FINAL REPORT

Well there it is.

Gallegos emerges as the top vote-getter in the DA race,with Jackson nipping closely at his heels. Hagen proves only to be a factor in that he helped Jackson hold Gallegos below 50% and therefore bought her a spot in the runoff.

The big question will be whether he endorses Jackson (as he endorsed Dikeman) and the follow up question is if so, whether many of his farther-left-than-Gallegos base will follow him as he crosses over to support the farthest-right candidate. I suspect less than a third of Hagen’s supporters will go that route, even if Hagen endorses Jackson (and even fewer if he doesn’t).

Meanwhile, in the 4th, there isn’t any huge gap between Sundberg’s absentee ballot performance and his precinct performance, so it seems that the DUI probably didn’t cause him that much damage…yet. There’s some difference between his mail and precinct percentages, but it is easily explained as the standard differences seen for more conservative vs. more liberal candidates, where conservatives tend to do a bit better with absentee votes.

However, what’s ominous for Sundberg is that if enough of the Higgins folks get behind Cleary, they should be able to beat Sundberg in the fall. I wonder if the victors were buying a lot of drinks for the vanquished over there at Six Rivers?

Also interested in whether the two Pats addressed each other’s audiences as well as their own, and whether Higgins will officially throw his support to Cleary. If so, I think between the raw numbers and news of Sundberg’s DUI actually reaching more voters, he’s going to have an uphill battle if he’s to pull it out in the fall.

Meanwhile, the big surprise (to me, anyway) was how strong a showing Bass made. As the likely recipient of a lot of Leonard’s voters, she could be tough to beat in the runoff. But I wouldn’t say that Bonnie is sure to lose or anything, just that in the past few hours she’s gone from presumptive front-runner to apparent underdog.