Holstege trails Wallis, Priefer dominates IWD election

Editor’s note: A separate story discusses the turnout in the November 5 election and the Congressional District 41 race.

For the second consecutive election, the race for Assembly District 47 is very close. As of Saturday evening, Nov. 16, incumbent Republican Gregg Wallis leads his Democratic opponent Christy Holstege by 3,900 votes.

Wallis took the lead this week. At 6 p.m., Nov. 10, Holstege had a 283-vote lead over Wallis. She had the lead in the immediate days following the 2022 election, but Wallis eventually won by a total of 85 votes.

Riverside County voters supported Holstege, giving her 52.7 % of the vote and a 9,300 vote advantage. But San Bernardino voters, representing about 20% of the district, were overwhelming in favor of Wallis. He received 63.1% of their vote and a 13,100 vote advantage.

Holstege was expecting that the Presidential race would increase turnout and that would benefit her since 40% of the district is registered Democratic votes and 34% are registered Republicans.

While registered Republican outnumber Democrats by almost 12,000 voters in the San Bernardino portion of the district, in Riverside County, Democratic registration was nearly 29,700 greater than registered Republicans. But she did not garner sufficient Riverside County votes to offset Wallis’s San Bernardino County advantage.

The 72% voter turnout in Riverside County for this race also exceeded the 62% in San Bernardino County.

In the 36^(th) Assembly seat race, Republican Jeff Gonzalez has a 4,370-vote lead over Democrat Jose “Joey” Acuna. This District includes portions of Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties. The Riverside County voters gave Gonzalez a 4,800 lead. Acuna’s strength was in Imperial County.

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In the Idyllwild Water District election, there were four candidates for three seats. As of Saturday night, challenger Jessica Priefer has garnered 648 votes, far ahead of the other three candidates, all of whom are incumbents.

“I am very humbled and surprised and proud,” Priefer said. “I want to hear from the people. What changes do they really want?”

Board President Dr. Charles “Chip” Schelly is second with 456 votes.

Surprisingly, former Director Steve Kunkle, who resigned in October and vowed no interest in returning to the IWD Board, lead Board Vice President Peter Szabadi. Kunkle has 355 votes and Szabadi has 291 votes.

On Friday, Nov. 8, in a text message to the Town Crier, Kunkle reaffirmed his intention to decline the election results.

If he does decline a new position on the Board, Elisabeth Florer, of the County’s Registrar of Voters Office, said in an email that the Board will have to declare a vacancy. By law, it has 60 days to fill the vacancy, from the announcement of it.

Schelly said that the Board has been advised to wait until January to declare the vacancy, which means the appointment of the fifth director would be delayed until February or March. This appointment would be for two years. Then, an election would be held to fill the remaining two years of the term.