Politics & Government
Cole and Crenshaw Headed for San Diego City Council Runoff
Blanca Brown, vice president of the Lemon Grove School District, finished with 9 percent of the vote.
Myrtle Cole and Dwayne Crenshaw will meet in a runoff in a special election for the District 4 City Council seat in southeastern San Diego, according to vote counting tonight.
With all 54 precincts counted, Cole, a former police officer and now a United Domestic Workers coordinator, led with 32.87 percent of the vote.
Crenshaw, who is on leave as executive director of San Diego Pride and a longtime community activist, had 15.31 percent.
Because no candidate received the majority needed to win office outright, a runoff will be scheduled in late May or early June.
The district covering the city's southeast has been vacant since Jan. 2, when Tony Young resigned after six years to become chief executive of the San Diego and Imperial Counties chapter of the American Red Cross.
Young left office just after redistricting took effect. Because he was re-elected in 2010, the District 4 boundary at that time was used to determine which voters choose his successor.
Barry Pollard, an electronics industry employment recruiter, was third with 11.36 percent of the ballots cast, followed by pastor and developer Ray Smith (8.79 percent), teacher and businesswoman Blanca Lopez Brown (8.31 percent), administrative coordinator and educator Sandy Spackman (8.16 percent), City Council policy advisor Bruce Williams (7.46 percent), community volunteer Tony Villafranca (4.78 percent) and lawyer Monica Montgomery (2.94 percent).
There are approximately 1,880 mail and provisional ballots still to be counted, according to the San Diego County Registrar of Voters.
