Latest Merced County results give boost to Democrats Adam Gray, Esmeralda Soria

A new batch of votes from Merced County vaulted longtime Assemblymember Adam Gray, D-Merced, to a slim lead over Republican businessman and farmer John Duarte of Hughson in their contest to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Merced County election officials cranked out results for almost 22,000 more ballots Monday evening, but thousands more ballots in Fresno and neighboring central San Joaquin Valley counties still provide the potential for some very close races from last week’s midterm general election to remain undetermined for at least a few more days.

The hotly contested Gray-Duarte race for the 13th Congressional District has been a squeaker since election night. With the latest Merced County results released just after 6 p.m. Monday, Gray had 51,203 votes, or 50.4%, compared to 50,442 votes or 49.6% for Duarte.

The 13th Congressional District includes all of Merced County and parts of west Fresno, Madera, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.

Merced County’s latest update shifted the lead from one candidate to the other, but only narrowly. Duarte had held a narrow lead over Gray since election night on Nov. 8, and prior to Monday evening’s update from Merced County held a razor-thin lead of 84 votes.

Also still undecided is one of California’s tightest contests for a seat in the state Assembly. That’s the race for the 27th Assembly District between Democrat Esmeralda Soria of Fresno and Mark Pazin of Merced. Soria, currently a member of the Fresno City Council, held a 625-vote advantage entering Monday over Pazin, the former sheriff of Merced County.

With Merced’s new tally, Soria’s lead had grown to 1,681 votes. Soria now has 38,228 votes, or 51.1%, to Pazin’s 36,547 votes, 48.9%.

About 40,000 Fresno County ballots yet to be counted

But in the district that includes portions of Merced, Fresno and Madera counties, there are lots of votes yet to be processed that could still swing the race. In Fresno County, officials estimated last Thursday that they still had about 40,000 ballots to process and count, and that doesn’t include late mail-in ballots that continue to arrive through the U.S. Post Office. Fresno County won’t issue its next update of vote counts until late Tuesday afternoon.

And in Madera County, where election officials last estimated they had almost 12,000 votes yet to count, a new update of results won’t come until Wednesday.

It’s unclear how many of the remaining uncounted ballots in the three counties come from voters within the 27th Assembly District.