In the races for two Kern Community College District seats, one challenger has taken a lead over an incumbent by a modest margin and, in the other, the margin couldn't be more modest, based on very preliminary returns.
It's important to note the Kern County Elections Office pointed out that despite the processing of more than 56,000 ballots as of Wednesday morning, more than 30,000 remain uncounted with the total number left to count still uncertain as of Wednesday afternoon. Plus, ballots are still coming in by mail.
It turns out that's more than enough to sway the direction of either race, but especially for KCCD Area No. 3, which is entirely in Kern County, where only one vote separated the candidates based on the early results.
John Antonaros, the chief of staff for county Supervisor Zack Scrivner, led incumbent Nan Gomez-Heitzeberg, who currently represents Area No. 3, in the vote tally 2,838 to 2,837, per the results available as of 2:14 a.m. Wednesday, with 5,675 votes tallied.Â
In the race for Area No. 2, which encompasses portions of four counties — Inyo, Kern, Mono and San Bernardino — 13,692 votes had been tallied as of Wednesday afternoon, with each locale in various phases of processing its respective ballots.
For seat No. 2, Christina Scrivner leads by a relatively slim margin, 50.64 percent to 49.36 percent, over incumbent Jennifer Slayton, with an untold number of ballots to be counted across multiple counties.
Scrivner's early lead is largely on the strength of her results from the eastern part of Kern County, as she led locally with 5,553 votes to 4,190. In the other three counties in the race, Slayton held the edge; however, those tallies only counted for about 29 percent of the votes counted thus far.
