12th Assembly District race still undecided

The 12th Assembly District race remained too close Wednesday to confirm which two candidates will face off in November, as several thousand ballots still needed to be counted.

The latest results from the Secretary of State’s Office showed Ken Vogel and Heath Flora, both Republicans, leading the pack of five candidates, with Vogel garnering 13,880 (25.5 percent) votes compared with Flora’s 12,315 (22.6 percent) votes.

Former Riverbank mayor and Democrat Virginia Madueño remained in third place with 11,899 votes (21.9 percent), or 416 votes behind. Democrat Harinder Grewal and Republican Cindy Marks trailed with 10,472 (19.3 percent) and 5,808 (10.7 percent) votes, respectively.

Whether the uncounted provisional and vote-by-mail ballots will make a substantial difference for any of the candidates remains to be seen. The two leaders in the race will square off in November, regardless of party.

Soon after polls closed, Madueño had trailed Flora by more than 800 votes, so she gained significant ground in the first few hours, noted campaign consultant Andrew Acosta. “There are a lot of votes out there. For anyone in this position, you might as well wait till they count them,” he said.

Austin Erdman, San Joaquin County’s registrar of voters, said roughly 40,000 countywide vote-by-mail and provisional ballots still to needed be counted. He estimated 9,600 of those votes are from the 12th Assembly District. Erdman said the final vote count for his county will probably be available before July 1.

Representatives from the Stanislaus County Registrar of Voters did not have an estimate Wednesday afternoon of how many vote-by-mail and provisional ballots still needed to be counted.

Stanislaus County has 219,255 registered voters, 140,206 of which are in the 12th Assembly District.

The Assembly district, which covers eastern Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties, including Turlock, Salida, Ripon, Manteca, Lathrop and part of Modesto, is composed of about 42 percent registered Republican voters and 34 percent Democrats.

Meanwhile, in the only contested race for Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors, incumbent Jim DeMartini appeared to win a fourth term with 53 percent of the vote. Patterson Mayor Luis Molina was second with 30 percent and Eileen Wyatt Stokman of Ceres had 17 percent. DeMartini needed more than half the vote to avoid a runoff in November.

DeMartini has represented the supervisorial district, including Ceres, Patterson and Newman, since 2005.

This story was originally published June 8, 2016 at 1:24 PM with the headline "12th Assembly District race still undecided."