Edelheit has big lead in early returns

In Mariposa County’s only contested race in the Tuesday general election, District 1 supervisor candidate Lisa Edelheit was well ahead in her bid to win that seat.

The first unofficial tally showed Edelheit with 657 votes compared to 498 for Stanley Bissmeyer. Those two advanced to the general election after the June primary.

District 1 covers a large part of the eastern portion of Mariposa County, including Yosemite National Park, El Portal, Fish Camp, Wawona and Ponderosa Basin.

The first vote count is, in general, the bulk of the votes cast in the county. Each voter is mailed a ballot and most utilize returning those ballots early. The ballots are either mailed into the Mariposa County Clerk’s Office, taken there in person or placed in a drop box and are generally the majority of votes counted in the election.

Even those which are turned in on election day by the early afternoon at the clerk’s office are counted in the first round of results.

Edelheit, if elected after the voting is certified, will replace current Supervisor Rosemarie Smallcombe, who did not seek reelection after 12 years in office.

The other races of interest involving Mariposa County will likely not be known until Wednesday.

That includes the race for Sen. District 4, where Republican Alexandra Duarte is facing off against Jaron Brandon, a Tuolumne County supervisor and a Democrat. The district encompasses a wide swath of the Sierra Nevada as well as parts of the northern Central Valley.

That is an open seat after incumbent Sen. Marie Alvarado Gil finished third in the primary election. Alvarado Gil won the seat four years ago as a Democrat but switched to the Republican Party in mid-term.

In the first round of counting in Mariposa County, Duarte had 3,208 votes compared to 2,369 for Brandon, but those are just a small percentage of what will be the final vote total in the large district.

In the race for United States Representative in District Five, incumbent Republican Tom McClintock is facing Democrat Michael Masuda. That district, too, encompasses a large portion of Eastern California and final results will likely take some time.

McClintock, in the initial results on Tuesday night, had 3,137 votes compared to 2,471 for Masuda in Mariposa County.

As soon as the polls closed at 8 p.m. in California, national projections indicated Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, would handily defeat Republican Steve Hilton in the governor’s race. In Mariposa County, Hilton was ahead in the first vote count with 3,227 while Becerra had 2,425.

All of the votes around the state will likely take some time to tabulate, including the 14 ballot initiatives which were included in this year’s election.

All of that information will be included in more extensive coverage in the Nov. 12 edition of the Mariposa Gazette.