California primary results: Ventura County Supervisor Kelly Long wins third term
The voters of Ventura County's 3rd District weren't looking for change.
When votes were certified March 29, Supervisor Kelly Long finished with a commanding lead in her reelection bid, with 61.8% of the vote, earning a third and final four-year term in office. Ventura County supervisors are limited to three terms, and Long was first elected in 2016.
Kim Marra Stephenson, a teacher and Camarillo resident who also challenged Long in her last campaign, was second with 33.77% of the vote. Heather Schmidt, a public policy consultant in Oxnard, had 4.43%.
Long appeared headed for victory from the moment the first returns were released on Election Night, showing her with more than 60% of the early mail-in votes. Her margin stayed about the same as in-person ballots were added throughout the night and in the following days.
"We are celebrating right now," Long said on Election Night from her campaign's watch party at Institution Ale in Camarillo, minutes after the initial results were released. "I just need 50-plus to win, and I’m very confident right now. This is very, very exciting."
If no candidate in the primary had exceeded 50% of the vote, the top two finishers would have advanced to a runoff in the November general election.
The 3rd District covers Santa Paula, Fillmore and Piru; most of Camarillo; and some areas in and around the northern and eastern edges of Oxnard.
County supervisor is officially a nonpartisan position, but Long is part of a 3-2 Republican majority on the board, and a win by Stephenson, a Democrat, would have tilted the board's ideological balance. The board oversees a county government with a $2.9 billion budget and about 10,000 full-time jobs.
In 2020, Long defeated Stephenson for the seat by a margin of 56% to 44%. Long widened her margin this time even though the latest redistricting in 2021 means the 3rd District is more heavily Democratic than it was when Long won her first two races.
Before 2021, the district included all of the cities of Camarillo, Santa Paula, Fillmore and Port Hueneme, plus some of the surrounding unincorporated areas. The new 3rd District lost Port Hueneme and parts of northern and eastern Camarillo, and added the eastern edge of the city of Oxnard as well as El Rio and Nyeland Acres, two unincorporated communities north of Oxnard.
Those changes took the district from 40% Latino to about 50% Latino, and from 42% Democrat to 47% Democrat. The office is nonpartisan and party affiliation does not appear on the ballot, but Stephenson won endorsements from many Democratic elected officials and Democratic Party organizations.
"When I talk to people, they don't look at my party," Long said two weeks before the election. "They just look at me as their supervisor."
Long outspent her opponents and also benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending by independent groups that supported her campaign. Through Feb. 17, Long's campaign had spent around $126,000, while Stephenson's had spent about $71,000, according to disclosures filed with the county.
One independent expenditure group funded largely by oil and gas interests spent about $193,000 campaigning for Long's reelection. Another group sponsored by the Ventura County Professional Firefighters union spent about $137,000 campaigning for Long.
Read past coverage: California primary election 2024: Meet Ventura County District 3 supervisor candidates
Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Results: Kelly Long far ahead in supervisor race
