Brian Colbert appears to leads Heather McPhail Sridharan by just 617 votes as of Friday in the runoff election for the District 2 seat on the Marin County Board of Supervisors.
According to the new count, Ian Sobieski, Steven Woodside and Melissa Blaustein lead the pack for three open seats on the Sausalito City Council.
District 2 encompasses the towns of Fairfax, Kentfield, Greenbrae, San Anselmo and Ross. This is a runoff between Colbert, who serves as a member of the San Anselmo Town Council and McPhail Sridharan, who serves on the Kentfield school board. Neither candidate won a decisive majority in the March contest.
“With the recent release of the updated election results, my lead in the race has essentially remained unchanged,” said Colbert in an email Thursday. “I am increasingly confident that my advantage is very unlikely to change. I have not heard from my opponent, but I have received a number of congratulatory messages from local elected officials.”
According to McPhail Sridharan’s campaign page on Facebook, she has been receiving many questions about the status of her campaign.
“Thank you for all your well wishes and support so far,” she wrote. “We will keep everyone updated as we receive final results.”
As of Friday, there were 5,440 votes left to be counted in the county, according to the registrar of voters, with 140,965 ballots already processed.
With the ballots of 82% of the 5,576 registered voters in Sausalito counted as of Friday, the contest for the three open seats on the city council appears to show leads, according to a statement from the Marin County Elections Department.
Councilmember Sobieski, who is currently serving as Sausalito’s mayor, appears to be leading with 23.5% of the votes. Former county counsel Woodside followed closely with 22.5%, and Councilmember Blaustein held onto 21.90% of the votes counted. Former Sausalito city councilmember Sandra Bushmaker has less support with 16.7% of the vote, while Jacqueline Amrikhas trails with 15.4%.
Sobieski is a Stanford University-educated entrepreneurial investor and chair of the Band of Angels, a startup investing group. He was first elected to the council in 2020.
Blaustein was also first elected in 2020 and served as the city’s mayor last year.
Woodside has previously served as county counsel for Marin, Sonoma and Santa Clara counties and currently chairs the board of the nonprofit Call of the Sea, which built a recreation of a tall sailing ship for educational use called the Matthew Turner.
According to a statement from the registrar of voters, the California Secretary of State’s estimated turnout for Marin County as of Nov. 15 is 83.7%. If Sausalito’s turnout ultimately ends up approximating that of the county, there are not enough remaining uncounted ballots to dislodge any of the top three vote-getters.
The next update from the Elections Department will be announced by 5 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 18. Official final election results will be released Tuesday, Dec. 3.
