Democrats likely to keep majority on Pima County Board of Supervisors

With the fate of the current Democratic board of supervisors majority on the line, early results gave District 3 Democratic incumbent Sharon Bronson an edge over her Republican challenger Kim DeMarco.

With nearly 48,000 ballots counted, Bronson maintained a lead over DeMarco, decreasing the possibility of a new Republican majority.

Nevertheless, DeMarco held out hope for ballots yet to be counted turning the race her way.

“We are feeling pretty good still,” she told the Star on Tuesday night. “These are early ballots and they tend to be a little more Democrat heavy. We are still very, very optimistic and I still think that we can pull this off.”

Her fellow Republican Steve Christy, was on his way to an overwhelming win against Green Party challenger Josh Reilly in District 4.

Christy said he would have preferred to work with a Republican majority but was confident he could work across the aisle with Democrats.

“I think we’ve got the momentum certainly and I think the reason we do is because this really is about keeping Pima County on the same track we are on now, bringing jobs into the community, making government accountable while working together with all the jurisdictions,” Bronson, who was first elected in 1996, told the Star.

Registered Democrats in District 3 outnumber registered Republicans by more than 12,500. In 2012, Bronson beat her Republican challenger Tanner Bell by nearly 10 percentage points.

The District 3 race saw a massive influx of outside fundraising in its final weeks, with tens of thousands of dollars spent in support of both Bronson and DeMarco.

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Our Southern Arizona, which was spending some of its money to get Bronson re-elected, and America Revived PAC, which was in DeMarco’s corner, had about $300,000 to spend, rivaling the amounts raised by both candidates’ campaigns. Officials from both parties described the level of spending as “unprecedented.”

Our Southern Arizona was backed in part by local real estate mogul Don Diamond and America Revived was supported by other local businessmen, like Jim Click and William Assenmacher, each of whom contributed $25,000 to the $122,750 war chest, according to recently filed campaign finance reports.

In District 1, the only other competitive race, Democratic challenger Brian Bickel was at Republican incumbent Ally Miller’s heels as of 10:35 p.m.

With nearly 77,000 ballots counted, Miller was up by a little over 3 percent in the heavily Republican district. Republicans make up nearly 39 percent of registered voters and Democrats are just shy of 31 percent.

The votes left to be counted, including in-person votes and mail-in ballots dropped off at polling stations, tend to lean Republican and could lead to a larger spread than early results showed, Bickel said.

Nevertheless, Bickel said the fact that he gave Miller a tighter race than John Winchester did in the August primary shows that many district voters are tired of what Bickel described as his opponent’s contentious relationship with other board members.

Miller did not return a call for comment.

District 5 Democratic incumbent Richard Elías enjoyed a big lead over Green Party challenger Martin Bastidas. District 2 Democratic incumbent Ramón Valadez faced no competition .