Challenger Jamie Walden pulled ahead of incumbent Norma O. Berrellez in the Alvord Unified School District board race Thursday, and Gracie Torres' lead in the Ward 2 City Council seat kept shrinking as county election workers moved through another batch of mail ballots.
Walden now leads Berrellez 1,181 votes to 1,119 — 51.3% to 48.7% — in Trustee Area 4, according to the Riverside County Registrar of Voters' 5:02 p.m. update. Berrellez had held a 0.3-percentage-point lead after Wednesday evening's count.
In Ward 2, Torres leads Aram Ayra 2,624 to 2,509, or 51.1% to 48.9%. Her margin has slipped from 3.5 percentage points Wednesday evening to 2.2 points.
City Council runoffs
Both council contests are runoffs between the top-two finishers from the June 2 primary, where no candidate won a majority. Whoever has more votes when the count ends takes the seat.
Thursday's update added 295 mail votes and 72 in-person votes in Ward 2. Ayra picked up 174 of those mail votes and 35 in-person votes, while Torres added 121 mail votes and 37 in-person votes.
In Ward 4, incumbent Chuck Conder leads challenger Rich Vandenberg 4,850 to 4,115 — 54.1% to 45.9%. His margin grew from 7.3 percentage points Wednesday evening to 8.2 points. The latest batch gave Conder 309 mail votes and 286 in-person votes, and Vandenberg 274 mail votes and 162 in-person votes.
This is the first November election under Riverside's current ward map — adopted June 13, 2023, after the 2020 census — so earlier election results in both wards aren't directly comparable.
School boards
In Alvord's Trustee Area 4, Thursday's batch gave Walden 86 mail votes and 126 in-person votes, compared with 69 mail votes and 76 in-person votes for Berrellez.
In the Riverside Unified School District (RUSD) Trustee Area 1 race, incumbent Noemi Hernandez Alexander holds 5,069 votes, or 51.8%, and a 12.6-point lead. Duffy Atkinson has 3,838 votes, or 39.2%, and Jinane Annous has 882, or 9%.
In a statement to the Gazette Wednesday, Hernandez Alexander thanked her volunteers and supporters for what she called “a people-powered campaign” and thanked voters for reelecting her, though the race has not yet been called. “It is a true honor to serve the kids and families of Riverside as their trustee,” she said.
In a statement to the Gazette Thursday, Atkinson said his campaign was “obviously disappointed with the early results” but noted that most ballots in Trustee Area 1 have yet to be counted. The campaign will let the registrar’s count and certification play out “before commenting further,” the statement said.
In a statement to the Gazette late Tuesday, Annous offered her congratulations to “the winner” and said she would keep supporting RUSD students, teachers and classified employees. “It’s not about who wins,” she said. “It’s about all of us working together ... ensuring that our children will always come first in any decision we make.”
What's left to count
All precincts have reported in each race, but that counts polling locations rather than ballots. So far, votes from about 24.3% of Ward 2's registered voters have been counted, along with 28.7% in Ward 4, 25.9% in RUSD Trustee Area 1 and 19.9% in Alvord Trustee Area 4.
As of Wednesday evening, the registrar estimated that about 455,000 vote-by-mail ballots and 11,000 Conditional Voter Registration (CVR) ballots remained uncounted across Riverside County. That estimate covers the whole county, not individual cities or districts.
In 21 past local races counted during even-year November elections — measured at the same point after election night — the gap between the top-two candidates widened in 16 and narrowed in five by the final count, according to county records reviewed by the Gazette. The leader changed in three of those races.
