Some insight into a possible upset San Diego's district 3 supervisors race. We will speak with the San Diego climate scientist back from the climate change summit in Marrakesh. This is KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Maureen Cavanaugh it is Monday, November 21. Our top story on midday edition. It seems you cannot take anything for granted during this unusual election season. Last week it appeared San Diego County supervisor Dave Roberts had secured a narrow victory against challenger Kristin Gaspar. The provisional and mailing ballots has turned that around. Now Kristin Gaspar has taken the lead by nearly 300 votes. Joining me is Allison St. John. Welcome. Glad to be here. What exactly has happened since election night. Did this mounting vote count for Gaspar come out of nowhere? It has surprised some people even in fact Kristin Gaspar his own campaign said the late about counts tend to drift to the left of the more democratic side. However in this case she has gained by for a 500 votes virtually every day and the campaign is saying that the campaign spent a lot of money in the last three weeks before the election so many of those late absentee voters may have been swayed by that campaign. It is a bit of a surprise but there may be some good explanations for a. To we know how many votes are left count? There are about 330,000 people registered to vote in that district and we have had almost 200,000 come in and there are about 30,000 left to go. We still have a large number to go and it is important to remember that many of those will be the provisional ballots which are the hardest account and therefore tend to get counted at the end. Those ballots are likely to drift back to the left again so there could be sort of a tail and of advantage to the Roberts campaign. Dave Roberts is an incumbent. If he did lose this election this would be extraordinary. It would be very precedent-setting in a way. For more than 20 years we have not seen an incumbent County supervisor be unseated in San Diego County. They tend to build up a lot of favors and have very strong campaign war chests and it has been virtually impossible to unseat a supervisor unless somebody retires. The power of incumbency here has been threatened. One of the campaigns saying? Any word from Kristin Gaspar about why things are turning away. I spoke weekly with Jason Roe who is her campaign manager and he said that he felt the money not just from his campaign -- because much more money was spent on this race by independent packs the regional Chamber of Commerce and the Lincoln club. Both through hundreds of thousands of dollars into that race. He felt they probably came in rather late. There were some late mailers and late TV ads attacking Roberts. It is possible therefore that some of the late voters were being influenced by that last-minute wave of campaigning. Not so much for Kristin Gaspar but against Roberts. Any word from the Roberts campaign as to this turnaround in the vote count? They are just saying let's wait and see. It is true that even though the trend is definitely going in Kristin Gaspar's wife the provisional ballots at the end remain to be seen. If she can maintain about a 52% lead in the next day or two as the last absentee ballots come and she may have enough to withstand any kind of last-minute the Canton in favor of Roberts. You say that the spending for Gaspar's campaign came in rather late. How much money was spent on this campaign? Roberts raised almost 400,000 and Gaspar raised almost 500,000. Those were pretty substantial campaigns. When you look at the regional Chamber of Commerce raising 300,000 and the Lincoln club racing about 400,000 -- this was an unprecedented amount of money for a County supervisor seat. I think that is because this particular seat will be very important in coming years. I want to talk to you about that. If Gaspar wins the board would be entirely Republican. Dave Roberts is and was the only -- Democrat on the Board of Supervisors. Should we expect any changes on the where the board operates? I think we have seen Dave Roberts really try to work very hard with his colleagues. He has decided not to be one of those loan voices on the board that does not really have any power to get anything done and he has in fact sort of played long a lot with the board. He has made some contributions and one many friends and supporters in his district. However the changes that we might see if we get Gaspar in who is supposedly a moderate Republican -- I guess we will see -- it is likely to be fairly subtle in the immediate future. I think the thing to look at is the fact that in two years and in four years the term limits will kick in for the first time and I County board and so there's a couple of districts which are almost certainly going to turn Democrat within the next four years. If you have the swing seat -- that is always the goal and the County board -- be Republican that could affect all sorts of decisions on how they spend their $500 billion budget on whether they put more towards benefits like food stamps or whether they keep a very very healthy surplus and build themselves a nice new building or whether they -- the other thing that I think to give her some credit Kristin Gaspar said she would like to see if she should -- if she could tighten the budget spending and improve things for tax errors. And how that would affect programs for our indigent population and underprivileged population. That is the kind of thing that we might see down the line. I have been speaking with Allison St. John. Thank you. Thank you.
Kristin Gaspar's lead over incumbent Dave Roberts continues to grow in their race for a North County seat on the Board of Supervisors, according to a count updated Monday by the Registrar of Voters Office.
Gaspar, the mayor of Encinitas, trailed by around 2,200 votes after election night counting but has been gaining ground ever since.
As of Monday evening her margin was 368 votes ahead out of 205,440 ballots cast. Around 164,000 absentee and provisional ballots still need to be tallied countywide.
Gaspar's campaign spokesman, Jason Roe, told City News Service last week it could take another week before a winner is determined — and if the margin is less than 500, a recount could be in order.
"We have been cautiously optimistic since election night," Roe said. "We expected to close the gap."
He said most of their spending was late in the campaign, which is reflected in the post-election night count.
Gary Gartner of the Roberts campaign told CNS, "We are monitoring the results closely. We're optimistic that in the final count, Supervisor Roberts will win the election."
He said they will wait until the final numbers are in before deciding whether to seek a recount.
Provisional ballots, which are likely to be the last votes tallied, traditionally tend to lean left, so Roberts could pick up more votes in the last few days of counting.
