Former Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, slightly expanded his lead Wednesday over state Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, in the neck-and-neck race to fill a soon-to-be-vacant seat on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors.
Medina and Roth are vying for the District 1 supervisorial seat up for grabs with the year-end retirement of decade-long Supervisor Kevin Jeffries of Lakeland Village.
Roth, D-Riverside, had enjoyed a nearly 10% margin over Medina on election night last week, but that spread compressed daily until the vote tabulation published by the Office of the Registrar of Voters Tuesday night, which showed Medina in front by 0.3%.
Figures released Wednesday evening indicated Medina now holds an 1,193-vote lead, or nearly a full percentage point, over Roth.
An estimated 60,000 countywide vote-by-mail and provisional ballots have yet to be tabulated. The next update on the count is slated for Thursday night.
Roth, who will term out of the state Senate in December, was an Air Force major general stationed in the area before entering politics. He spotlighted as accomplishments since 2012 securing funding for the UC Riverside School of Medicine and funds to increase the number of judicial officers countywide.
“I’m running for supervisor to build more housing our families can afford, improve our quality of life, recruit doctors and make mental health care more accessible,” the senator said in campaign literature. “I’ll ensure we fund and support public safety to combat crime, fight gang violence and stop illegal drugs from overtaking our communities.”
He said he has a “plan to address homelessness by partnering with nonprofits (and) expanding mental health and substance abuse treatment services.”
The senator has cast himself as a “moderate Democrat,” but on taxes he has been a largely party-line voter. Like Medina, who termed out of the Assembly in 2022, Roth has received failing grades from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Association for supporting tax hikes on gasoline, higher state fees for mobile phone services and increased state charges for recycling spent car batteries, among other things.
Medina, who was an educator prior to entering the Assembly in 2010, pointed to his record supporting greater appropriations for UCR, seed funding for the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and a bevy of restoration projects in Riverside as highlights of his political career.
He vowed to ensure the sheriff’s department is “accountable” in order to restore “trust with our community,” alluding to complaints regarding conditions in the jail system, which has led to at least one lawsuit.
“I will deliver for Riverside County families by tackling our homelessness crisis by rapidly moving people off our streets and into housing,” he said in a campaign promotion.
According to Medina, if elected, he intends to improve “public health and expand mental health and addiction services.”
He appeared before the board in June to oppose double-digit percentage pay hikes ultimately approved for the sheriff, district attorney and other elected officials. He vowed that, if elected, he would continue Jeffries’ tradition of declining pay raises for himself.