence and property crime that her opponents used to criticize her prosecution practices, claiming she created a system of “catch and release.”

Price’s opponents organized against her just six months into her six-year term. (A 2022 state law modified the election cycle for some state offices.)

Save Alameda for Everyone, which raised nearly $4 million for the recall, argued she was reducing sentences for criminals, refusing to charge violent felons, and failing to support victims of crime. Her office missed deadlines to file charges in more than 1,000 misdemeanor cases that had been sitting on her desk for a year.

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Thao also faced criticism for being soft on crime. Organizers of Thao’s recall said the effort was sparked by the mayor’s management of the police department — particularly, by firing Chief LeRonne Armstrong.

There were other criticisms. Gov. Gavin Newsom sent CHP officers, prosecutors, and surveillance cameras to help suppress crime, and the FBI raided her home as part of a political scandal. But one of the most culturally significant, and probably most lasting, strikes against Thao is the departure of the Oakland Athletics Major League Baseball team for Las Vegas.

Thao, the first Hmong mayor of a major U.S. city, argued she should stay put since she balanced the budget, inked a deal to redevelop the Coliseum, and stemmed a spike in violent crime to the point that the city saw no reported homicides in October.

If confirmed, the recall will be Oakland’s first in more than a century.

The union representing Oakland police officers issued a statement Wednesday praising the ouster of Thao and Price.

Why Is Alameda County’s Vote Count So Slow? Official Blasts Sluggish Pace (KQED)

That update brought the total number of ballots tallied so far to 238,035, according to the office. Assuming an 80% turnout among Alameda County’s 962,000 registered voters, which would align with recent presidential elections, that would mean the registrar still has a backlog of about 530,000 ballots to process.

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“What we typically see is a slow start, and then we ramp up,” Dupuis said. He said his office’s main challenge is the 460,000 mail-in ballots received on Election Day.

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While Dupuis’ office has gained a reputation for slow and sometimes inefficient operations, Alameda County is not alone in its long, drawn-out vote reporting this election.

Contra Costa, Marin and Napa counties, for instance, have not reported updated results since their final election night reports. Two other counties, San Mateo and Sonoma, say they’ve processed fewer than 10,000 ballots since election night.

On the other end of the spectrum, Santa Clara County processed twice the number of votes Alameda County did on election night — 468,395 versus 233,246. Dupuis credited Santa Clara’s performance to having more staff and twice as much high-speed sorting capacity.