Update: This California state senator erased a 3,400-vote deficit, now leads by 12 votes

Update

The 16th state Senate race between incumbent Democrat Melissa Hurtado and Republican farmer David Shepard just got tighter.

Shepard – whose lead shortly after Election Day ballooned to as much as 3,400 votes, only to see Hurtado take a 45-vote lead on Friday – picked up 71 of 109 votes that were added to Fresno County’s total on Monday.

The state Secretary of State’s website shows Hurtado with a 12-vote lead: 68,302 votes to 68,290 votes.

The vote count from Kern, Tulare and Kings counties remain unchanged from Friday. Kern County officials have about 100 votes to process.

This is the story originally published Dec. 3:

State Sen. Melissa Hurtado foretold a long wait for the ballots to be counted in her re-election quest.

But the Bakersfield Democrat – by way of Sanger – didn’t expect a race that could turn out to be one of the closest in state history.

The 34-year-old Hurtado fell behind her Republican challenger, Porterville farmer David Shepard, by almost 3,400 votes a week after the Nov. 8 general election.

Friday morning, she trailed Shepard by 245 votes as uncounted ballots in the district shrank to mere thousands.

Friday evening when the state Secretary of State updated the count, Hurtado enjoyed a 45-vote advantage of more than 136,000 votes – 68,264 to 68,219. That is a .033 percentage lead.

“I wasn’t expecting to go ahead on Friday,” said Hurtado during a Saturday afternoon interview. “I was thinking maybe Monday or whatever the next reporting days are.”

Except for a brief moment when 61% of the ballots had been counted, Hurtado never led the race until Friday.

The question is: Will those 45 votes hold up?

Hurtado thinks so, but stops short of declaring victory.

“I think that we want to make sure that every vote is counted first with a hundred ballots left in Kern County, and on average 60% are in my favor. I feel relieved,” she said.

Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties – areas where Shepard pocketed a majority of the votes – have finished their count. Kern County has 100 votes left to process, according to the state Secretary of State.

Legislators are scheduled to be sworn in on Monday, although county elections officials have until Dec. 9 to report final official results to the Secretary of State.

“I don’t think anyone (from the 16th District) is going to be sworn in on Monday,” said Hurtado.

In addition to the 16th state Senate race, the 47th Assembly race in Riverside and San Bernardino counties remains tight with 34 votes separating the candidates.

Kern County, which came up with more votes counted on Friday than what it had estimated it had, has been good for Hurtado. She relied on county voters for 52.54% of her total votes. The county accounts for more than 45% of the district’s total votes.

Shepard, who took to Twitter to complain about the long wait for the count, led Hurtado in Tulare (+2,736), Fresno (+2,043) and Kings (+5,131) counties.

“It’s been 3 weeks since the election and ballots are still not completely counted which is preventing a handful of races from being called, including mine,” Shepard tweeted on Nov. 29. “This is utterly ridiculous and should not be accepted as the norm. California must do better.”

On Saturday, Shepard tweeted a link to his Instagram account saying it was his “statement on the most recent ballot drops out of Kern County.”

His message wished happy birthday to his youngest son, and nothing about the election.

There is no automatic recount in California, but one can be called within five days starting the 31st day after election day, according to the Secretary of State’s website. That would be Dec. 10-14. Those asking for a recall would bear the cost.

Hurtado raised and spent about $4 million in the race for a Latino-majority district that stretches from Reedley to Bakersfield. Shepard, who said he was a third-generation farmer, had less than one-fourth of that amount to spend.

The district leans Democrat and Latino citizens of voting age are 58% of the population.

Busy days after Election Day

It has been a roller coaster year for Hurtado, and not just because of the tight race.

Redistricting lumped her in the same state Senate district as fellow Democrat Anna Caballero, so Hurtado decided to run in the 16th District, which stretches from a portion south of Parlier and Reedley and continues through Kings County and into a chunk of Kern County.

In the days after the election, Hurtado flew to a United Nations climate change conference in Egypt. “It’s important that we have a seat at the table,” said Hurtado, who was among a delegation of state legislators at the conference.

She also had to deal with a cancer diagnosis of her father. Plus, she got engaged.

“It’s been kind of an emotional roller coaster ride here for all of us,” said Hurtado.

Esta historia fue publicada originalmente el 3 de diciembre de 2022, 2:53 p. m..