Latest results show Soto winning District 4 City Council seat, Middleton behind, Holstege tied

With vote counting continuing Wednesday in Riverside County, Naomi Soto said she and her team remain “cautiously optimistic” she will retain her lead in the closely watched race for the District 4 seat on the Palm Springs City Council.

As of early Wednesday, Soto, former chair of the city’s Measure J Oversight Commission, has 1,210 votes to Joe Jackson’s 1,108, giving her a 30% to 27% lead. David Rios is in third with 22% of the vote, followed by Ernest Ceceña at 13% and Anna Nevenich at 8%. Soto’s lead is slightly more than it was when votes first began to be announced Tuesday evening. David Ready, a former city manager, win the District 5 race after running unopposed.

Although the initial count from Election Night is complete, the results are still provisional with approximately 355,000 ballots outstanding, including 320,000 mail-in votes and 35,000 conditional voter registration ballots. Additionally, mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day have until Nov. 12 to be received and processed.

It is unknown how many ballots from the city of Palm Springs remain outstanding. The county expects to release its next updated results at 6 p.m. this evening.

In contests involving two current City Council members seeking higher office, the latest vote count shows:

• Christy Holstege and incumbent Assemblymember Greg Wallis in a 50-50 tie in a rematch for the State Assembly District 47 seat. As of 9:42 a.m., Holstege has received 77,782 votes to Wallis’s 76,642. In 2022, Wallis won the seat by only 85 votes.
  
  
• In the race for the newly-created State Senate District 19 seat, Lisa Middleton trails State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh. Bogh is leading 53% to 47% with 131,553 votes compared to Middleton’s 116,018.

City voters were also being asked to remove the 2037 sunset date on a 1% sales tax increase originally approved in 2011 — Measure J. Voters were in strong favor of the ballot measure seeking that approval by a margin of 72% to 28% with all 19 city precincts reported.

Measure AA asked voters to decide whether a new lease should be signed that would eventually see the city’s hospital — Desert Regional Medical Center — sell to Tenet Healthcare. That measure is also passing handily — 71.5% to 28.5% as of the latest results.

Seats on the Desert Healthcare District and Desert Community College District boards of directors were also on the ballot, as is the fate of a Palm Springs Unified School District bond.

In those contests, the school bond is passing, 74% to 26%; Ron Oden leads in his effort to retain the seat that represents Palm Springs on the college board of directors; and Greg Rodriguez is leading two opponents in an effort to win the seat on the Healthcare District Board in the zone that serves Palm Springs.

In a contest with national implications, as of 9:30 a.m., Democrat Will Rollins is essentially ties with incumbent GOP Rep. Ken Calvert for a seat in the US House of Representatives. With 70% of the vote counted, Rollins has 107,632 votes (49.5%) to Calvert’s 109,874 (50.5%). The District 41 race is a rematch of their 2022 contest.

The latest Riverside County data shows roughly 40% voter turnout. Political Data Inc. reported that 65% of the 29,300 ballots mailed out in the city were returned — a higher number than both the 2022 and 2020 General Elections.

A complete tally of the votes often takes weeks. The county has 30 days to certify election results and on Dec. 6 must send one complete copy of the general election returns to the California Secretary of State in an electronic format. State results need to be certified by Dec. 13.

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Editor’s note: This story is developing and will be updated as new vote totals are released. To track all the city races (and those throughout the county), head to this website. You can follow the State Assembly District 47 race here and the Senate District 19 race here.

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