The race for an open seat on Redwood City Council has become a nail-biter as two candidates are separated by a single-digit difference.
As of Wednesday’s updated ballot counts, incumbent Vice Mayor Lissette Espinoza-Garnica was narrowly trailing Planning Commissioner Isabella Chu by only four votes, according to the San Mateo County Registration and Elections Division.
Espinoza-Garnica is the only incumbent on the city council facing a challenger for reelection. Of the four spots up for election, one race is between two newcomers and the other two are uncontested and will be retained by incumbents Mayor Jeff Gee and District 4 councilmember Elmer Martinez Saballos.
Since Election Day, Chu’s lead has steadily declined with Espinoza-Garnica catching up to her.
“I’m obviously curious about what will happen and hope my razor-thin lead will hold,” Chu said in an interview Wednesday.
The first few batches of results after Election Day showed Chu with 52.5% of the votes compared to the vice mayor’s 47.5%. Now, two weeks later, an already close race has become even tighter as Chu now has 50.07% and Espinoza-Garnica is at 49.93%.
Chu is not surprised that her lead has shrunk considering the demographics of voters who turn in their ballots later.
“The trend is unsurprising and consistent with the 2020 race where older and more conservative voters tend to vote early and younger voters tend to vote later,” Chu said.
Younger voters also tend to lean more left, said Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University.
Chu also attributes her lead shrinking to ballots from younger voters getting processed later on if they are challenged for being improperly signed.
“Because younger voters do not sign things as frequently, those votes tend to require manual verification,” Chu said.
Espinoza-Garnica did not respond to requests for comment.
Espinoza-Garnica describes themself as a democratic socialist. They support progressive policies like prioritizing re-entry and intervention programs over incarceration and rent control, according to their campaign website.
While Chu acknowledges that she and the vice mayor have “considerable overlap” in their intentions, Chu considers herself progressive but not as left-leaning as Espinoza-Garnica.
“I would say we are equally progressive, but I am more moderate and pragmatic with a broader coalition,” Chu said. “I believe that you need a broad coalition in order to accomplish progressive goals.”
There are about 800 ballots left to be counted across the whole county in addition to 1,400 challenged ballots. Challenged ballots are those that require additional verification, such as those without a signature or have a signature that does not match the one on the voter’s file.
There were 4,655 total registered voters in District 3 of Redwood City as of September 2024. So far, 2,758 votes have been counted for this race, according to the division.
In the 2020 Presidential election, 3,251 ballots were cast for the District 3 city council race. Thus, it is possible that there are more ballots to be added to the total count.
Counts are expected to be updated again before 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The county has until Dec. 5 to finalize the results.
With only four votes separating the two, the race is still anyone’s game.
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