Santa Barbara Votes: 2024 Primary Election Results

Das Williams Behind in Race for 1st District; Joan Hartmann Way Out Front in Race for 3rd; Election Results Still Too Soon to Call Tuesday Night

By Nick Welsh, Ryan P. Cruz, Jean Yamamura & Jack Magargee Tue Mar 05, 2024 | 08:11pm

For Nick Welsh’s Wednesday-morning election wrap-up, click here.

It’s the 2024 Primary Election, and in the biannual independent.com tradition, we’ll be using this page to deliver results, reactions, and reports from the various election night parties happening throughout Santa Barbara County.

Reporters Ryan P. Cruz and Jean Yamamura and intern Jack Magargee will be out and about to get the scoop while Executive Editor Nick Welsh writes these updates, which typically run late into the evening.

If you’re wondering who’s winning, who’s losing, what they’re saying, and what they’re drinking, this is the page to stay on all night long. Feel free to send feedback and your own reactions to news@independent.com.

Click here to jump to election results.

[Updated: Wed., Mar. 6, 2024, 8am]

Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann on election night, March 5, 2024. | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

With little suspense, enthusiasm, or genuine excitement over the presidential primary, Santa Barbarans appear to have stayed away from the polls — or, more precisely, their mailboxes — in record numbers; according to preliminary election returns, 20 percent of the county’s registered voters turned in their ballot in time to be counted by election night. That number will no doubt increase as ballots cast by mail and at the polls on Tuesday are tabulated.

Santa Barbara County Supervisor, 3rd District

While it remains way too early to call, it appears that incumbent 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann enjoys a commanding lead, having taken in 63 percent of the ballots counted thus far. To avoid a November run-off, Hartmann — a popular, soft-spoken environmentally minded two-term supervisor — needs 50 percent plus one. Republican challenger Frank Troise and declined-to-state challenger Jenelle Osborne (mayor of Lompoc) will need to win a big chunk of the uncounted votes to make up enough ground to force a November run-off.

On election night, Hartmann sounded very upbeat and much relieved, having been up at 3:30 Tuesday morning to get some last-minute electioneering in, participate in the supervisors’ meeting, and then call some Lompoc voters to make sure their ballots got cast. Given that the 3rd District functions at the key pivot point in the county’s political pendulum, it came as a big surprise that county conservatives, the oil industry, and fractured remnants of what had once been a Republican Party, never really mounted any kind of a serious campaign against Hartmann.

Santa Barbara County Supervisor, 1st District

Roy Lee at his election night party at his restaurant Uncle Chen’s in Carpinteria.

The big surprise — bordering on David and Goliath — is that that Carpinteria City Councilmember and restaurant owner Roy Lee enjoys a slight edge over political veteran and Democratic Party warhorse Das Williams in the race for the 1st District, which encompasses Carpinteria to Santa Barbara’s Eastside, with a few fingers in the city’s Westside as well.

Both charismatic and polarizing, Williams — who has served two terms on the board, not to mention a stint in the Sacramento state house and before that the Santa Barbara City Council — has been around long enough to step on enough toes to inspire an “Anybody but Das” coalition that congealed around Lee. Williams raised considerably more money than Lee, fielded more volunteers and paid canvassers, and has way more name recognition.

Given that late-arriving votes tend to trend heavily in favor of the Democratic Party’s preferred candidate and that Williams embodies the Democratic Central Committee — his chief of staff runs it — Williams could make up the difference as the votes roll in as he did four years ago when he came from behind to beat his challenger Laura Capps in a bitterly fought race. Still, the tightness of the race qualifies as a genuine election night surprise. The so-called smart money and prognosticators had been betting the election was Williams’s to lose.

First District Supervisor Das Williams on election night. | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

But at Pepe’s in Old Town Goleta, where Williams and his supporters were gathering, the mood was subdued. Williams himself was quiet and expressed hope rather than confidence that the tide would turn. He expressed pride in not having gone negative, as Lee had done. Lee bashed Williams as being “two faced” and a career politician who had forsaken Carpinteria, where both candidates live.

By contrast, the celebration at Leta’s, where the Democratic Women and the Women’s Political Committee — neither of which endorsed Williams — had set up shop, the mood was celebratory and happy, and raucously so.

The first results from mailed-in ballots in the 1st District race for county supervisor have Roy Lee ahead over incumbent Das Williams, 6,628 to 6,241, with about a quarter of the possible votes cast; the district has more than 56,000 registered voters.

