A runoff contest between two candidates for the Marin County Board of Supervisors was incredibly close with barely one percentage point separating them.
According to unofficial returns from the county for Tuesday’s election, San Anselmo Town Councilmember Brian Colbert has received 50.71% of the vote, compared to Kentfield school board member Heather McPhail Sridharan’s 49.29%. The next updated vote count is expected to be released by 5 p.m. Friday.
Both are running for the District 2 seat, which encompasses the towns of Fairfax, Kentfield, Greenbrae, San Anselmo and Ross.
According to McPhail Sridharan’s campaign page on Facebook on Wednesday, she has been receiving many questions about the status of her campaign but is waiting for the registrar’s latest count “no later than 5 p.m. on Friday.”
“Thank you for all your well wishes and support so far,” she wrote. “We will keep everyone updated as we receive final results.”
McPhail Sridharan anticipated that at least 14,000 votes had yet to be counted.
The election went to a runoff because neither candidate won a majority of votes in the March primary, with Colbert securing 43% of the vote and McPhail Sridharan winning 26%.
Colbert, who earned a law degree from the University of Chicago Law School, has served on the San Anselmo Town Council since 2017 and served as mayor during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. If elected, he would be the first Black supervisor in Marin County.
McPhail Sridharan spent the pandemic years keeping educators on track as the president of the Kentfield School District board. Prior to that, she worked as director of business development for Ticketmaster. She studied political science and government at UC Berkeley and earned a master’s degree in Latin American Political Economy at University of Oxford.
While both candidates shared similar policy priorities, such as addressing housing issues and supporting wildfire prevention, their approaches reveal key differences.
Colbert’s endorsements included the Marin Independent Journal, the Sierra Club, the North Bay Leadership Council and several unions, including SEIU 2015 representing long-term caregivers and the North Bay Building Trades union.
McPhail Sridharan was supported by San Anselmo Mayor Eileen Burke, Larkspur Mayor Scot Candell and Vice Mayor Catherine Way, former Fairfax Mayor and Marin Water director Larry Bragman, the Marin County Young Democrats and Planned Parenthood.