Without a recall or other election to help drive up voter interest, turnout is expected to be significantly lower for the April 19 runoff race for San Francisco's vacant 17th Assembly District seat.
Even with ballots being mailed out to registered voters in the city's eastern neighborhoods, the race is likely to be decided by less than half of those eligible to vote.According to the city's elections department, a little less than 35% of the 287,636 registered voters in the Assembly District cast ballots in the February 15 special election to fill the seat vacated by David Chiu, who in November became San Francisco's first Asian American city attorney.
District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney took the top spot with 36.45% of those cast, for a total of 34,141 votes based on the unofficial returns.Landing in second and advancing to the runoff was gay former District 9 supervisor David Campos.
He received 33,404 votes, or 35.66% of those cast.Turnout for the election was helped by the successful recall of three school board members on last week's ballot.