SF Mayor Lee Wins High School Mock Election; Gascon Trounced
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) - San Francisco's young people want their interim mayor to stick around for a full term but not their district attorney, according to results of a survey of the city's public high school students released Tuesday.
About 8,600 students from around San Francisco voted in the mock election, which was organized by the city's Department of Children, Youth, and their Families in advance of the Nov. 8 election, said Peter Lauterborn, the department's youth vote coordinator.
Interim Mayor Ed Lee won 59 percent of the vote in the election, which followed the same ranked-choice format as the real election, in which losing candidates' votes are redistributed to voters' second and third choices, Lauterborn said.
However, in the district attorney's race, current District Attorney George Gascon received the lowest percentage of votes, coming in at under 10 percent, Lauterborn said. Alameda County prosecutor Sharmin Bock won with 53 percent of the vote, he said.
In the race for sheriff, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi bested three current and former sheriff's department employees who are in the race, garnering 56 percent support.
In the mayor's race, Supervisors John Avalos and David Chiu finished second and third, respectively.
Chris Cunnie finished second in the sheriff's race, and David Onek finished second in the district attorney's race, Lauterborn said.
The students also voted on ballot measures being considered by the city's electorate.
On two dueling measures that propose reforming the pension system for the city's workers -- Lee's Proposition C and Public Defender Jeff Adachi's Proposition D -- nearly 54 percent of students supported the former, while 57 percent voted down Prop D.
A school bond measure, Proposition A, passed overwhelmingly with more than 79 percent support. About 69 percent of students supported Proposition B, a bond measure to improve the city's streets.
Lauterborn said the results are interesting because in some cases -- like in the mayor's race -- they matched recent polls of adults, while in the district attorney's race, where polls have shown Gascon in the lead, "they clearly showed a differing sense of opinion."
However, candidates who did not win the mock election can take heart; most of the students are not yet of age to cast real votes. Lauterborn said only 200 or 300 of the students who participated are 18.
The survey, which was voluntary, was given to the majority of the students in their classrooms, he said.
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