OAKLAND — Almost a week after the polls closed and Alameda County elections officials have continued to count the mail-in ballots, the Oakland City Council District 3, District 1 and at-large races seem to be locked in, with the apparent winners declaring victory Monday.

In the District 3 City Council race, incumbent Lynette Gibson McElhaney conceded on Monday, she said in a video posted to her Facebook account.

“It has been an absolute honor and privilege to serve the community in this capacity,” Gibson McElhaney told followers, later noting that it is her “fervent wish” that Carroll Fife can “build upon the foundation we’ve laid. That she can accomplish the greater work she aspires to do to get us that much closer to justice.”

Carroll Fife has been elected to the Oakland City Council, representing District 3 in West Oakland. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group) 
Oakland Councilmember Lynette Gibson McElhaney (Courtesy of Lynette Gibson McElhaney) 

Fife, in a statement, thanked her supporters and acknowledged the win, adding, “This one council seat is just the beginning. Our campaign is transitioning into a permanent political organization dedicated to passing transformative legislation and building a progressive majority on the Oakland City Council.”

Also acknowledging a win on Monday was the incumbent in the citywide at-large council seat, Rebecca Kaplan, who was first elected to the council in 2008.

In a statement, Kaplan said her opponent, Derreck Johnson, had called to concede and congratulate her.

Election results were still unofficial on Monday. In the city’s ranked-choice voting system, if a candidate does not win more than 50% of the total first-choice votes, a cycle kicks in under which the last-place candidate is eliminated, and then voters who selected that candidate have their next choice counted, repeating until a candidate has the majority of votes.

According to the latest ranked-choice voting calculations posted Sunday evening, Kaplan held 52.64 percent of the votes, after she and second-place challenger Derreck Johnson scooped up additional votes from last-place candidate Nancy Sidebotham.

Oakland City Council’s at-large representative, Rebecca Kaplan, has won re-election. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) 

Fife held 51.02% of the vote to McElhaney’s 32.48% of the votes after ranked-choice voting eliminated last-place candidates in the race, in early results.

Both Fife and Kaplan won support from progressive voters in Oakland, as well as labor unions. Fife, one of the leaders of the Moms 4 Housing group who famously took over a vacant West Oakland house to shelter Black mothers and their families, has been vehemently pro-tenant and campaigned on ideas that include beefing up tenant protections, restoring and building affordable housing, and giving tenants chances to buy the homes they live in if the dwellings go on the market.

Gibson McElhaney, in her speech posted online Monday to followers, said she was proud of what she had accomplished, calling many of her victories “quiet victories” — such as helping to save small businesses — as well as larger ones, like helping to establishment the city’s Department of Violence Prevention. Gibson McElhaney’s son, Victor, was killed last year in Los Angeles, where he was a student at the University of Southern California, and she has long been an advocate of stopping gun violence.

In the District 1 City Council race, incumbent Dan Kalb held on to a large lead in his race against challengers Steph Dominguez Walton and Tri Ngo, and Dominguez Walton posted a note conceding the race on Monday afternoon to her social media following.

“While we came up short, we succeeded in reaching thousands of people in the district whose voices have gone unheard,” she wrote, thanking her voters and campaign volunteers.

While incumbent Noel Gallo still maintained more than 50 percent of the votes over challengers Richard Santos Raya and Zoe Lopez-Meraz, his lead dropped a couple of percentage points to almost 51% as Alameda County updated its election tally late Monday.

In the District 7 race for retiring councilmember Larry Reid’s wide-open seat, his daughter, Treva Reid, was holding a lead over four other challengers, with well-known pastor Bishop Bob Jackson in second place, according to the latest results. With the latest round of ranked choice voting, she held more than 60 percent of the votes, although that figure could change as votes continue to be counted.

As for the school board races, many of those who emerged as leaders in very early election results were still keeping a lead by Monday’s vote count. In District 1, Sam Davis was leading over Austin Dannhaus and Stacy Thomas for the school district board seat.

In District 3, VanCedric Williams was leading the race and followed by Maiya Edgerly, Cherisse Gash, Mark Hurty and Maximo Santana.

In District 5, Mike Hutchinson was ahead of Leroy Gaines, Sheila Pope Lawerence and Jorge C. Lerma.

In the District 7 race, Clifford Thompson remained in the lead over Ben “Coach” Tapscott, Kristina Molina, Bronche Taylor and Victor Javier Valerio.