Richmond council seat to be decided by lot draw Tuesday

Clerk will draw a name in luck-of-the-draw event to decide council District 2 seat winner

Weeks of phone calls, debates and pounding the pavement did not help in deciding the winner of Richmond’s City Council race, so on Tuesday morning that will be done by the drawing of lots.

Four weeks after Election Day, Andrew Butt and Cesar Zepeda are tied in the Richmond District 2 race, each with 1,921 votes.,

In accordance with city rules, City Clerk Pamela Chrisitan will conduct the election draw.

Butt had held a five-vote lead, but last Thursday after a Contra Costa County Elections Division’s ballot audit, that lead evaporated, and the two candidates ended in a dead heat.

The candidates will report to Richmond City Hall council chambers at 9 a.m. Tuesday, where their names will be written on a piece of paper, sealed in an envelope and placed in a bag. Both candidates, who can take a witness to the event, will shake the bag and the City Clerk will draw an envelope and reveal the winner.

The last time a Contra Costa County race ended in a tie was in 2018 when candidate Larry Enos beat Pete Petrovich by the roll of a dice in the Byron-Bethany Irrigation District Director 1 contest. In the 1992 Martinez school board race, Howard Barto and Bob Repicky also finished tied for the third and final seat. The school district drew lots and Repicky won.

Zepeda joked that since this was a race, it might have been good to decide the election by a foot race.

“No foot race, unfortunately not,” the former track athlete said.

For his part, Butt said he might consider asking for a recount this week if his name is not drawn. He has up to five days to do that after the election is certified, which was on Friday.

“I don’t know that it’s an automatic thing necessarily, but it would be the next thing I would think about,” he said.

The drawn-out process has been difficult, not knowing for so long who the next council member would be.

“If anything, it’s been frustrating that there’s been so much confusion around the finality of it,” he said. “It kind of feels like Groundhog Day. I mean, every day it’s like OK, this will be decided tomorrow. So I don’t know. Hopefully we’ll be done with this. This drawing will be done tomorrow and we can, you know, move on from there.”

To watch the historic event live, go to http://www.ci.richmond.ca.us/3178/KCRT-Live.