It may take days, or even weeks, to determine the winner in the 3rd District SLO County supervisor race.
As of 11:15 p.m. on March 3, challenger candidate Stacy Korsgaden held a narrow 304-vote lead over incumbent Supervisor Adam Hill, with 13,618 votes counted.
Thousands more are still to be counted in the coming days, according to SLO County Clerk-Recorder Tommy Gong. More than 20,000 SLO County ballots were not tallied on Election Day. Those remaining include mail-in ballots received after March 1 and provisional ballots.
Gong said he plans to share a more precise breakdown of the outstanding ballots on March 4 or 5. The next updated results will be posted on March 6. Given the narrow margin in the District 3 race, the final outcome may not be known for several days, Gong said.
"We'll complete the canvass as expeditiously as we can," Gong told New Times. "We're processing the mountains of vote-by-mail ballots that we have."
In 2018, a tight race for 4th District supervisor between Lynn Compton and Jimmy Paulding dragged out 17 days after Election Day. Gong said the public should expect something similar for the 3rd District this year.
Korsgaden, a Grover Beach insurance agent running for her first elected office, told New Times she was "very excited" to see herself in the lead on election night.
"I was pleased to see we were definitely in the running," she said. "I knew that I'd given it 110 percent. Whatever happened, I was going to be happy with."
Hill did not respond to a request for comment before press time.
The neck-and-neck results follow a venomous stretch of the campaign. After weeks of Korsgaden attack ads against Hill, the race ended with a salacious robocall to voters that feigned association with the KKK and expressed sarcastic support for Hill.
After the SLO County District Attorney announced an investigation into the robocall, longtime political activist and Hill critic Kevin P. Rice came forward as being behind it. The case is under review and no charges have been filed, the DA's Office said on March 3.
Korsgaden continued to disavow and condemn the robocall. She told New Times that she's met Rice but doesn't know him.
"It was just so ugly and unnecessary. It threw me for a loop," she said. "It was too bad that had to happen in the ninth inning of the campaign." Δ
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