KAZU reporters spoke with voters at the polls yesterday
Rain in Santa Cruz didn’t seem to dampen voter turnout. San Jose State University professor Tammie Visintainer, who lives in Santa Cruz, says she’s hoping the election will bring an end to some recent federal changes.
"I had a huge National Science Foundation grant that was terminated during the anti-DEI executive order," said Visintainer. "So I'm out here voting to support science and federal agencies and all the federal workers."
Kristy Silveira, another Santa Cruz resident, feels the current administration has been running wild.
"I think that if the Democrats took control of one or both," said Silviera, "we would at least have some kind of guardrails with a lot of the things in the corruption that's going on."
Democrats did take control of both the House and the Senate.
Locally, Marina is getting a new mayor. Incumbent Bruce Delgado chose not to run again after 18 years in the job.
Mitzi Camacho says when voting for his replacement, one question stood out for her: "Who do I want this mayor to cater more to? Locals like us that grew up here, or rather the transplants that are kinda moving into town?" Early returns suggest the 3-way race will go to Mike Moeller.
Laura Mejia turned in her ballot at the Marina Community Center, where she was also picking up her daughter. She said that made her ballot drop-off "so much easier, kinda like a drive-through. But also the kids get to see that their parents are also coming in and making that time to come and vote."
County election officials will continue to update results until all the ballots are counted.
" I was literally just parked in my car for the last hour just trying to fill out... everything from my ballot because a lot of single parents just don't have time to take off of work or... throughout the day," said Mejia, who works at CSUMB.
