Gaines wins

Another special election will need to be prepared.

According to the Roseville Press Tribune, Ted Gaines has won the race for the State Senate District 1 seat with 63.2 percent of the vote. Gaines will now replace the late Senator Dave Cox, who passed away in July 2010.

Now that Gaines has claimed a new seat, yet another election will need to be held to fill his State Assembly District 4 position. New Governor Jerry Brown now has 10 days to call an election for the Assembly seat.

Voter turnout was light for this special election throughout the District, including Mono County where 1,007 voters supported the Republican Gaines and 834 supported Ken Cooley, Gaines’ Democratic competition, for a total of 1,841 counted votes.

According to the County’s Semi-Official Summary Report, however, there were actually 1,978 ballots received in total from election day turnout and vote by mail turnout. According to Linda Romero, Assistant Clerk-Recorder-Registry, the different numbers reflect those ballots that were collected and had either over-voted or under-voted.

“Over-voting means they voted for both candidates and under-voting means they didn’t vote at all,” Romero explained. “Also, some people had write-ins but there was only one certified write-in so if it was someone other than that, it does not count.”

Gaines said, in the Roseville Press Tribune article, Tuesday was a fairly routine day for him with a number of meetings and a caucus of Assembly Republicans.

The election was definitely unique from others he’s been involved in, Gaines said.

“It was a very intense campaign, because of the fact that it was a special election with a shortened time frame. It was an exhausting process.”

District 1 stretches from the Oregon border on the north, to Mammoth Lakes on the south, and includes approximately 850,000 residents.