Kevin Jeffries Maintains Slim Lead Over Bob Buster In Supervisor Race

The narrow lead outgoing Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries held over Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster in the race to represent the county's First District was still holding today.

The latest ballot count from the Nov. 6 general election had Jeffries, R- Lake Elsinore, with 53,199 votes compared to 52,387 for Buster, or 50.38 percent to 49.62 percent.

[Click here to see the latest results on all the races pertaining to Lake Elsinore and Wildomar.]

The Registrar of Votes' website noted that all vote-by-mail ballots had been processed, but 60,000 provisional and 9,000 damaged ballots had yet to be tabulated countywide.

Another updated vote count is scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday.

Jeffries said he was not yet ready to declare victory, and Buster was not yet prepared to concede as of Monday.

This was the first time Buster had been forced into a runoff election since his inaugural campaign in 1992. The Harvard-educated citrus farmer failed to win more than 50 percent of the vote in the June primary.

Campaign filings showed both Buster and Jeffries spent six-figure amounts on their races, though Buster raised 60 percent more in political contributions.

Buster's camp underscored a record of trying to improve the local economy and save the county money through public employee pension reform and the acquisition of federal grants for transportation projects that employee local workers.

Jeffries criticized Buster's six-figure pension and vowed that if elected, he would work to convert all the supervisors' retirement plans to self- funded 401(k)s. The property management firm owner also blasted the incumbent for supporting some aspects of  Gov. Jerry Brown's 2011 "realignment" initiative that resulted in many state responsibilities being shifted onto counties -- without assurances for long-term funding.