It was, in retrospect, a terrible idea for Republican Third Supervisorial candidates Kris Murray and Deborah Pauly to challenge their fellow Republican, Don Wagner, in today’s Special Election to replace Todd Spitzer, who was elected to the OCDA’s office in November. However the early election results show that Wagner is prevailing, at least for now, against the only Democrat in the race, former Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.
Wagner is leading with 40% of the vote, compared to Sanchez who is at 36.9% of the vote. Murray is trailing far behind with 7.6% of the vote and Pauly is at 5.5% of the vote.
These votes reflect the vote by mail ballots, which are about 14% of the total vote.
Murray, an Anaheim City Council Member, was a long shot given that only the Anaheim Hills area is in the Third Supervisorial District - not the entire city of Anaheim.
Pauly was an even longer shot as she was no longer serving on the Villa Park City Council and Villa Park is a very small sliver of the Third District.
Wagner really had a huge advantage as almost the entire City of Irvine is in the Third District.
Sanchez is doing better than I expected but as the only Democrat in the race she figured to have quite a few votes. That said she only recently moved into the Third District after living in Santa Ana for many years.
Hopefully Sanchez will lose as she was mostly an embarrassment as a member of the House of Representatives while Wagner has done a good job during his tenure as Mayor of Irvine.
The winner Tuesday will finish out the remainder of Spitzer’s term and will face re-election again next March, when Spitzer would have been up for re-election, according to the Voice of OC.
