Humphrey Closes in on Righeimer; Mesa Verde Deficit All But Erased; OJB *Provisionally* Calls It For Humphrey!

By
Greg Diamond
– November 8, 2014Posted in: Fresh Juice

 

Humphrey closing in on Righeimer

Frankly, Righeimer’s not looking too good right now.

Here are the standings after today’s vote totals were released:

CITY OF COSTA MESA Member, City Council
Number To Vote For: 2
Completed Precincts: 70 of 70
Vote Count Percentage
KATRINA FOLEY 8,502 26.5%
* JIM RIGHEIMER 6,878 21.4%
JAY HUMPHREY 6,855 21.3%
LEE RAMOS 4,826 15.0%
TONY CAPITELLI 1,683 5.2%
AL MELONE 1,304 4.1%
RITA LOUISE SIMPSON 1,079 3.4%
CHRISTOPHER SCOTT BUNYAN 989 3.1%

Jay Hunphrey is closing in, with the deficit now cut down by 66 votes to 23 — and a bunch of better ballots on the way.

The Registrar has now updated the “What’s Left to Count” figure — and it includes a whopping upwards revision of the number of VBMRAPs — Vote-By-Mail ballots Returned At the Polls — from 66,000 to 81,000.  (Hey, it did say that the original figure was just an estimate.)  All but 9,765 of them have now been counted; the rest should be finished on Monday. (Counting is going well enough at this point that Neal Kelley is giving his troops a day off.)

Of the 54,070 votes left to count, 38,513 are provisional ballots and 5,792 are paper.  Provisionals tend to skew towards to poorer and more transient; paper ballots tend to skew towards the suspicious.  Neither are likely to skew towards Righeimer.

Righeimer’s best hope at this point is that the 12% of so of the VBMRAPs include some conservative precincts from Costa Mesa.  The odds are against that, though.  Costa Mesa has enough apartments that it should get its share of provisional voters.  Riggy may have lawyers on hand to challenge them; Humphrey should of course do the same, to counter those challenges.  (In my experience, though, Kelley is quite good about not taking the bait too easily on ballot challenges.)

Yesterday’s vote total may be found in this table:

CITY OF COSTA MESA Member, City Council
Number To Vote For: 2
Completed Precincts: 70 of 70
Vote Count Percentage
KATRINA FOLEY 7,244 26.4%
* JIM RIGHEIMER 5,900 21.5%
JAY HUMPHREY 5,811 21.2%
LEE RAMOS 4,086 14.9%
TONY CAPITELLI 1,473 5.4%
AL MELONE 1,165 4.2%
RITA LOUISE SIMPSON 947 3.4%
CHRISTOPHER SCOTT BUNYAN 832 3.0%

This means that Foley picked up 1,258 votes, Righeimer 978 votes, and Humphrey 1,044 votes — in the category that had been expected to be the second most favorable to Righeimer.  This reinforces the notion, proposed on Facebook, that Thursday’s flood of votes favoring Riggy was an anomaly — precincts from the conservative Mesa Verde area just happened to be counted that day.

If OJB wanted to be irresponsible, based on the projected returns among the provisional and paper ballots, it would call the race for Humphrey right now.  OJB is very, very tempted to do this, but does not want to risk its journalistic integrity.  Then again — what the hell; we’re still better than Fox News.  So we’ll hedge just a little.

OJB PROVISIONALLY CALLS THE ELECTION FOR JAY HUMPHREY!  (THAT IS, IF PROVISIONALS COME IN AS EXPECTED.)

If OJB turns out to be wrong, OJB apologizes.  But OJB feels pretty good about this right now.  OJB hopes to feel even better by 5:05 p.m. Monday.  Remember, counting provisionals and paper ballots takes a bit longer than counting VBMs, so they’re not likely going to keep on mowing through the remaining ballots at the same pace.

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)