Chula Vista Mayor John McCann and Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre appear headed to a July runoff election in the race for District 1 county supervisor, based on early election returns after the polls closed Tuesday night.
McCann held a double-digit lead over Aguirre in the partial results. Once all the votes are counted, if one candidate pulls far enough ahead and receives at least 50%, they will win the election outright and be elected.
But McCann, reached by phone just after the first results, was looking to July.
“We know that we’re going to have a battle; Paloma is a good candidate,” McCann said Tuesday night. “But we have the momentum of coming in first by a large margin.”
In a statement, Aguirre thanked her opponents, nodded to national political turmoil and said she’s eager to keep pushing for the South Bay’s residents and most pressing issues.
“I’m humbled by the strong and energized to keep fighting to lower costs for working families, protect public safety in every community, and clean up the Tijuana River sewage crisis harming so much of South County,” she said.
The race had drawn a particularly large amount of campaign spending in of McCann, Aguirre and San Diego City Councilmember Vivian Moreno, who was trailing Tuesday night in a distant third.
The candidates are among seven who ran for the seat representing about 650,000 people — a seat that has been vacant for months since the unexpected departure of Nora Vargas earlier this year.
Their contest was wrapping up just as the four other supervisors were set to debate whether waiting for input on a proposed county budget from their new colleague warranted delaying its adoption.
Much is at stake in this multimillion-dollar special election, in part because the results will determine whether the current, evenly split county board will have a Democratic or Republican majority.
But the outcome may not be determined as the seven-way race wraps up Tuesday, if no candidate wins outright.
Jose Sarabe, of Chula Vista, knows the board faces big decisions ahead and wants a representative at the table as soon as possible.
“Voting is important in this election,” he said after dropping off his ballot Tuesday morning at City Hall. “We just had someone who resigned her position, and now we’re spending all this money on another election. We gotta vote.”
Vargas served as supervisor from 2021 to 2024 and was re-elected to the seat in November. She announced in December that she would step down before the start of her second term, citing “personal safety and security reasons.”
The seat represents the cities of Chula Vista, National City and Imperial Beach, the San Diego neighborhoods of Barrio Logan, Nestor and San Ysidro and the unincorporated areas of Bonita and parts of Spring Valley.
In addition to McCann, Aguirre and Moreno, the other candidates running included Chula Vista Councilmember Carolina Chavez, energy consultant Elizabeth Efird, businessman Louis Fuentes and Lincoln Pickard.
District 1 voters overwhelmingly chose voting by mail. By just after 10 p.m. Tuesday, election officials had counted 57,449 ballots — just 1,876 of them cast in person.
Though election officials said they cannot predict voter turnout, it’s typically lower in special elections.
“The turnout for a similar election, the 2023 Fourth Supervisorial District Special Primary Election, was 24.5%,” said Antonia Hutzell, a spokesperson for the county Registrar of Voters.
By late Tuesday night, it stood at 15.4%. That number would continue to rise as more ballots are received and processed.
Barbara Jacquot, of Chula Vista, dropped off her ballot at City Hall Tuesday morning. She wants to see her mayor take higher office and believes the Republican has the experience to grow South County as he has led the county’s second-largest city.
“I voted for McCann because he’s a strong mayor,” she said. “I just really see the development of Chula Vista going in the right direction, especially here on the west side where I live.”
Alex Guerra, of National City, feels the stronger leader is Aguirre, a Democrat.
“She’s been the most vocal on issues like the sewage crisis,” he said after dropping off his ballot at the National City Public Library. “Just because the sewage odors aren’t impacting me doesn’t mean I don’t care. I went to San Ysidro High (School) and still have friends there, and I feel for them.”
National City resident Martha Letezma, who also ed Aguirre, said she appreciated the candidate’s fight to end the sewage crisis, too. “We need someone like her at the county level,” Letezma said in Spanish.
Candidates and their ers had less than three months to make their case to voters, but they’ve made the time count. Since January, dozens of mailers have been sent, and millions of dollars have been raised and spent — most by committees backed by two labor unions.
The race is nonpartisan, but the incoming supervisor will break the 2-2 deadlock between the two Democrats and the two Republicans on the current Board of Supervisors.
