Hundreds of voters flocked to one of two voting centers in East Palo Alto on Tuesday while city council candidates made final efforts to reach voters up to the last minute before the polls closed at 8 p.m.
Nine candidates are vying to win one of three at-large spots on the council.
As of Wednesday, three candidates are leading ahead of the rest of the pack with only a few dozen votes separating them. Incumbent Carlos Romero has 16.8% with Webster Lincoln on his tail at 16.36%. Mark Dinan is placing third with 15.75% of the vote so far, according to the preliminary results.
The next closest contender, Deborah Lewis-Virges, is at 13.32% with about 200 fewer votes than Dinan.
But Dinan warned that candidate placements could shift dramatically as the rest of the votes get counted.
“Watch closely,” he said. “In past races, candidates have been ahead. Then the last count gets in and they fall back.”
As 5 p.m. hit on Election Day and residents started getting off work, the line of people eager to vote grew and extended along the parking lot at the Lewis and Joan Platt East Palo Alto Family YMCA.
Many voters said they had to wait in line for over an hour to cast their ballots.
Several candidates for city council stayed onsite at the parking lot the whole day, handing out flyers as voters headed to the polls. A steady stream of voters was maintained from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., many candidates said.
“It’s very social, people are seeing their friends,” candidate Dinan said. “But it would be nicer if it was faster. I wasn’t expecting there to be a line at 10 o’clock because it’s the middle of the workday.”
Latino identity clash
Tensions heated up in the afternoon as one resident began angrily yelling at incumbent Romero. Another candidate, Lincoln, had his booth set up at the site of the altercation. He captured a video of a man hurling expletives at Romero just before 1 p.m., accusing him of not being a “real” Latino.
“Leave my city alone, you’re the worst thing to happen to here,” the man yelled. “You’re not even a Latino. You’re pretending to be a Latino but you’re just a white guy pretending to be Mexican.”
In an attempt to avoid the vitriol, Romero took refuge behind a tree, according to Lincoln.
Romero’s biography on his campaign website says his father immigrated from Mexico and the family spent time going back and forth between Mexico and the U.S. during his upbringing.
Candidates also had to be careful not to campaign within 100 feet of the polling place.
In 2020, Lincoln unsuccessfully sued East Palo Alto Mayor Antonio Lopez, accusing him of electioneering too close to a vote center. Lopez hired a taco truck to park outside a voting center and hand out free tacos on Election Day. The court eventually cleared Lopez of any wrongdoing.
“We don’t want another ‘taco gate,’” quipped Gail Wilkerson, one of the candidates.
Lincoln, who arrived at the voting center at 6:30 a.m., said he noticed a significant increase in voter turnout compared to 2022 when he also ran for city council. He attributed it to the fact that this year’s race coincided with the U.S. presidential election. But he also noted that East Palo Alto’s decrease in voting centers allowed voters only two locations where they could cast their ballots in person for the city council race.
“In 2022 they had another vote center at the high school on Myrtle Place,” Lincoln said. “Then they had the vote center here and then the vote center at the University Circle. This year there’s only two.”
The polling station at the YMCA was the only one on the East side of Highway 101, making it more convenient for most East Palo Alto residents.
“A majority of people are just not going across to other side and wait in traffic to get back over here. People are coming here because this is the only vote center on this side of the freeway,” Lincoln said.
In the evening, some voters frustrated with the long wait headed over to the other vote center across Highway 101 at University Circle. But they arrived to find that other people had the same idea and ended up having to wait just as long.
Ofelia Bello, a candidate who did not work the campaign trail but is still in the running, is nevertheless landing in the middle of the pack of preliminary vote counts despite doing little promotion compared to her competitors.
She made an appearance at the YMCA voting center on Tuesday, handing out flyers to incoming voters so they could become more familiar with her and why she is running. She explained that personal job changes and health matters in her family led her to put her campaign plans on the back burner.
“I dropped everything to just be with my parents and to support my mom through some medical things that were happening,” she said. “Between transitioning jobs, looking for a new job and the healthcare needs of my parents, my campaign had to be put to the side. I’ll drop whatever for the healthcare needs of my parents.”
Long way to go
The San Mateo County Registration and Elections Division reminded people that tallies in every race of the county in early days are not definitive as there are more ballots that need to get added to the counts.
In this year’s race, candidates have received a total of 8,066 votes so far. In the 2020 race when there also three seats up for grabs, ballots tallied up to a total of 19,048 votes shared between the candidates. Thus, the count appears to have a long way to go.
“There are still many ballots to count,” the county wrote on its website. “Vote by Mail ballots that were received on Saturday, Nov. 2 to Election Day and the days following have not been counted yet. This means that the election night results may be different from the final count.”
The next updated count is expected to be posted before 4:30 p.m. Thursday.
