2 of 3 Wards Decided in Riverside Council Races

The bitterly waged runoff election for three open seats on Riverside’s City Council moved toward a photo finish Tuesday night, with one race too close to call and the two others decided by small margins.

The protracted 10-week race for the seats of retiring incumbents Chuck Beaty, Joy Defenbaugh and Laura Pearson began when none of the candidates in Wards 1, 3 or 7 won more than the 50% majority needed in the November general election.

In Ward 7, Steve Adams, a retired police officer, won over Terry Frizzel, a former Riverside mayor and council member, by a 177-vote margin. Thirty-six ballots remain to be counted in the ward.

But the Ward 1 race between Dom Betro, who directs a family-services organization and owns an Italian restaurant in Riverside, and Paul Fick, a deputy district attorney, remained too close to call, with only 12 votes separating the candidates and 70 ballots to be counted.

In Ward 3, Art Gage, a business consultant, was ahead by 86 votes against Mike Goldware, a contract lawyer and Riverside Unified School District board member. Fifty ballots remained to be counted for the ward, but both Gage and Goldware said they felt the race was over.

Fick said he wouldn’t ask for a recount unless he thought there were irregularities in the machine count.

“They put the ballots through a machine and it counts them,” Fick said. “If it’s close, they shuffle them and run them through again. At this point, I don’t think a recount will be an issue.”

Gage had campaigned for fiscal moderation, while Goldware focused on managing freight traffic through the district, which encompasses residential neighborhoods and a semi-industrial business area.

In the Ward 1 race between Betro and Fick, the campaign turned on the question of whether council members should view the post as a full-time job. Betro insisted that he would continue to run his business if elected, while Fick pledged to leave the district attorney’s office if he won the seat.

In Ward 7, the battle initially focused on economic growth and development policies, but also brought forward the simmering issue of tension between the Riverside Police Department and the local community.

Five years ago, Riverside police officers killed Tyisha Miller, a young African American woman whom they found asleep in a car with a gun in her lap. The officers fired a total of 24 shots at Miller, claiming later that she had woken abruptly and reached for the gun.

In 2000, facing an investigation from the state attorney general’s office, the City Council established a commission to review complaints against the police, and the fate of the panel has become a hot campaign issue.In December, the Riverside Police Officers Assn. endorsed Adams, giving him more than $10,250 in cash and in-kind donations, as well as Fick, who received nearly $13,000, and Gage, who was given $11,000.

The association said that the candidates were selected on the basis of their crime policies, but they were also asked what they thought of the review board, according to Patrick McCarthy, the association’s president. All three candidates endorsed by the association have expressed a willingness to reconsider the commission’s future, though none have said they would vote to abolish it any time soon.

Adams also received endorsements from incumbent council members Nancy Hart, Chuck Beaty and Ameal Moore. Beaty and Moore also endorsed Paul Fick in Ward 1, along with incumbents Ed Adkison, Joy Defenbaugh and Frank Schiavone.

The spirited nature of the races may have driven up turnout in the runoff. Turnout historically goes up about 10 percentage points in Riverside’s mail-only runoffs, but nearly twice as many people -- 3,924 -- cast ballots in Ward 7 for the runoff as turned out to vote in November.

Participation jumped by about 30% in Wards 1 and 3, to a total turnout rate of about 36%. Most of the ballots were sent in last week, officials said, suggesting that voters made their decisions early and weren’t swayed by last-minute campaigning.

Election workers deployed to monitor five ballot drop-off locations set up throughout the city found themselves with little to do but chat to passersby.

“It’s been dead,” said Sherry Morton, a city employee who took in fewer than 50 ballots at City Hall.