“We’re watching the results, but there are a bunch of votes out there left to be counted,” Roy Lee said from Uncle Chen’s, his family restaurant in Carpinteria.

An hour later, 27 of the 42 precincts in the 1st reported in, keeping Lee ahead 51 percent to 48 percent, though in the polls alone Williams led with 194 votes to 155. Fifteen precincts to go.

The third wave of precincts brought in another 14, with Lee maintaining his lead — 7,176 votes to Williams’s 6,689 — by around 10:30 p.m. Lee’s election watch party at Uncle Chen’s had broken up hours earlier. His campaign manager Wade Cowper was catching a plane early the next morning to get out of town for a while, but was mulling the possible necessity of dealing with a recount should Williams decide to contest the close election.

By Wednesday morning, all 42 precincts were in and Lee’s lead had grown to 637 votes, but the final count of snail-mail ballots is still a week away.

“I am deeply humbled by the trust and support of our community,” Lee said. “While there are still ballots to be counted, we are confident that we will pull through. This victory is not about me; it’s about us and our shared vision for community-minded local government. I pledge to serve with integrity, openness, and unwavering dedication to the needs of all our residents. Thank you to the supporters, volunteers, and most of all, voters, for believing in our campaign and for entrusting me with this amazing responsibility.”

Presidential Primary

If turnout was low, that’s in part because the outcome in the presidential primaries felt so preordained as to have already been written in stone. Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination in Santa Barbara County — as in California and all the other Super Tuesday states — by an overwhelming 92 percent of the Democratic votes cast. By this writing, that number was 23,492.

Among county Republicans, Donald Trump won 10,231 ballots; translated, that’s 70 percent. Nikki Haley, Trump’s outspoken challenger and nemesis, got 25 percent, or 3,653 votes.

Even among the party faithful, these candidates didn’t so much as cross the finish line as they stumbled over it. Adherents of both parties — for differing reasons — grumbled, held their noses, and did their duty but with a singular lack of effervescence, joie de vivre, or passion. Robert Kennedy Jr. never qualified for the California ballot, so his level of support — certainly some — is not measurable.

U.S. Senate

In the race for U.S. Senate — to replace the now-deceased Dianne Feinstein — Democratic congressmember Adam Schiff from Burbank has a significant lead over a voluminous pack, but not enough to garner a legitimate majority of votes cast. Steve Garvey, the Republican first-time candidate and former Dodger great, snagged 26 percent, and Katie Porter, the take-no-guff populist Democrat from Orange County famous for the chalkboard she takes into battle, took 11 percent.

Schiff, who walked precincts in Santa Barbara County early on in his political career for Santa Barbara’s Jack O’Connell, made a point to highlight Garvey — a Trump supporter — in his campaign ads, building Garvey up by appearing to knock him down. The strategy has its critics, but it appears to have paid off.

Schiff and Garvey are now headed for a runoff in November’s general election.

Other Races

State Assemblymember Gregg Hart on election night | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

In other races, Congressmember and incumbent Democrat Salud Carbajal has snagged nearly 60 percent of the vote and is headed for a runoff against conservative Republican Thomas Cole, who picked up 33 percent, which appears to be roughly how many votes any candidate with a “R” next to their name can expect to get in a campaign in which no candidates do any campaigning and no reporters write anything about it. In federal races, the top two vote-getters face one another in November. Left out was peace activist Helena Pasquarella, a substitute teacher from Ojai who used the campaign to highlight the suffering endured by Palestinian civilians in Gaza after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. She snagged 7.4 percent.

The races for State Senate and State Assembly were similarly lopsided with Democratic incumbents Monique Limón and Gregg Hart beating their Republican opponents — Elijah Mack and Sari Domingues, respectively — by margins of two-to-one.

To the surprise of no one, 4th District supervisor and incumbent Bob Nelson appeared to have established an insurmountable lead over challenger Krishna Flores of Los Alamos, pulling out ahead with 74 percent of the vote.

Likewise, the City of Santa Barbara’s Measure A — which would amend the city charter to loosen the rules guiding which bids need to be accepted for city projects — was ahead by 75 percent. Currently, the low-bid proposal gets the award; under the new rules Public Works directors will be allowed to select bids based on a broader totality of factors, not just the low bid.

Proposition 1, the $6.4 billion mental health and homeless housing bond measure, was barely ahead in Santa Barbara County and throughout the state.

Election Results

Precincts Reported: 194 of 194 (100%)
Total Votes: 100,160 (Mail: 91,958; Poll: 8,202)
Total Registered Voters: 238,661
Turnout: 41.97%

Reporting Time: Final Certified Results