Chesa Boudin’s lead widens in closely watched DA contest

In the latest tally of votes Tuesday, District attorney candidate Chesa Boudin’s lead widened over interim District Attorney Suzy Loftus in the most exciting contest of election night.

The results show the progressive Boudin ahead of his more moderate opponents Loftus, Nancy Tung and Leif Dautch.

 

With 35,430 votes, Boudin so far has the most first-choice votes with Loftus in second, Tung in third and Dautch in fourth. Boudin has 32.91 percent of the vote and is ahead of Loftus by 2,229 votes, or by 2 percentage points. Boudin’s previous lead over Loftus was by 717 votes and less than one percentage point.

 

Loftus was leading in the race with early returns but Boudin overtook her as more votes were tallied. The Department of Elections did not calculate ranked-choice voting with the latest results and will not until the end of the night.

 

David Latterman, a political consultant, told the San Francisco Examiner that the early returns were “not indicative of what we are going to see in the next hour or so” as more votes are counted. Early returns tend to be The City’s more conservative voters and progressive candidates like Boudin tend to do better with ballots cast on election day.

 

“We knew that the early results were going to skew conservative,” Boudin told Examiner at his election night party. “We were hoping to be close within 10 points. Five is right where we want to be.”

Later, with the latest upated tally, Boudin said he had a one-word answer to reporters asking him how he was doing: “Winning.”

His supporters erupted in cheering and chanted, “Chesa!”

“We know campaigns like this aren’t won because we have media and the establishment on our side,” said former Supervisor Jane Kim, a Boudin supporter. “They are won with people power.”

 

Loftus told her supporters that despite trailing Boudin she was “cautiously optimistic” that she will ultimately prevail. “The night is young so we are going to watch the polls very closely, we’re all going to be hitting refresh,” Loftus said.

 

In San Francisco, voters can rank multiple candidates for a single office by preference. A candidate wins if they receive more than 50 percent of the first-choice votes. Otherwise, candidates are eliminated round-by-round as subsequent choices are factored in until a candidate reaches a majority.

 

The early returns are from vote-by-mail ballots the Department of Elections received and counted before election day. The department’s updated vote count at 9:45 pm includes votes from polling stations. The next update is expected at around 11:45 pm along with a ranked-choice voting calculation. There will remain thousands of more vote by mail ballots to count in the coming days.

 

The outcome will determine who succeeds former District Attorney George Gascon as the top prosecutor of San Francisco. The contest was neck-and-neck between Loftus and Boudin heading into election day.

 

The race was the first open district attorney’s contest in 110 years until Mayor London Breed appointed Loftus as interim district attorney last month, when Gascon suddenly announced he would not finish his term.

 

The appointment helped Loftus raise her name recognition with voters, but also sparked backlash. Critics accused Breed of unfairly tipping the balance of the election in favor of Loftus just weeks before the election.

 

The race took another unexpected turn when the rank-and-file police union spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to oppose Boudin, running television ads and mailers that described him as a danger to public safety.

 

Boudin is a deputy public defender who entered the race amid a national wave of progressive district attorney candidates running to end mass incarceration. He was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the presidential candidate, and is the son of imprisoned radicals.

 

Loftus has high-profile endorsements from a range of political heavyweights including Breed, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Kamala Harris. She is a former prosecutor and the ex-president of the Police Commission.

 

If Loftus wins, it will give Breed an ally in the District Attorney’s Office who can help move forward her agenda as the mayor seeks to address homelessness, car break-ins and drug use on the streets.

 

The other candidates in the race, Dautch and Tung, have not attracted the same level of support since the beginning of the race.

 

Dautch is a deputy attorney general for California. His candidacy is backed by the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association.

 

Tung is an assistant district attorney for Alameda County who has positioned herself as the law-and-order candidate in the race.

 

Editor’s note: This story will be updated throughout election night. Please check back later for more.

 

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/suzy-loftus-takes-early-lead-in-closely-watched-da-contest/

Chesa Boudin’s lead widens in closely watched DA contest - The San Francisco Examiner