Emeryville Election 2022: Tight Race for 2 Council Seats; Incumbents Ahead in School Board Race; Measure O Easily Passing

With mail-in ballots still to be counted, the Emeryville City Council race remains tight and appears too early to call.

Kalimah Priforce has an early +100 vote lead with Sukhdeep Kaur & David Mourra duking it out for the second seat. Brooke Westling & Eugene Tssui are running fourth and fifth respectively but their deficits are not considered insurmountable.

Westling verbally withdrew late in the race by asking her supporters to cast their ballots for Priforce and Tssui. Despite this, she’s currently only 37 votes from gaining a seat.

In a tight race, Priforce was likely buoyed by his persistent social media presence and fundraising efforts. He also channeled some star power by gaining an endorsement by CNN commentator Van Jones who has over 1 million Twitter followers.

The current turnout represents a fraction of registered voters in the city and we could potentially see large swings over the next couple days. Turnout at the 2021 Special Election was roughly 25% of the city’s roughly 7,000 registered voters and closer to 50% in the 2018 general election (there was no council election in 2020 when no challengers filed).

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School Board Incumbents Appear Cruising to Victory

The School Board election is going as expected thus far with the three incumbents maintaining double digit margins.

Challenger Brian Donahue, who positioned himself as the “change” candidate, is failing to convince voters that he was the right kind of change for the struggling district.

Donahue’s reputation likely dogged him and he was unable to leverage support from his obscure opinion blog and its sparse following.

Measure O Passes

Measure O, a city fronted Property Tax measure, is sailing toward approval needing only a simple majority.

The measure looks to offset revenues lost during Covid business lockdowns by increasing the transfer tax on properties valued over $1 million.

The county will push daily updates of the vote tallies via their website. We will update this post as results are updated.