Election NIGHT!

Lucky for me I was not in my apartment to see the initial returns for early vote. Originally Hardberger was beating Castro by a huge 9,000 votes. That margin has since narrowed to 5,500, but it could be a long night for the Castro supporters out there.

In a big surprise of the night Delicia Herrera is beating Ray Lopez in district 6 so far by a narrow 300 votes. This is proof positive that the right message and grassroots power are more important than money. With no surprise at all Elena Guajardo is winning in district 7, and the lead is expanding.

Hardberger supporters out there should be the most encouraged right now. Hardberger had better than expected early vote and voters are still in line in the northwest part of town. Hopefully nobody is celebrating too much right now. With the slow paper ballots coming this is anyone's game.

No matter what happens tonight, Democrats should feel encouraged. Currently the council has one known Republican and after tonight (unless Noel Suniga upsets) there will be 9 D's on council and a Democratic mayor.

UPDATE 9:19 PM
26% of the precincts are reporting and the Mayor Race is now within 2,900 votes. As long as they are not calling district 6 and 7 that lead should narrow. Delicia Herrera is holding steady at 200 votes and Elena Guajardo is expanding her lead to 700 votes, and I feel comfortable saying that Elena has won.

UPDATE 9:38 PM
A little under 41% of the precincts are reporting now and Julian Castro is only down by 3% to Phil Hardberger. That is an amazing recovery. Delicia has expanded her lead to 700 votes over Ray. I feel comfortable calling the second city council election and say that Delicia Herrera has won in District 6.

UPDATE 9:55 PM
The Red State has some interesting news that Districts 8, 9, and 10 have only counted 38 of 208 ballot boxes. These are the three precincts that Hardberger is going to win, and District 8 reports are showing long lines that caused the poll to close at 8:30 pm. This is good news for the Hardberger camp. This is going to be a long night, and I am planning on stick with it all night.

UPDATE 10:03 PM
53% of the precincts are in and the lead is narrowing more. Castro is only down by 2,200 votes but as Cincinnatus and The Red State have said, the northside is only partially in and this will bump Hardberger up again.

UPDATE 10:24 PM
WOW, what a difference a few hours make. 55% of the precincts in and Castro is in the hunt and he is only behind by 1,500 total votes. It is way to early to say that Castro has the momentum with most of the Northside still out. With turnout exceeding over 100,000 tonight, no matter who wins, they are governing with a mandate and that seems good.

UPDATE 10:33 PM
Nearly 60% of the vote in and Hardberger is pulling away again. Castro is down by 1,800 votes now and Hardberger is saying that only 1/3 of the Northside votes are in. If this is true, then Julian's catch-up game tonight could be ending. In an unrelated note, Just Another Blog broke the 1,000 viewer mark!

UPDATE 11:10 PM
The last box has just arrived to the election headquarters.

UPDATE 11:38 PM
Phil Hardberger is our new Mayor. 96% of the precinct are in and Phil Hardberger has expanded his lead to 2,500 voters ahead of Julian Castro. There are only 20 more precincts left. It has been a very good day for San Antonio. There were over 125,000 voters, there are two more women on council and both of them are Hispanic. It looks like the city wins big tonight and the next two years should be very good in San Antonio. Great job to TRS and The Jeffersonian on their live blogging.

UPDATE 11:46 PM
The final numbers look like this:

BALLOTS CAST - TOTAL. . . . . . . 129,991
Mayor
Phil Hardberger . . . . . . . . 66,830 51.47%
Julian Castro . . . . . . . . . 63,001 48.53%

City Council District 6
Ray Lopez  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .      5,101   44.23%
Delicia Herrera  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .      6,433   55.77%

City Council District 7
Elena Guajardo.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .      8,901   54.78 %
Noel A. Suniga.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .      7,349   45.22%