2 Stallings Backers Defy Odds to Pay for Election Recount

Seeking to “change” the outcome of last month’s San Diego City Council 6th District primary, supporters of candidate Valerie Stallings on Tuesday requested a recount that they hope will give her the 14 additional votes needed to oust Councilman Bruce Henderson.

In an admittedly long-shot attempt to preclude the need for next month’s runoff, two Stallings supporters formally requested a recount of the three-candidate Sept. 17 primary, in which Stallings drew 49.93% of the vote, falling just short of the majority needed for outright election.

Historically, local election recounts have altered only a handful of votes, and local election officials said Tuesday that Stallings’ chances of picking up the 14 ballots needed to surpass the 50% threshold are exceptionally slim.

The unlikelihood that a recount would produce a conclusive outcome, in fact, led Stallings’ campaign team to decide against requesting a recount itself.

However, the two Stallings partisans, who along with other supporters agreed to pay the estimated $2,500 cost of next week’s recount, decided that the 14-vote gap between her outright victory in the primary and a runoff was so small as to merit the attempt to erase it.

“This is so close that it’s worth a try,” said Pacific Beach businessman Bernard Sosna, who joined real estate agent Kathy Evans in asking the city clerk’s office for the recount. “Besides, I’d like to end Bruce Henderson’s political career sooner rather than later.”

Final official vote totals showed that Stallings received 9,601 votes, compared to 9,481 ballots (49.3%) for Henderson. Despite having narrowly outpolled Henderson, Stallings was forced into a runoff by the 146 write-in ballots drawn by City Hall gadfly Don Stillwell, whose votes kept her first-place total just below 50%.

The recount, in which ballot cards will be rerun through computers and absentee and write-in ballots counted by hand, will be conducted by the San Diego County voter registrar’s office next Monday.

Henderson, dismissing Sosna and Evans as a “developer and realtor” who are “very angry” at him for winning council approval of a Pacific Beach downzoning plan reducing future density, predicted that they are “wasting their time and money” in seeking the recount.

“But if they want to spend $2,500 on a recount instead of using it for mail or something else for her in the runoff, that’s fine with me,” Henderson said. “I’m actually encouraged by this, because it suggests they think she can’t win in a runoff.”