UC Berkeley undergraduate student Cecilia Lunaparra is leading the race for Berkeley City Council’s District 7 seat, which has been vacant since January following the resignation of Rigel Robinson, who stepped down after a community-led recall campaign and alleged threats.
Lunaparra’s sole opponent, James Chang, is the chief of staff for Berkeley City Councilmember Ben Bartlett. He studied political economy at UC Berkeley before graduating from the Berkeley Haas Evening & Weekend MBA Program this spring.
District 7 sits on the five blocks south of the UC Berkeley campus, and the majority of the district’s voters are students. Qualified voters needed to register by April 1 to vote in Tuesday’s special election.
A total of 372 ballots had been received both in the mail and in person as of Wednesday, according to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. Of the ballots counted so far, 117 votes have gone to Lunaparra compared to 77 for Chang.
“We have 30 days to certify the election, but it seems highly unlikely that it’ll take that long,” said a spokesperson for the county registrar, “You know, we go through all the processes. We’ve got to say, do the signatures match the ones that were mailed in?”
Lunaparra is a queer Mexican American UC Berkeley senior majoring in urban studies and history. She is endorsed by the UAW-UC union, the Service Employees International Union and Gen-Z for Change, among other organizations. Her campaign said they anticipated another batch of ballots from the registrar of voters late Wednesday and they are confident the early trends will continue.
“I am absolutely blown away by the support our campaign has received from all corners of District 7 and throughout the East Bay,” said Lunaparra in a statement Wednesday. “As we wait to learn the final results, I am incredibly proud of the issues that we have raised, coalitions that we have built, and the good trouble we have stirred up.”