Glazer, Bonilla Poised to go Head-To-Head in Special Election for State Senate

Democratic candidates Steve Glazer and Susan Bonilla seem poised to advance in Tuesday’s primary election to fill a vacant state Senate seat representing parts of Contra Costa and Alameda counties, according to unofficial election results.

The general election will be held on May 19 but official results won’t be in until March 27, according to Tim Dupuis, the Registrar of Voters in Alameda County. With all of the precincts reporting, Glazer, the Mayor of Orinda, had nearly 33 percent of the vote, trailed by state Assemblywoman Bonilla, D-Concord, with just under 25 percent. Fellow democrat and termed-out former Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan came in with 22 percent of the vote, followed by Republican candidate Michaela Hertle, who withdrew from the race last month but nonetheless garnered 17 percent of the vote. She endorsed Glazer in the primary. Democrat and psychology professor Terry Kremin came in with just under 3 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results.

The candidates were all vying for the 7th state Senate district seat vacated last November by Mark DeSaulnier, who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He endorsed Bonilla to replace him. Glazer made headlines in 2013 when he advocated for a statewide ban on transit strikes amid two BART strikes that year.

On Tuesday, he tweeted, “The deception and manipulation by the BART unions and their allies had an impact but failed.” Glazer has served on the Orinda City Council since 2004 and emphasized infrastructure improvements and education reform in his campaign literature. He said on Tuesday the primary was “positive evidence that voters want a fiscally responsible bi-partisan problem solver who is independent from powerful special interests.”

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Bonilla served as a Contra Costa County supervisor and mayor of Concord prior to her election to the state Assembly in 2010. A former high school teacher, Bonilla’s campaign for state Senate focused primarily on education, including better funding for K-12 schools. She scooped up an endorsement by the Mt. Diablo Education Association, the largest teachers association in the district, but failed to grab the endorsement of the California Federation of Teachers, which endorsed Buchanan. Buchanan, who served in the state Assembly from 2008 to 2014 after serving for 18 years on the San Ramon Valley Unified School District’s board of education, also emphasized education in her campaign. She garnered a larger portion of the vote than Bonilla in Alameda County -- nearly 29 percent to Bonilla’s 14 percent -- but fell short in Contra Costa County, where Bonilla received 27 percent to Buchanan’s 21 percent.

Turnout was also higher in Contra Costa County, where 21.5 percent of registered voters cast ballots, compared to Alameda County, where just over 15 percent of voters voted. Dupuis said voters have been trending towards vote-by-mail ballots and said there were at least 3,200 ballots that came through the mail on Tuesday that have yet to be counted. Representatives from the Contra Costa County Elections Division did not immediately return a request for comment.

Under a new state law, ballots postmarked by election day will be counted, meaning that for the next several days, county elections officials will be watching for any other ballots that could be valid as well, Dupuis said. With only 2,249 ballots separating Bonilla and Buchanan, Dupuis said every vote that comes in could make a difference for the candidates.

“It really isn’t over until the last vote is counted,” Dupuis said.

By Bay City News

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