Final votes tallied: Hernandez, Tovias, Easley, Rice to be sworn in December 10
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
Published: December 05, 2012
The final vote has been counted and the lineup remains the same for the Santa Paula City Council, while there was never any question who would be elected to the offices of City Clerk and City Treasurer.
Ventura County’s top election official, Clerk Recorder/Register of Voters Mark Lunn released the final vote Thursday afternoon, the result of the November 6 Presidential Election. When the polls closed on Election Day there were approximately 63,000 mail-in and provisional ballots left to count, a process that took several weeks.
The final results for the Santa Paula City Council race adhered to the trend seen early in the returns, with first time candidate Martin Hernandez holding on to first place with 3,871, 31.08 percent of the total. Hernandez, chief of staff to Supervisor Kathy Long, ended up with 582 votes more than his closest competitor, incumbent Jim Tovias.
Tovias, an insurance agent, was elected to his second term on the council with 3,289 votes, 26.40 percent of the vote. Coming in third was incumbent Fred Robinson, the longtime CEO of The Arc, a nonprofit organization offering services to the development disabled. Robinson’s try for a second council term was thwarted with his third place ranking with 2,832 votes, 22.72 percent of the total.
Duane Ashby, a corporate trainer and financial analyst who was narrowly defeated for the council two years ago, came in fourth with 2,436 votes, 19.56 percent of total votes cast. The City Council race showed 30 voters preferred a write-in candidate, 0.24 percent of the total 12,456 votes that were cast in the council race.
The race was no race for City Clerk and City Treasurer: Judy Rice was elected to her second term as City Clerk with 6,085 votes, 97.74 percent of the total. There were 141 write-in votes, 2.26 percent of the total. Voters marked 6,226 ballots for the City Clerk.
Sandy Easley, the city’s Interim Finance Director, won her fourth term as City Treasurer 6,145 votes, 97.85 percent of the total. There were 135 write-ins, 2.15 percent of the total 6,280 votes cast for the seat.
Throughout Ventura County 330,419 of the 426,948 registered voters cast ballots for a voter turnout of 77.39 percent. About half of all ballots cast were mail in.
Hernandez, Tovias, Easley and Rice will be sworn into office at the December 10 City Council meeting.
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