Sacramento Democrat refuses to concede loss in mayoral race despite bipartisan consensus

A Democratic mayoral candidate who campaigned to govern one of California’s biggest cities is refusing to concede defeat. 

Flojaune Cofer and California Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, both Democrats, have spent months battling it out to become Sacramento’s next mayor. 

With the country’s most populous state consistently being among the slowest to count ballots, it wasn’t until three weeks after Election Day on Tuesday evening that one of the candidates, McCarty, declared victory.

His celebration came after Sacramento county officials released the latest batch of election results Tuesday afternoon, showing McCarty garnering 95,310 votes to Cofer’s 92,678.

With roughly 2,587 remaining ballots to be counted as of Tuesday, Cofer has refused to end her mayoral hopes, despite a bipartisan polling group saying it is mathematically impossible for her to win the race, even if all of the remaining ballots are votes for her.  

Paul Mitchell, vice president of bipartisan voting data firm Political Data Inc., told the Sacramento Bee that his group’s analysis of the data proved McCarty was the final winner. 

Yet Cofer has held firm she will not concede until all votes are tabulated. 

“I am deeply committed to the democratic process and to amplifying the voices of every Sacramentan. That’s why I’m waiting until every single vote is counted before making any statements about the outcome of this election,” Cofer said in a post to X on Tuesday evening. 

The two mayoral candidates sparred over a number of issues during their battle to replace outgoing Mayor Darrell Steinberg. During a debate in September, Cofer confirmed she was on the left of McCarty on several policies, voicing support for shifting police funding to violence prevention programs and endorsing city-sponsored homeless shelters and services at parks.

Steinberg congratulated McCarty after the assemblyman declared victory during a Fox News appearance Tuesday evening. Saying he had endorsed McCarty, Steinberg said he would be “great” in the role of mayor.

It’s uncertain when every ballot in the mayoral race will be counted. However, California has a history of drawn-out election results. 

Roughly one-third of ballots were uncounted after election night in 2020, and the state was making updates to its count a full month after Election Day that year. 

Meanwhile, other heavily populated states, such as Florida, completed tabulating ballots four days after Election Day this election cycle and reported the results of nearly every vote within a few hours of polls closing four years ago. 

Commenting on another close California race yet to be called, Florida’s governor on Wednesday slammed the state for its slow results process.

“We are on the eve of Thanksgiving and California still hasn’t finished counting votes,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (D-CA) complained in a post to X. 

The Golden State’s shift away from in-person voting in recent years has significantly contributed to the drawn-out process. 

California enacted a law in 2021 to make universal mail-in ballots permanent, making it the eighth and largest state to do so.

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“In the last three elections, six to eight times more voters voted on the mail-in ballot than in person,”  Stephenie Shea, San Bernardino County’s registrar of voters, told the San Bernadino Sun earlier this year. “That requires additional time than in-person ballots.”

Another state law gives election officials until Dec. 3 to complete the vote count, auditing, and certification. California also accepts mail-in ballots up to seven days after the election.