Finigan wins; McNamer and Gitlin in runoff
A celebration of her supporters ensued, but 52 votes in the district have yet to counted, election officials said Wednesday.
If those ballots are all ruled valid, Gray would need 38 out of 52 to overtake McClure.
Final results will not be available until all 429 absentee and provisional ballots delivered to the polls countywide can be verified. Officials are shooting for Friday afternoon, if not sooner.
While the McClure-Gray contest is not completely resolved, in District 1 challenger Roger Gitlin and incumbent Leslie McNamer are headed for a November runoff.
Gitlin had 294 votes to 276 for McNamer. Donna Westfall was a distant third at 95 votes.
David Finigan handily won re-election to his District 5 seat, leading challenger Larry Childs 605-405.
McClure had 450 votes to 427 for Gray.
District 2
McClure received the unofficial and as yet inconclusive results in a celebratory atmosphere at county Democratic Party headquarters in Crescent City on Tuesday night.
The room was rife with optimistic anticipation after an initial count of mail ballots put McClure 38 votes ahead of Gray. When the counting closed for the night, all the hand-wringing dissolved into happy hoots, hollers and hugs.
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” McClure shouted, arms raised and fists clenched in the unmistakable stance of a victor.
But in the end those 52 outstanding ballots will tell definitively if the four-term incumbent won or lost.
“We are going as fast as we can to get these done, but I also want to make sure they are right,” said County Clerk Alissia Northrup, explaining that all 359 mail ballots returned to polling places on Election Day must be checked, along with 70 provisional ballots issued at the polls to people who, for whatever reason, weren’t on the rolls when they went to vote.
McClure wasn’t erring on the side of possible defeat as she celebrated Tuesday night. At about 10:15 p.m., hushed silence and nervous chatter took turns filling the room for a tense half-hour, while the crowd awaited a final count.
McClure stood, sat, stood, sat, paced around and repeatedly said “thank you” to those who worked on her $16,000-plus campaign.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you won yet?” someone shot back with a laugh.
Two days later, the answer is still no.
If her lead holds, McClure’s fifth term as a county supervisor will begin in November, lasting until 2016. Her last two re-election campaigns have been similarly close: each carried by a margin of 20 votes.
Gray did not respond to requests for comment on Election Night or Wednesday. He planned to issue a written statement Wednesday, according to someone who answered the phone at his law office, but the statement did not materialize by 6:30 p.m.
District 1
In the primary, about 44 percent of Del Norte’s registered voters cast ballots, assuming the uncounted mail and provisional ballots are all valid.
Overall, only 28.6 percent of the people eligible to vote in Del Norte County actually did so in this election.
Gitlin was at the Flynn Center when the night’s final round of results were released, showing him with 44.21 percent of the vote and McNamer with 41.5 percent.
The 14.3 percent of votes captured by Donna Westfall will be up for grabs come November.
There are 46 ballots yet to be counted in District 1, Northrup reported. This isn’t enough to give either contender a winning majority, even if the ballots were all valid and cast for one candidate.
“I’m humbled by the voters of this county that put such trust in me,” Gitlin said Tuesday night.
The runoff election in District 1 will be a “focal point,” ultimately deciding the future direction of the Board of Supervisors, he said.
“We’re not going out tomorrow and knocking on doors. I’ve got to give it a rest — recharge my battery,” he said.
Earlier in the evening on Tuesday, McNamer was ensconced with four generations of family members at Toreros lounge.
“I’m not surprised,” she said of the tight race, “He did a lot of door-knocking, and I just wasn’t able to in this campaign.”
McNamer has represented District 1 for two terms. Her primary campaign spent about $1,600, according to official finance reports and verbal statements she made about last-minute expenditures.
District 5
Finigan said he was pleased to win by a decisive margin.
“Some people don’t appreciate how close some of these infrastructure projects are to being done and how far we’ve come,” he said.
Finigan has represented District 5 on the Board of Supervisors since 1996. November will mark the start of his fifth term in that office.
Reach Emily Jo Cureton at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Staff writer Adam Spencer contributed to this report.
