RITTER LEADS; DURFEE, LUCERO IN TIGHT RACE
Both Butte County Board of Supervisors seats that represent the bulk of Chico were up for grabs Tuesday night as incumbents Debra Lucero and Tami Ritter faced off with political newcomers Peter Durfee and Mary Murphy-Waldorf in District 2 and 3 respectively.
Third District
In the third district seat, Ritter, who is seeking a second term, had a firm lead over Murphy-Waldorf on Tuesday night. Ritter, a former Chico city councilor before winning a seat as a county supervisor in 2018, collected 1807 votes, or 72.6% percent.
Despite the big lead Ritter was concerned about the overall voter turnout on Tuesday.
“I am pleased with the current numbers and aware that they are currently not official,” said Ritter “With over 20,000 registered voters per district I am extremely concerned if there are less than three thousand voters per district.”
According to Butte County’s elections office, there were 15,389 ballots counted by 9:30 p.m. out of a total of 123,469 registered voters. In the third district race, Butte County reported just 2,489 votes, but all of those were vote by mail ballots. According to the website, none of the Election Day votes had been counted yet.
Murphy-Waldorf, who had never sought up local office before this year, had 682 votes, or 27.40 percent.
Second District
The hotly contested third district supervisor race between Lucero and Durfee had the incumbent Lucero gaining 1,742 votes, or 51.98 percent of the vote while Durfee, a current Chico Police Department sergeant had earned 1,487 votes or 42.88 percent of the vote.
In this race, 3,351 votes have been counted and all of those are vote-by-mail ballots.
In third place was Carl Jeffries, who was employed in Environmental Health Safety with 172 votes or 5.18 percent of the vote.
The campaign was a bruising one between Lucero and Durfee. Lucero accused Durfee of being part of a group that wanted to pave over Butte County and sell county water to the south. And Butte Forward, a political action committee supporting Durfee, accused Lucero of a number of things including putting her husband on the payroll and traveling excessively on county dollars.
Jeffries was largely left out of the fray the entire campaign.
The early results had Lucero cautiously optimistic about the direction of the evening.
“If this is the case then I’m thrilled,” said Lucero. “I’m
thrilled that this is the case in a district that is heavily gerrymandered. It shows what the people want and I am hopeful that we will prevail. And this is the beauty of democracy — that we can vote.”
As he waited for the results to start coming Durfee hung out at his home with his family and friends along with James Gallagher’s representative Braden Pisani.
“I am excited, I’m ready for everything to move one way or another.” he said. “I think everybody’s put in a lot of hard work, the people with my campaign, my friends and family.”
He hoped that the election would end Tuesday — without a runoff.
“That was the goal when we set out you know 18 months ago and finish it at the primary,” he said. “That may or may not happen, and if it doesn’t happen that’s fine too, and we will go on to November if that’s the case.”