The first numbers

Pub date November 8, 2011
WriterTim Redmond
SectionPolitics Blog

The absentees are in, and it’s no surprise that Mayor Ed Lee is in the lead. In fact, he’s way in the lead — he’s got 39 percent of the 67,000 absentees. I expected him to have a big advantage here, since he did a lot of early GOTV.

Worth noting: John Avalos, the most progressive of the major candidates, is in second in the absentees. That’s a very good sign for the Avalos campaign. But Lee is almost 20,000 votes ahead of Avalos and Dennis Herrera, and that, folks, will be very hard to make up.

The district attorney’s race is over; George Gascon has won.

The sheriff’s race is interesting; Ross Mirkarimi — again, the most progressive candidate — is actually ahead in what is looking like a very conservative absentee vote. He’s only got a slight lead over Chris Cunnie (31.7 percent to 31.4 percent, a total of a couple hundred votes) but that margin will grow as the night moves on. Mirkarimi, it appears, will finish first.

Here’s why I say it’s a conservative absentee turnout: The sales tax, Prop G, is losing 57-42 and Prop. H, the neighborhood schools measure, is ahead 58-41. Both results suggest a strong westside turnout in the absentees.

I’m surprised that Mirkarimi is doing so well with this bunch.

And I’m a little surprised that Prop. C (the “consensus”) pension reform is so far ahead of Prop. D (the Adachi pension reform). Even in the conservative areas, C is leading by 7 percent.

By the way, the school and street bonds have won. If they’re over 66 percent (and both are) in this batch of votes, they’ll win handily.