Election results to be certified Tuesday

With only about 400 Maricopa ballots left to count, Tuesday’s election results likely will stand.

Christian Price is the city’s new mayor, and Bridger Kimball and Leon Potter will sit on the council for the first time. Incumbent Councilman Marvin Brown retained his seat.

Math is not on the side of fourth city council candidate Rosalin Sanhadja to move up in the rankings.

For Sanhadja to take over Brown, who came in third in the number of votes cast, there would have to be 500 ballots remaining, and each voter would have to pick Sanhadja while simultaneously not voting for Brown, said Pinal County Elections Director Steve Kizer.

“Based on the 400 outstanding ballots reported to me by the Recorder’s Office, it is mathematically impossible,” Kizer said. He estimated that once those ballots are counted, there will be roughly 4,300 ballots cast in the Maricopa primary.

Votes from the city’s all mail-in primary election will be certified by the Maricopa City Council at its regular meeting on March 20 and the winners will be sworn in at the June 5 council meeting.

Ballots in the drop box at city hall were taken Wednesday morning to the Pinal County Elections Office in Florence, where they will be counted by Friday, said City Clerk Vanessa Bueras.

Price, who began his campaign for mayor in early June, was ahead of City Councilman Carl Diedrich Tuesday night with 60 percent of the votes cast in his favor versus 39 percent for Diedrich with 3,851 ballots counted.

Kimball, who lost a bid for city council in 2010 by 39 votes, declared himself the top finisher at a gathering at The Native New Yorker with 29 percent of the 8,787 votes cast in his favor.

He was followed by Potter, 26 percent; Brown, 25 percent; and Sanhadja, 19 percent.

Joe Hoover, who announced his bid for mayor in late June and then pulled out in October, said he supported Price after he removed himself from the race.

“Christian has demonstrated great leadership and knowledge of the financial side,” he said Wednesday.