November 18, 2016
The final tally for Iranian-American candidates in last week’s US elections is two wins and eight losses, both wins by Democrats.
The first win was by the candidate seeking the highest office this year. Baltimore-born Cyrus Habib was elected lieutenant governor of Washington State with a substantial margin of 55 percent.
The second win was by Iran-born Ahsha Safai to a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Only Democrats have a chance in San Francisco, but they are divided into “moderate” and “progressive” factions. The moderates are what most of the rest of the country calls liberal and the progressives are what others call radical.
Safai is a moderate, and his victory was noted citywide because it changed the makeup of the Board of Supervisors from a 6-5 progressive majority to a 6-5 moderate majority.
Safai becomes the second Iranian-American to serve on the Board of Supervisors. More than a decade ago, Chicago-born Ross Mirkarimi won a seat on the Board as a progressive and stayed there until he was elected sheriff
On the other side of the city last week, Marjan Ghafourpour Philhour was an Iranian-Filipina-American running as a moderate against another progressive, Sandra Lee Fewer. That race involved 10 candidates. Philhour came in a very strong second. Only Philhour and Fewer were taken seriously by the voters.
More than a decade ago, San Francisco adopted what is sometimes called Instant Runoff Voting. Voters do not vote for one candidate. They rank the candidates on their ballots. The purpose is to make sure that the winner has an absolute majority of the vote.
After the first place choices are counted, if no candidate has a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is dropped and his voters second choices are counted and distributed among the others. This process is repeated until someone gets a majority.
This method of voting has been adopted by only a few other communities around the United States. The benefit is that it means the winner has the support of a majority while voters do not have to return to the polls for a second round of run-off voting, when the turnout is commonly much lower.
In Philhour’s race, this process required 10 rounds. The official tabulation by the San Francisco Elections Board is re-produced here. After the first round, Fewer had 38.7 percent of the vote and Philhour 35.4 percent. Philhour was behind by 3.27 percentage points. Over successive rounds Philhour narrowed that to 2.47 points. But in Round 10, when the last candidate was dropped, most of his voters went with Fewer and she won by 4.16 percentage points. Philhour had 47.9 percent of the vote to Fewer’s 52.1 percent.
In Safai’s district, there were five candidates. Safai led after the first round by 6.5 percentage points with 38.7 percent of the vote to progressive Kim Alvarenga’s 32.2 percent. Safai led every successive round and won in Round 5 with 53.0 percent to Alvarenga’s 47.0 percent.
In the election for which no results were available last week, Daniel Emilio Sabzehzar failed to win a seat on the Merced City Council in northern California. A college student, he came in second in a three-person race.
Here are the final numbers for the elections last week that involved Iranian-Americans.
Washington State Lieutenant Governor
D-CYRUS HABIB 1,418,573 54.8%
R-Marty McClendon 1,171,135 45.2%
US Congress Tennessee 3rd District
R-Chuck Fleischmann* 176,410 66%
D-MELODY SHEKARI 76,664 29%
I-Rick Tyler 5,091 2%
I-Cassandra Mitchell 5,069 2%
I-Topher Kerstung 2,489 1%
US Congress California 45th District
R-Mimi Walters* 127,705 59.5%
D-RON VARASTEH 86,894 40.5%
Orange County, California—State Assembly
R-Steven Choi* 78,855 60.9%
D-SEAN JAY PANAHI 50,632 39.1%
Orange County, CA—Newport Beach City Council
Will O’Neill 13,077 50.3%
Phil Greer 6,965 26.8%
FRED AMERI 5,980 23.0%
Orange County, Calif—Irvine City Council
VOTE FOR TWO
Christina Shea* 18,539 20.6%
Melissa Fox 16,134 17.9%
Anthony Kuo 13,732 15.2%
Farrah Khan 10,284 11.4%
SHIVA FARIVAR 6,368 7.1%
Anila Ali 6,212 6.9%
Dale Cheema 5,948 6.6%
Courtney Santos 4,147 4.6%
Mathew Ehorn 3,163 3.5%
Hyunjoung Ahn 2,867 3.2%
Ian Daelucian 2,706 3.0%
Merced County, Calif—Merced City Council
Matthew Serratto 1,216 50.1%
DAVID SABZEHZAR 798 32.9%
Denise Rossi 413 17.0%
Santa Clara County, CA—Los Gatos Union School Dist
VOTE FOR TWO
Daniel Snyder 5,106 34.4%
Stephen Dale Parsons 5,042 33.9%
MANI FARHADI 4,714 31.9%
City elections are non-partisan in California so no party identification is listed.