votersIn Mono County, the strong upset of incumbent Sheriff Ralph Obenberger made the big news of the night. Challenger, former LAPD Lieutenant Ingrid Braun of Mammoth Lakes, brought in 1,932 votes to Obenberger’s 1,085. The fate of that election was foretold in the earliest returns. Absentee ballots showed Braun with 730 and Obenberger with 436. All of the vote totals in this report are considered Semi-Official until all provisional ballots are counted, but those are few and not expected to change any elections.

In the Town of Mammoth Lakes, the three winners – predicted by many in Town – were John Wentworth with 812 votes, Shields Richardson with 742 and Colin Fernie with 685. Karen Siebert came in fourth with 596 votes. Following her were Cleland Hoff with 354, Elena Blomgren with 261, Deb Pierrel with 197 and Ken Murray with 93.

The challenger in the Assessor’s race, Barry Beck, came out the winner with 1,463 votes to Assessor Bob Musil’s 1,272. In Supervisor District 5, Stacy Corless gained 55% of the vote with 289 votes. Greg Eckert brought in 140. Kirk Stapp, 98. In Supervisor District 1, Larry Johnston won with 177 votes to Bill Sauser’s 128. The voter turn-out in Mono County was 54%.

In Inyo County, there was one local race of interest – Supervisor in District 1. The earliest vote showed Dan Totheroh ahead with 222 votes to David Tanksley’s 161 and Bill Stoll’s 46 votes. At the end of the evening, Totheroh had 311 votes; Tanksley, 259 and Stoll, 70. Elections officials said there were around 1400 more absentee ballots to count and so the complete final tally was not done election night. Clerk Kammi Foote said that she and her staff would process the ballots and hope to have a third update by Wednesday afternoon and finish by Thursday.

Voter turn-out for Inyo was very low – 9%. Clerk Foote said there were an unusual number of write-ins from Mickey Mouse to real people, indicating that voters apparently wanted more choices. There was only one local race that was contested.

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