Riverside's two City Council runoffs remained unsettled late Tuesday, Nov. 3, as Riverside County released its fourth round of election-night results — with the same candidates ahead in each race as earlier in the night.
Gracie Torres held a narrow lead over Aram Ayra for the open Ward 2 seat, 51.9% to 48.1% as of the county's 11 p.m. report — a lead of 3.7 percentage points. In Ward 4, Councilmember Chuck Conder led challenger Rich Vandenberg 53.1% to 46.9%, a 6.2-point lead.
Both races are runoffs between the top two finishers from the June 2 primary, so whoever finishes with more votes takes the seat. Votes counted so far equal only 19.8% of registered voters in Ward 2 and 22.3% in Ward 4, and the county will keep counting mail and provisional ballots.
In school board races, Riverside Unified School District (RUSD) Trustee Noemi Hernandez Alexander held a double-digit lead in Trustee Area 1. In the Alvord Unified School District, Trustee Norma O. Berrellez led challenger Jamie Walden in Trustee Area 4, 895 votes to 881.
Ward 2: An open seat and a tightening race
Ward 2 is an open seat, with current Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes running for California State Assembly to represent District 58.
Torres led in all four of Tuesday night's county reports, but her lead slipped in the third. She was ahead 52.1% to 47.9% in both the 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. reports — the 9 p.m. update added no new Ward 2 votes. The 10 p.m. report brought her to 2,161 votes to Ayra's 2,005, narrowing her lead from 4.1 percentage points to 3.7. The 11 p.m. report showed no change.
At 11:15 p.m., Ayra told the Gazette he was grateful to Ward 2 voters "for getting out to make their voice heard."
"I’m also grateful for County staff who are working hard to ensure every vote is counted," he said. "There are still thousands of ballots to process and we look forward to seeing the results as they come out.”
Torres did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday night.
The runoff is a rematch of a close primary. In June, Torres finished first with 38% of the vote and Ayra second with 35.7% — a 2.3-point gap that was the tightest in any Ward 2 race since at least 1997, according to a Raincross Gazette review of county results. In that race, candidates Mike Vahl took 22.5% and Christen Montero took 3.7%.
Ayra has run for the seat before. In 2021, he finished third with 13% in the race Cervantes won with 52.1%.
Ward 4: Conder holds steady
Conder, first elected in 2017, led in all four election-night result drops. His margin edged up slightly in each of the first three — from 5.9 points to 6.1 to 6.2 — and held there in the 11 p.m. report, with 3,700 votes to Vandenberg's 3,268.
Conder was the front-runner in June but fell short of the majority needed to win outright. He took 45.6% of the vote, ahead of Vandenberg's 28.3% and Jessica Qattawi's 26%.
Vandenberg declined to comment, while Conder did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday night.
Conder won his first term in 2017 by unseating Councilmember Paul Davis, 54.1% to 45.9%. He won reelection in 2021 with 56.4% against Monrow Mabon.
New ward lines
Both wards are voting under new boundaries this year. The city adopted a redrawn ward map on June 13, 2023, after the 2020 census, and June's primary was the first election held under those lines.
That means past Ward 2 and Ward 4 results come from different territory, so they are an imperfect guide to how either ward votes now. Cervantes' 2021 win and Conder's 2017 and 2021 wins all came under the old map.
This is also the first time either ward has gone to a runoff since 2006. Ward 2's last runoff was in January 2006, when Andy Melendrez defeated Ruben Rasso. Ward 4's was the same month, when Councilmember Frank Schiavone won reelection over Samuel Cardelucci.
School boards
In RUSD Trustee Area 1, Hernandez Alexander had 52.1% of the vote as of 11 p.m. Duffy Atkinson had 39% and Jinane Annous had 8.9%. Hernandez Alexander’s lead grew from 12.5 percentage points at 8 p.m. to 13.1 at 10 p.m., where it held in the 11 p.m. report. 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.”
She is just above the 50% mark, but the race isn't settled. In the county's past school board races, late counting has moved results by more than that.
The Alvord Trustee Area 4 race is the closest of the four. Berrellez led Walden 50.4% to 49.6% in the 11 p.m. report, unchanged since 9 p.m. Her lead had been just 0.1 percentage point in the first report of the night, when she had 859 votes to Walden's 857.
What's left to count
All precincts in the four races have reported, but that figure counts polling places, not ballots. Mail and provisional ballots are still coming in.
The county had not posted an estimate of uncounted ballots as of 10 p.m. Tuesday. Its first estimate is expected Wednesday at the earliest.
Past counts suggest the totals could grow. In the county's six past even-year November general elections, final vote totals ended up between 1.30 and 4.99 times the election-night count.
Leads can also change hands. In 21 past races in those elections that were still being counted on election night, the gap between the top two candidates widened by the final count in 16, narrowed in 5 and flipped in 3.
Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day will be counted if they arrive by Nov. 10. The county begins its official canvass Nov. 5, and voters have until Nov. 25 to fix signature problems on mail ballots. The county must certify results by Dec. 3.
