Petaluma City Council race still too close to call

For the second straight election, a Petaluma City Council race was too close to call on election night, signaling the prospect of a weeks-long canvass of ballots and even a possible recount before the outcome is known.

Unofficial results from the Sonoma County Registrar of Voters released on Nov. 9 show Councilman Gabe Kearney in third place with 9,703 votes and Planning Commissioner Bill Wolpert trailing with 9,566 votes, a difference of just 137 votes. The top three vote getters earn seats on the council, and incumbent council members Mike Healy and Kathy Miller held comfortable election night leads.

Nearly 70,000 ballots remain uncounted countywide, according to City Clerk Claire Cooper, including provisional ballots and those mailed or dropped off on election day.

“They don’t know how many are from Petaluma,” said Cooper, who acts as the city’s conduit to the Registrar of Voters.

The county has until Dec. 6 to complete its canvass of ballots, but has indicated a desire to finish by Thanksgiving, Cooper said.

“They won’t provide any incremental updates,” she said. “Now we just wait nervously.”

In 2014, the mayoral race between Mike Harris and David Glass was too closed to call on election night, with Harris ahead by 211 votes after the initial count. But following a three week canvass of votes, the results flipped and Glass was declared the winner by 84 votes.

Wolpert, who is backed by Petaluma’s progressive bloc, has not conceded and said he would await the outcome of the county’s canvass.

“I’m guardedly optimistic,” he said. “I wish I was leading in the ballots on election night.”

A late entry into the council race, Wolpert led the three incumbents in fundraising. Progressives, including Glass, pushed a strategy of voting only for Wolpert as a way of unseating one of the three incumbents, who ran as a slate, and upsetting the current council majority.

Kearney said he was hopeful that his election night lead would hold up after all ballots had been counted. He said he was focused on continuing his work for the city until the final results are announced.

“I’m going to stay positive and hope my lead holds, or if anything, widens,” he said. “I have to have faith in the process.”

To keep his mind off the canvass, Wolpert, an architect, said he was focused on work that was neglected during the campaign. He did not rule out asking for a recount if the final results remain close.

If he ends up losing, Wolpert said he would continue serving on the planning commission, and would consider running again in two years.

“It’s a little too early to tell,” he said. “The campaign took a lot of energy.”

(Contact Matt Brown at matt.brown@arguscourier.com.)