Sacramento County Elections & Politics Digest

Shawn Farmer, Paul Sandhu and Rich Lozano return to office. Measure Q, a 1 cent sales tax, is projected to raise $3.6 million for Galt.

Council members Bret Daniels and Tim Schaefer both have new titles on the Citrus Heights City Council, following a vote Dec. 8.

Bobbie Singh-Allen, first directly elected Sikh mayor in America, will be sworn in for her second term as mayor of Elk Grove. She says upcoming tasks includes a new train station, improvements in Old Town, public safety, and affordable housing.

The U.S. Supreme Court is about to confront a new elections case, a Republican-led challenge asking the justices for a ruling that could increase the power of state lawmakers over elections for Congress and the presidency.

With 2,000 uncounted ballots left, Citrus Heights City Council Districts 2 and 5 remain uncalled. District 2’s Marijane Lopez-Taff has a small lead over Michael Nishimura. In District 5, incumbent Porsche Middleton leads by 30 votes over Natalee Price.

Pat Hume leads Jaclyn Moreno in this supervisorial district’s race by just 372 votes.

Three pro-union candidates won the Sacramento City Unified school board election. The newly elected members suggest that last spring's strike wasn’t the most important matter on parents’ minds.

Anna Rohrbough increased her lead to 282 votes over Folsom Mayor Kerri Howell. “It’s as official as it can get without being officially official,” said Rohrbough.

Four years after California began issuing nonbinary IDs, fewer than 16,000 people have asked the state for a little piece of plastic with their gender marked by an X rather than an F or M.

Energized by activism against COVID-19 education mandates, conservative parents all over California took aim at seats on local school boards. Some saw the makings of a GOP wave in a blue state. It didn’t happen.

The latest vote count totals released Nov. 22 show Mayor Porsche Middleton has regained a slight lead of 29 votes in the race for Citrus Heights City Council District 5.

Paula Villescaz (D) concedes and congratulates her rival, former assemblyman Roger Niello (R). He will be returning to the capital as a state senator for the recently redrawn District 6.

While LGBTQ candidates and their supporters celebrated several milestone victories around the nation in this year’s midterm elections, California quietly reached its own.

Attorney and law professor Michael Vargas will make history as the Elk Grove Unified School District’s first openly gay trustee. Vargas won the Nov. 8 election with 3,855 votes to parent Stephanie Spurlin’s 3,271. Current board members Gina Jamerson and Beth Albiani had no challengers.

The latest vote tally released Nov. 18 shows the race for the District 5 Citrus Heights City Council seat is now tied, with each candidate receiving the same number of votes.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will not seek to lead House Democrats for another term, but will remain in Congress.

Democrat Malia Cohen has won the race for California controller, beating out a Republican who gave his party its best shot in years to end its losing streak in statewide elections.

With not all votes counted yet, Bobbie Singh-Allen is projected to be reelected mayor of the city of some 179,000.

A week after the election and two California congressional races are neck and neck: Assemblyman Adam Gray (D-Merced) and Republican opponent John Duarte are evenly matched in the 13th District. And there’s still no clear winner in the 22nd, where Assemblyman Rudy Salas (D-Bakersfield) and Republican incumbent David Valadao (R-Hanford) are similarly tied. The races will determine whether the congressional majority is red or blue.

The top vote getters on Election Day continue to hold the lead in the races for seats on the Sacramento City Council and the Natomas Unified school board, according to an updated count.

As of Nov. 10, less than 30 votes separate Citrus Heights Mayor Porsche Middleton and challenger Natalee Price in the race for the District 5 council seat. Total votes counted so far only amount to 1,291, with 659 votes going to Middleton and 632 votes going to Price.

Watch the newly anointed second-term governor closely in 2023. He has been making unmistakable moves that signal his interest in the White House. Will he run or won’t he? Here are some of the reasons for both sides of the decision.

California Assemblyman Kevin Kiley has a 9,000-plus vote lead on Dr. Kermit Jones to serve District 3 in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Matsui, the victor with 65 percent of vote, will represent Elk Grove, downtown Sacramento, Florin, Galt and Rancho Murieta.

Billionaire Trump backer Peter Thiel leads the pack.

There are four Black candidates running for statewide office in California. Three are contenders to win as they fight it out with their opponents in the final days of election season.

Parents are paying closer attention to district decisions and are participating in California’s school board elections at a higher frequency post pandemic. According to Troy Flint, the California School Board Association’s chief information officer, the state has seen “an increase in parent engagement after [parents] got a peek into their school’s curriculum and attended online school board meetings.”

The latest campaign finance disclosures show more than $100,000 has poured into the various races for Citrus Heights City Council, far more than the city has ever seen in recent years—despite elections shifting to smaller council districts within the city instead of being held at-large.

As Jaclyn Moreno and Pat Hume look to replace Don Nottoli, the Board of Supervisors’ famous swing vote, advocates are trying to gauge what the candidates really think about two of the most pressing issues.

Malcolm X Academy, a full-time community homeschool in Oak Park, is modeled after the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School. The academy is part of the Neighbor Program, a pan-Afrikan socialist organization.

Paul Pelosi remained hospitalized Oct. 31 while recovering from an attack by the man who planned to take the Speaker of the House hostage and “break her kneecaps.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Khasigian will serve as the election officer for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Eastern District of California to oversee any handling of complaints of election fraud and voting rights abuses. Assistant U.S. Attorney Angela Scott will serve as the national security cyber specialist, responding to digital election threats.