CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : Victory Margin Is Wide for Oakland Mayor

Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris handily won a second term at the helm of his beleaguered city, beating Ted Dang, the unknown political upstart who had forced him into a runoff and a long, bitter campaign.

Harris’ victory proves “that divisive politics would not work,” Sanjiv Handa, spokesman for the Harris campaign, said Wednesday.

With 100% of the precincts counted, Harris garnered 64.5% of the vote, to real estate developer Dang’s 35.4%.

In conceding late Tuesday, Dang warned about how polarized the city has become: “We have two constituencies--one that still doesn’t support him, and one that supports him very much. Except that one has the resources and the assets and the ability to help the city far more than the other sector.”

In other major contests in the state, former prosecutor Paul Pfingst won a convincing victory in the San Diego district attorney’s race, and voters in Fresno for the third time failed to embrace a school bond measure designed to build much-needed campuses.

Other races were not so certain, as county workers in California struggled to count what is expected to be a record number of absentee ballots. Several exceptionally tight races hang on the results of 500,000 to 700,000 outstanding absentee ballots.

A record 23% to 25% of the state’s voters weighed in without going to the polls Tuesday, according to the secretary of state’s office. By Wednesday, the semi-official voter turnout was pegged at 58.2%; it is expected to rise to 62% once counting is completed.

The outcome of two anti-homeless initiatives in San Francisco could be reversed by 10,000 ballots that have yet to be counted. Proposition M, which called for a ban on people lying or sitting on commercial district sidewalks between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., was voted down, 50.6% to 49.3%. Proposition N, which would require recipients of general assistance to spend the majority of the money on housing, won 51.2% to 48.7%.

Berkeley, where elected officials must win with 50% of the vote plus one, could face three runoff elections in the next 28 days, depending on the outcome of absentee balloting. One election was certain Wednesday. Voters resoundingly turned their backs on attorney and delicatessen co-owner Thomas Burcham, believed to be the first avowed Republican to run for the nonpartisan City Council in 25 years.

Measure F in the Bay Area city of Albany also hung in the absentee-voter balance Wednesday. Voters so narrowly approved the measure--50.6% to 49.3%, a margin of 83 votes--that uncounted ballots could reverse the outcome. If passed, the measure will give approval to a card room beneath the grandstands of Golden Gate Fields racetrack.