On June 30, the Riverside County Registrar of Voters issued the final results of the June 7 primary. And there were no surprises from the ongoing vote counts.
Below are the results of the races in the Riverside County June primary. The top two vote getters for each U.S. and state-elected position will be the candidates on the November election ballot. Regardless of party, the two candidates with the most votes will face off during the fall campaign.
For Riverside County elected positions, if a candidate receives more than 50% of the votes cast, they are declared the winner and will not have to battle in November.
District Attorney Mike Hestrin and Sheriff Chad Bianco exceeded the 50% threshold and are re-elected for their third and second terms, respectively.
Nearly 28.6% (375,610) of the 1.3 million registered voters in the county cast ballots in the primary. The Riverside County turnout for the March 2020 Presidential pPrimary was 43.2%. In 2018 for the last gGubernatorial pPrimary, turnout was 35.2% and, four years earlier, in 2014, only 22.3% of registered county voters came to the polls.

U.S. Representative District 41
Running in a slightly modified district, Republican Congressman Ken Calvert was the leading candidate with 48.2% of the votes. His November challenger will be Democrat Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor. Rollins and his fellow Democrat Shrina Kurani together garnered 69,406 votes, or 46.0%, which is slightly less than Calvert’s 72,700 votes.
In the closely balanced district, this indicates a close race in November between Calvert and Rollins. However, if Republican John Michael Lucio’s 6,880 votes switch to Calvert, he could easily protect his incumbency.

State Senate District 32
With only two candidates, both Assemblyman Kelly Seyarto (R) and Brian Nash (D) will be on the November ballot. For the primary, where the results did not affect the November ballot, Seyarto received 62.6% of the votes.

State Assembly District 47
Four candidates were in this race. Christy Holstege, Democrat from Palm Springs, garnered 50.2% of the vote followed by Republican Greg Wallis, who had 31.2% of the votes. Although Holstege collected more than 50%, that did earn her the seat until the November votes are counted.

State Assembly District 36
Assembly District 36 includes Garner Valley, Anza and Aguanga. Ian Weeks, a Republican and Eduardo Garcia, a Democrat, have received 91.4% of the total vote and will compete in November.

District Attorney
In a three-way race, incumbent Hestrin was re-elected as Riverside County District Attorney. He garnered 55.0% of the total vote, outpolling his two rivals, Judge Burke Strunsky and Lara Gressley.

Sheriff
Similarly, incumbent Sheriff Chad Bianco was re-elected with 60.7% of the votes over his challenger Michael Lujan.

Auditor Controller
Wildomar Mayor Ben Benoit and incumbent Auditor-Controller Paul Angulo will face-off in November. The final June 7 results showed Benoit receiving 46.0% of the ballots cast and Angulo with 39.4%.

Assessor-County Clerk and Treasurer Tax Collector
In two separate races, the incumbent office holder was not challenged. Peter Aldana, the assessor-county clerk, and Matthew Jennings, treasurer-tax collector, were elected and will not have to face any November challenge.

County Superintendent of Schools
Incumbent Edwin Gomez was unopposed.

County Supervisors
Two incumbent supervisors, Karen Speigel (2nd District) and Manual Perez (4th District, which now includes the Hill communities) were unchallenged and, therefore, re-elected.
Current Board of Supervisors Chair Jeff Hewitt of the 5th District had three opponents. Moreno Valley Mayor Yxstian Gutierrez outpolled Hewitt by slightly more than 1,000 votes. Neither candidate polled more than 35%. So the fall campaign will focus on gaining support from the voters of the other three candidates, especially Lloyd White’s who received 26.2% of the votes.

Judges
There were four Superior Court judgeships on the ballot:
Office #4
Deputy District Attorney Natalie Lough, with 49.8% of the vote and will face Senior Deputy District Attorney Amy Barajas (28.2%) in November.
Office #11, #26 and #28
In these three races, the top vote- getter garnered more than 50% of votes cast.
In the Office #11 race, Jay Kiel, a deputy district attorney, received 52.2% of the vote to defeat his opponent, Laura Garcia. In Office #26, Jason Stone has 63.9% of the votes and for Office #28, Kristi Kirk has 55.4%.

Statewide votes
Comparing the top two vote getters in the statewide races, Riverside County voters and the rest of the state were remarkably the same except for one second place candidate. In the race for controller, local voters favored Yvonne Yiu (D) over Malia Cohen (D). But Lanhee Chen was the top vote- getter in the county and statewide.
While Riverside County and statewide voters were in step on which candidates they favored, local voters were decidedly less Democratic than the rest of the state. For example, Newsom gained 55.9% of the state voters, but only 45.3% of Riverside County voters. And similar differences in the other races.