Henson, Quirk win final two seats

Incumbents Ward, Halliday remain top two vote-getters

By Michelle Meyers, STAFF WRITER

HAYWARD Election officials finished tallying the last batch of ballots from the March 2 Hayward City Council election late Friday, and at last the race is called.

Voters elected two incumbents, Bill Ward and Olden Henson, and two challengers, Barbara Halliday and Bill Quirk, to fill four open council seats, according to the final count of 57,924 votes.

It has been clear since the earliest counts that voters elected Ward and Halliday, who ended up only 11 votes apart.

But Quirk and Henson's victories, while likely, were in limbo because it was unknown how many Hayward votes remained outstanding.

About 30,000 county residents turned in absentee ballots on election day that were not counted until March 12. Election officials spent last week counting and verifying 8,000 more provisional ballots that were doled out on election day largely because of problems with the electronic voting machines. And 2,000 absentee ballots were damaged in the mail and needed to be replicated.

Ward, an urban planning consultant with two decades on the council, was the top vote-getter, with 7,760 votes, 13.4 percent of the votes. Halliday, a planning commissioner and insurance claims supervisor, was right behind him with7,749 votes, 13.3 percent.

Almost 2,000 votes away, Quirk, a library commissioner and astrophysicist, came in third with 5,936 votes, 10.2 per cent. He was followed by Henson, an encryption consultant and 21/2-term councilman, who received 5,765 votes, or 9.9 percent.

Challenger Robert Lopez, a council critic and plumber with the East Bay Municipal Utility District, was actually ahead in earlier vote tallies. But he ended up with 5,490 votes, 9.5 percent.

There were 13 candidates for the four seats. Voters could vote for up to four candidates.

The other candidates and their vote totals and percentages are: incumbent Joe Hilson,4,310, 7.4 percent; Gary Craig, 4,163, 7.2 percent; Francisco Zermeo, 4,119, 7.1 percent; Barbara Heringer-Swarr, 3,886, 6.7 percent; Jason Moreno,2,450, 4.2 percent; Cora Baker, 2,225, 3.8 percent; Ed Bogue, 2,037, 3.5 percent; and Francisco Abrantes, 2,034, 3.5 percent.